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 Are politics too hard on smokers poll
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lil_devil
New Member

Canada
17 Posts

Posted - 06/25/2002 :  17:16:55  Show Profile Send lil_devil a Private Message
Poll Question:
should goverment reduce taxes
and let people smoke anywhere
but restorants and clothing stores?




Results:
sure why not....i can live with that   [11%] 2 votes
No way   [22%] 4 votes
I don't know   [11%] 2 votes
yes but only if we are allowed to ask them to put it out in our presence   [22%] 4 votes
I cant stand smokers!! or anything for that matter dammit!   [17%] 3 votes
I wish I could give another answer but nontheless it ressembles #1   [17%] 3 votes


Poll Status: Locked  »»   Total Votes: 18 counted  »»   Last Vote: 06/28/2005 18:54:13 

Lars_H
SFN Regular

Germany
630 Posts

Posted - 06/25/2002 :  17:32:30   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Lars_H a Private Message
This poll makes almost as little sense as your other one. The idea behind an opinon poll is to find out what opinons people have, not to state your own opinon in the form of a multple choce question.

You mix two diffenrent things here. Are taxes on cigaretts fair? And Should the gouvernment make laws to restrict where people are allowed to smoke.
Those two questions are unconnected.

Why do you allow for exceptions in Restaurants and clothing stores only. What about hospitals, public transportations, gas-stations and cinnemas?

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Snake
SFN Addict

USA
2511 Posts

Posted - 06/25/2002 :  18:11:27   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Snake's Homepage  Send Snake an ICQ Message  Send Snake a Yahoo! Message Send Snake a Private Message
quote:

Why do you allow for exceptions in Restaurants and clothing stores only. What about hospitals, public transportations, gas-stations and cinnemas?


I just assumed he was being humorous by adding that, unless he didn't think the question through enough. Certainly of any place smoking should be banned is hospitals, but by the hospital not the government.

* * * * * *
*Carabao forever.
-----------------
Bye, bye Los Angeles. SAN FERNANDO VALLEY SECESSION - YES.
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Bradley
Skeptic Friend

USA
147 Posts

Posted - 06/26/2002 :  12:20:56   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Bradley a Private Message
As a life-long blue-collar worker, I've really come to view tobacco use as a strictly white-trash habit.

"Too much doubt is better than too much credulity."

-Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 - 1899)
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Trish
SFN Addict

USA
2102 Posts

Posted - 07/07/2002 :  01:59:39   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Trish a Private Message
Well, thank you so much Bradely. But why a 'white trash' habit? Does that include those who live in mobile homes and make barely enough to meet their bills? Does this somehow diminish their capacity for critical thought or intelligence at all? What exactly are you implying by 'white trash'? I would consider your answer carefully, because you might be surprised to find that not too few of us here fit your description of 'white trash'.

---
...no one has ever found a 4.5 billion year old stone artifact (at the right geological stratum) with the words "Made by God."
No Sense of Obligation by Matt Young
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gezzam
SFN Regular

Australia
751 Posts

Posted - 07/07/2002 :  06:42:40   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit gezzam's Homepage Send gezzam a Private Message
quote:

As a life-long blue-collar worker, I've really come to view tobacco use as a strictly white-trash habit.

"Too much doubt is better than too much credulity."

-Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 - 1899)





There are smokers from all walks of life be you rich or poor, living in a caravan or a mansion.

I reckon that was pretty much a poor generalisation of smokers. I used to be one (off for nearly 7 months now Snake), so I suppose that makes me white-trash in your eyes, or because I do not smoke now I have miraculously moved up the social ladder.. Geez, I hate pigeon holing people into groups.

Seems like a little bit of looking down the nose happening here.


"Damn you people. Go back to your shanties." --- Shooter McGavin
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Slater
SFN Regular

USA
1668 Posts

Posted - 07/08/2002 :  08:42:41   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Slater a Private Message
quote:

Seems like a little bit of looking down the nose happening here.



Well...yes.

Smokers make themselves into social pariahs. Of course people look down their noses at them. (While they were holding their noses)
If you have stopped smoking then you have stopped making everyone and everything around you stink. Your social position would improve as your good manners improved--nothing miraculous to it.

-------
My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ---Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860
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Trish
SFN Addict

USA
2102 Posts

Posted - 07/10/2002 :  00:30:47   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Trish a Private Message
Slater, however the smokeing here wasn't the issue but rather the concept that smokers are somehow given less worth than non smokers. I understand that smoking is a nasty addiction and I won't smoke in a persons home or car or even their yard without their permission, nor will I ask for that permission. I'd rather do without than subject another to my smoking. However, I don't need to be told by someone that as a person I am worthless because of that addiction. That is where the problem comes in.

---
...no one has ever found a 4.5 billion year old stone artifact (at the right geological stratum) with the words "Made by God."
No Sense of Obligation by Matt Young
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Slater
SFN Regular

USA
1668 Posts

Posted - 07/10/2002 :  09:18:27   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Slater a Private Message
Slater, however the smokeing here wasn't the issue but rather the concept that smokers are somehow given less worth than non smokers.
That's actually twisting around what is happening.
For the longest time smokers treated everyone else as though they had less worth than the smokers. Now that the majority have passed laws demanding that they be left alone and smokers portray it as if they were the ones being picked on.

I understand that smoking is a nasty addiction … However, I don't need to be told by someone that as a person I am worthless because of that addiction. That is where the problem comes in

You are misinterpreting what gets people pissed at smokers.

Nobody gives a flying fart if you have an addiction. It's not like cigarette addiction isn't common knowledge-you must have known before you started and didn't care, so why should we?

People are pissed at smokers because it is aggressive anti-social behavior.

Only this morning I was walking down the street when suddenly my head is in a cloud of rank smelling soot. That was about an hour and a half ago and my beard still reeks from it. Some woman about twenty five feet away from me on the sidewalk decided that she would start smoking and to hell with the rest of us-we were going to start smoking too whether we wanted to or not.

As far as anti-social behavior goes that is on a level with if I decided to just start peeing and sprayed my piss on any and all passersby.
I could use the same "addict" excuse you just did. People tell me I'm worthless because I have an old bladder and I take blood pressure medicine that makes me go frequently. Obviously that isn't why people would think I was worthless. They would think I was worthless because I showed no concern for anyone else. I was being anti-social. I just peed away never caring who I soaked.
Such bizarre behavior might very well prompt a physical attack on me. That would be a predictable response that was a direct consequence of my actions. Yet smokers expect-no demand-no consequences to their actions. And what is the difference in covering strangers in soot and sprinkling a little piss on them?

They both smell, they are both offensive, but the pee isn't carcinogenic.



-------
My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ---Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860
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Bradley
Skeptic Friend

USA
147 Posts

Posted - 07/10/2002 :  14:43:12   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Bradley a Private Message
quote:
Does that include those who live in mobile homes and make barely enough to meet their bills? Does this somehow diminish their capacity for critical thought or intelligence at all?[quote]

Not at all. White trash is more a state of mind.

[quote] What exactly are you implying by 'white trash'?[quote]

How about someone who won't rise above his state, like by breaking low-life nuisance habits or availing himself of the local library?

[quote] I would consider your answer carefully, because you might be surprised to find that not too few of us here fit your description of 'white trash'.


Hey, I said I'm blue collar, and I'm by no means rich. I come from a working class background, but I never felt comfortable with the good old boy crowd. A lot of folks on both sides of the tracks are genuinely offended by educated peasants, however, I've never bought into that sort of yankee anti-intellectualism.

"Too much doubt is better than too much credulity."

-Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 - 1899)
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Bradley
Skeptic Friend

USA
147 Posts

Posted - 07/10/2002 :  14:47:04   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Bradley a Private Message
quote:
Seems like a little bit of looking down the nose happening here.


From ME?! Oh, my goodness gracious NO!

"Too much doubt is better than too much credulity."

-Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 - 1899)
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@tomic
Administrator

USA
4607 Posts

Posted - 07/10/2002 :  20:15:56   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit @tomic's Homepage Send @tomic a Private Message
You are right slater but non smokers are taking it to another level when they vote to ban smoking at establishments that smokers frequent(such as bars). Non smoking areas or non smoking bars should be an acceptable solution but to tell a bar owner that his or her customers can't smoke even when the non smokers have plenty of options is wrong. Sure, public smoking is, in some instances, not cool but to ban smoking at places people go to smoke is just plain wrong.

One could argue that smoker's clog up the health system I suppose and burden the non smokers but you could easily counter that the tobacco companies taxes and the high taxes paid for each cigarette amounts to a considerable sum. Assuming the money goes where it's supposed to.


@tomic

Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law!
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Trish
SFN Addict

USA
2102 Posts

Posted - 07/10/2002 :  22:07:59   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Trish a Private Message
quote:
As a life-long blue-collar worker, I've really come to view tobacco use as a strictly white-trash habit.


For the longest time smokers treated everyone else as though they had less worth than the smokers. Now that the majority have passed laws demanding that they be left alone and smokers portray it as if they were the ones being picked on.

I didn't need someone calling me white trash either. Yes, I agree - smoking is a nasty habit. And, well I'm not really old enough to have been in the group that would have thought that but am old enough to have already been smoking when the warnings were put on cigarettes.

I wish I'd never started - but I was young and stupid - once. We all were some less so than others. For all the use of wishing it still doesn't change that I did start smoking and I haven't been able yet to quit.

Bradley,

I've been trying to quit for years. Would you believe that I actually am more successful at quitting when I'm not around my family than when I am. Well, I'll just keep quitting until I quit for the last time - until then...

---
...no one has ever found a 4.5 billion year old stone artifact (at the right geological stratum) with the words "Made by God."
No Sense of Obligation by Matt Young
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Slater
SFN Regular

USA
1668 Posts

Posted - 07/11/2002 :  11:33:28   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Slater a Private Message
non smokers are taking it to another level when they vote to ban smoking at establishments that smokers frequent(such as bars).
Having moved from New York City to San Francisco I can tell you that going to a bar here in California is much, much more pleasant merely because of the smoking ban.
One might ask, what places don't smokers frequent?
These laws are for the protection of innocent people not to punish smokers for spite. They don't punish smokers at all, they prevent them from punishing non-smokers.
Are a secretary and an office manager in a high rise office tower worthy of working in a non-toxic work place but a barmaid and a bartender are not? Should the owner of a small business not be sued for every penny he's got for not supplying a safe work place but the owner of a bar be?
Non smoking areas or non smoking bars should be an acceptable solution but to tell a bar owner that his or her customers can't smoke even when the non smokers have plenty of options is wrong.
Non smoking areas are a joke. Unless they are in a separate room with a separate vent system they don't work at all. If someone starts smoking in a room the only option they give a non smoker is to leave. The people who work there don't have that option. They can only stay and risk death. The law banning smoking in bars in California was passed to protect the employees who are only trying to make an honest living and deserve a safe work environment. Smokers can go out on the street to smoke, just as they would have to do in their own work places.
Sure, public smoking is, in some instances, not cool but to ban smoking at places people go to smoke is just plain wrong.
Last time I checked people go to bars to drink. It's a hell of a lot more enjoyable having a nice drink with friends if no one is smoking.


Trish
I wish I'd never started - but I was young and stupid - once. We all were some less so than others.
Although I vaguely remember sometime in the distant past that I once was young, I've never been stupid.
For all the use of wishing it still doesn't change that I did start smoking and I haven't been able yet to quit.
Our actions have consequences. Because an action of yours, that you now regret, has consequences that you don't like, that does not give you the right to inflect these consequences on other people.
If you are going to smoke around other people then don't exhale. Because if you do you are going to get that foul smelling crap all over them, and they aren't going to like it. And they aren't going to think very highly of you for doing that to them.


-------
My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ---Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860
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@tomic
Administrator

USA
4607 Posts

Posted - 07/11/2002 :  12:42:13   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit @tomic's Homepage Send @tomic a Private Message
quote:
Should the owner of a small business not be sued for every penny he's got for not supplying a safe work place but the owner of a bar be?


I would think that just as a smoker knows what they are getting into when they take up smoking a bartender etc know what to expect in a bar. I have no problem with non-smoking bars if an owner wants that and i think it would be a good idea but an owner should also be able to allow smoking. Are you saying you don't have the choice of finding another bar? I don't see your point.


@tomic

Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law!
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Slater
SFN Regular

USA
1668 Posts

Posted - 07/11/2002 :  13:49:28   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Slater a Private Message
I would think that just as a smoker knows what they are getting into when they take up smoking a bartender etc know what to expect in a bar.
So they are asking for it, huh.
Now smokers know what to expect in a California bar too. They'll have to go outside-just as they would in any other business.
I have no problem with non-smoking bars if an owner wants that and i think it would be a good idea but an owner should also be able to allow smoking.
These laws were passed for the protection of the public. An owner should not be allowed to have smoking in his bar any more that he should be allowed to put poison in everyone's drinks. (Here in SF in the 1880's we had any number of bars on the Barbary Coast that did exactly that)
Are you saying you don't have the choice of finding another bar?
In what fantasyland do these voluntary non-smoking bars exist?
I don't see your point.
I don't see yours either. What other parts of the health code do you want to get rid of? Why are people in bars forced to go into that little room to take a crap? Why can't they just shit on the staff and the other patrons?
You want to move your bowels you go in the rest room. You want to smoke you step outside. What's the big deal? Neither is something you should be shareing with the public.


-------
My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ---Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860

Edited by - slater on 07/11/2002 13:50:27
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