<p>Emerald, your avatar is too small for me to tell how old the person is. </p>
<p>The largest health cost in the US comes from obesity, not smoking. Nothing costs more.</p>
<p>Look for the obese to be the next lepers, since nobody smokes near anybody anymore and the rate has simply plummeted over the last decade or two. Soon, eating ice cream will be taboo, and people will be visited by DCFS for feeding their children sweets. </p>
<p>I’d rather we had freedom of choice, personally. I tire of the zealots on all subjects. </p>
<p>But stopping smoking is the best think you can do for your health. THEN comes losing weight.
Freedom of choice is nice, but one’s choices tend to impact a lot of other people.</p>
<p>I guess. But, I’m just exhuasted by the police state these days. It’s just me. </p>
<p>The fact is we are going to be living in the zombie apacolypse of dementia and altzheimers. Nobody gets out of here alive. :ar! </p>
<p>Eating ice cream hurts only the person eating it physically.
It doesn’t hurt everyone around the person like smoking does. </p>
<p>The harm people are speaking of these days is not second hand, though I’m sorry you suffered that fate, Romani. Times have changed. People stupid enough to smoke are not smoking around others. The harm from overeating and smoking is the same, financial. That’s what people “mean.”</p>
<p>Look, I think there need to be laws to protect people from other people’s idiocy, but I also think we are way too much up in everybody’s business with this misguided idea the baby boomers have that we can all live forever and live the way they want you to live.</p>
<p>I don’t smoke, don’t drink and have medical numbers like a 25 year old. But, you know, my grandmother, when she found out she had altheimers at 80 said she wished she’d just kept smoking and drinking. She lived for ten years without knowing who anybody was. </p>
<p>How is that a “win?”</p>
<p>People are definitely smoking around others. It’s not something I notice in my small hometown, but in the city I live in, I notice it. There are enough people on the sidewalk smoking that you will probably inhale smoke at least once on your walk from one place to another. People tend to huddle in and right by building entrances so everyone going in and out has to smell out. I was waiting for a bus recently and somebody asked me if I minded if he smoked, and I said yes, and he went ahead and lit up in the enclosed bus stop.</p>
<p>I have a gene mutation that could cause me to become legally blind sometime during my life, and smoke inhalation is the single biggest risk factor. I always have hated being around smoke, and the smell makes me nauseous, but since I found that out, it’s bothered me even more.</p>
<p>The push to legalize marijuana is the next bandwagon for people to jump on. I wonder how this will square with the anti-tobacco smoking movement. </p>
<p>PSA: NEVER cut up patches of any kind. Doing that ruins the slow release mechanism and too much drug can be absorbed too fast as it leaks out.</p>
<p>But if you don’t know how old someone is, how can you tell if they are a smoker or not?
How old would you say the woman in my avatar is?>>>>>>>></p>
<p>I can’t see the avatar pic well enough, but by the time a person is late fifties or so, their voice has gotten husky and their skin is…different. More wrinkled and almost seems to be a bit thickened. JME.</p>
<p>Obesity hand in hand with diabetes is indeed nearly as bad. One can quit smoking and never pick up another cigarette but people have to eat. It’s a tough one. Just this week I’ve been reading that sugar is just as deadly as smoking.</p>
<p>Some people smoke in public in Seattle, but not really that much. Even though my nose is very sensitive, I am bothered just as much by people driving by me with the window rolled down
Dont notice that much marijuana smoking in public, although they did just have a huge smoke out, on the same night as the Pearl Jam show.
What a coincidence!
It was over by the time we came out.
<a href=“http://www.king5.com/news/marijuana/Washington-legal-pot-anniversary-234764641.html”>http://www.king5.com/news/marijuana/Washington-legal-pot-anniversary-234764641.html</a></p>
<p>28% of men in my state smoke. I am sure it is higher in the more rural, uneducated areas…where I am (sigh). You are lucky if you life in a state/area where people don’t smoke around others. People who are obese affect me through higher insurance costs, but they don’t outright alter my health directly. My state is littered with smoke and cigarette butts everywhere and it’s disgusting.</p>
<p>It isn’t just health costs. It’s the breaks the smokers have to take all day long while everyone else works. It’s the stink that follows them around. </p>
<p>If the smokers take more breaks than everyone else, it sounds like a workplace issue.
That would be irritating.</p>
<p>Anyone else notice that the new CC software is slow?
I can click on something & it still doesnt post after 5 or 10 minutes. But then I have duplicate posts.
Which cant be deleted.
Irritating.</p>
<p>I started this discussion and was kinda hoping for some honest feedback from actual smokers. I know I was this way so I’ll just say it…denial. I didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t dare really think it could ever happen to me etc. It’s such a powerful addition. : (</p>
<p>The danger from low level exposure to second hand smoke outdoors is negligible, if it even exists. You can say you hate it, or that you don’t want to be around it, but unless you are exposed continually to smoking at a high rate indoors in poor ventilation, you aren’t being effected health wise. </p>
<p>Smoking is idiotic. But it’s not killing you when you are walking down the street. One more example of the puritanical attitude Americans always adopt.</p>
<p><a href=“Study Finds No Link Between Secondhand Smoke And Cancer”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2013/12/12/study-finds-no-link-between-secondhand-smoke-and-cancer/</a></p>
<p>I suppose you believe motorcycle helmets should be totally optional, too.</p>
<p>Oh, it doesn’t cause cancer? Well, that’s certainly a game-changer. </p>