Should smoking be banned in NYC parks?

[Nosi]

he wants cops and park rangers to hand out tickets for folks who smoke in parks.

$Ka-Ching$ for the win. Sounds like a stealth tax rather than a real program to eradicate a bad habit. Quitting is a so you can be sure there are always going to be hard core addicts smokers out there. (I am a nonsmoker, but I'm tolerant of those smokers who are courteous to me. They're being taken for a ride.)

 

[Nosi]

That seems excessive.

Littering is already illegal.

Would you ban all packaging because some people toss it into the street? Ban dogs because some owners don't pick up after them?

I think your confirmation bias is showing.

I would like to see curbs (legal and capitalistic) on excessive packaging. Store owners can RFID tag products that are tiny and easily lifted. I speak as someone who's fought many a combat to get tiny electronics out of meter square shrink wrap plastic. We saw the last Styrofoam clamshell burger holder from McDonald's thanks to curbs.

 

[Nosi]

... then they came for the high cholesterol diners but I said nothing because I was young and healthy.

... then they came for the people with high-stress jobs but I said nothing because I enjoyed working in a pressure cooker.

... then they came for the smokers and I said nothing because I was in the hospital going through my second bypass.

(Is that how that ends?)

My version ends with:

Then they came for the fat person, which was me.

 

[Francesca R]

It's not an original idea, Bloomberg's just catching up. India just implemented a country-wide public smoking ban.

Iraq was considering one too

 

[WildCat]

That seems excessive.

Littering is already illegal.

Would you ban all packaging because some people toss it into the street? Ban dogs because some owners don't pick up after them?

I think your confirmation bias is showing.

I know of no other product so casually and consistently thrown on the ground after use. Do you?

 

[Foolmewunz]

My version ends with:

Then they came for the fat person, which was me.

That was sorta my point. After years of smoking and eating any old damned thing I please, I'm paying the price - I go in for a bypass sometime early December.

 

[microdot]

Any time a smoking ban is on the cards people invariably seem to trot out the argument that the pollution from smoking is negligible when compared to pollution from motor vehicles.

I'm inclined to believe that is a valid argument.

However!

If motor vehicles were banned tomorrow I imagine that the effect on the world economy would be massive.

If smoking was banned tomorrow I believe the effect on the world economy would be significantly less.

I realise that governments would lose a source of income from taxation.

In the UK I would hazard a guess that the loss of taxation would be more or less balanced out by the reduction in costs to the NHS of caring for those suffering the very serious ill effects that arise from smoking.

Also healthier people = more work days = more income tax paid to the government.

Or am I being too simplistic?

ETA - I also can't see any real, useful benefit for anybody in smoking.

 

[Furcifer]

Any time a smoking ban is on the cards people invariably seem to trot out the argument that the pollution from smoking is negligible when compared to pollution from motor vehicles.

I'm inclined to believe that is a valid argument.

However!

If motor vehicles were banned tomorrow I imagine that the effect on the world economy would be massive.

If smoking was banned tomorrow I believe the effect on the world economy would be significantly less.

I realise that governments would lose a source of income from taxation.

In the UK I would hazard a guess that the loss of taxation would be more or less balanced out by the reduction in costs to the NHS of caring for those suffering the very serious ill effects that arise from smoking.

Also healthier people = more work days = more income tax paid to the government.

Or am I being too simplistic?

ETA - I also can't see any real, useful benefit for anybody in smoking.

This is a case for an outright ban on the sale of tobacco.

You may have a point about cars, but consider recreational vehicles, weed whackers, lawn mowers etc. Things we can easily do without and create a heck of a lot of pollution, noise etc.

 

[Beerina]

A red herring segued into a non sequitur. Well done.

Like any scientific theory, it is a prediction. File it away and wait and see.

In 20 years, I expect you to be back and apologize. Have a nice day.

 

[Nosi]

That was sorta my point. After years of smoking and eating any old damned thing I please, I'm paying the price - I go in for a bypass sometime early December.

For me, it wasn't so much what I ate, although I admit to liking food more than I should, it was the pills I needed to take to survive that added the pounds. (They damaged some internal balancing stuff, so my body doesn't know how to balance my energy vs fat ratio, doctors gave me some fifty cent explanations I can't remember.)

I was born with a laundry list of problems, which including mild autism, mental illness, and physical problems, that call for 20 different medications. Each pill had a side effect that called for another pill to counteract, bla bla bla.

I'm still managing some weight loss despite this mess, as I've learned healthy cooking via crock pot.

Nonetheless, I am leary of all this bullying by government jobsworths as it is too easy to scapegoat people you don't like the looks of. Smokers and fat people are easy targets of bigotry as their habits can be seen as 'self inflicted'.

 

[willhaven]

Smoking and obesity are self inflicted.

It may be easier for some to lose weight than others, but everyone can do it. Smokers never have to start in the first place.

 

[Nosi]

Smoking and obesity are self inflicted.

It may be easier for some to lose weight than others, but everyone can do it. Smokers never have to start in the first place.

Back in tobacco's heyday, smoking was advertised as 'good for you' and your 'T Zone'. Go find your old 1950's commercials for tobacco. Solders were actually given cigarettes in their rations during WW11. My mother started smoking during those dark days. Now, she is trying her to quit and is finding it very difficult. She is also being made a scape goat.

 

[willhaven]

But the majority of people who smoke today grew up knowing it was bad for them yet chose to do so anyway.

It's hard to fault those who were lied to.

 

[doobiedoright]

BTW, smoking is banned on the beaches here in Chicago. It wasn't due to secondhand smoke though, but because smokers think the world is their ashtray and just flick their butts on the sand and in the water.

Seriously smokers, what's up with that? What makes you think this is OK? Most of you wouldn't throw your bag of fast food trash out the car window or on the sidewalk, but you all (don't lie now) throw your butts any old place with nary a thought.

Sorry you just lumped a bunch of people together and your wrong.
I field strip then place butt in pocket!

 

[Nosi]

Sorry you just lumped a bunch of people together and your wrong.
I field strip then place butt in pocket!

Mom chases ashtrays. She won't leave her butts any-old-where.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Sorry you just lumped a bunch of people together and your wrong.
I field strip then place butt in pocket!

Thanks. You just reminded me that I have two cigarette butts in my lefthand outside pocket of the suit I wore today.

Yes, there are some people who make a point of taking care of their butts. With the new rules here, it's greatly for self-preservation - for most people - but I've always done it.

@Nosi,
Your mom must be maybe a half-generation older than me (or started smoking very young). I don't have the misleading advertising excuse. By the time I was taking up smoking we already referred to them as cancer sticks or coffin nails. I took it up because it seemed the cool thing to do. I have no excuse. No one in my family smoked, either. But I remember those ads from when I was younger - so absurd in retrospect when we know what we now know.

 

[GreyICE]

Like any scientific theory, it is a prediction. File it away and wait and see.

In 20 years, I expect you to be back and apologize. Have a nice day.

No, no they are not. I've seen creationists give better definitions of scientific theories.

 

[Nosi]

Thanks. You just reminded me that I have two cigarette butts in my lefthand outside pocket of the suit I wore today.

Yes, there are some people who make a point of taking care of their butts. With the new rules here, it's greatly for self-preservation - for most people - but I've always done it.

@Nosi,
Your mom must be maybe a half-generation older than me (or started smoking very young). I don't have the misleading advertising excuse. By the time I was taking up smoking we already referred to them as cancer sticks or coffin nails. I took it up because it seemed the cool thing to do. I have no excuse. No one in my family smoked, either. But I remember those ads from when I was younger - so absurd in retrospect when we know what we now know.

Let's put it this way, when she was five or so, a Japanese bomber on it's way to bomb Hawaii flew over her house in Alaska.

 

[Donal]

I know of no other product so casually and consistently thrown on the ground after use. Do you?

Candy bar wrappers.

Of course, neither of us have any documented evidence to support this, just our own perceptions.

I believe the term is Argument from Ignorance.

 

[Nosi]

People cough up and spit phlem on the street, or big snot rocks on the street quite frequently in my experience. China has such a big problem that they've signs saying "please don't spit".