Obama bans clove cigarettes and other types, nothing of value lost.

[Seraph]

Watch what happens when we replace the worlds cigarettes with non-nicotine versions. Let's see if they notice...

[Cephius]

Honestly, if I want to kill myself slowly for the next 40 years with cigarettes, I should be able to.

No, not when you get one of the multitude of medical diseases associated with smoking, and raise the insurance premiums of people who don't intentionally kill themselves. Not to mention you take time and hospital beds away from people who didn't intentionally put themselves there. Stop acting like smoking only affects yourself, it doesn't.

Big mac's are never good even in moderation, and neither are swiss cake rolls. How about vodka? This is the biggest problem with the government taking over things that used to be public - now they get to tell us what to do. In 70 years our couches might tell us to stand the fuck up and do some running after we sit on them for more than 2 hours and then fold up so the government doesn't have to pay your bill to check your obesity

Comparing fatty foods to smoking? Really? If you eat a Big Mac a day and hit the gym every day, it balances out. There is no "balancing out" the effects of nicotine and smoking on one's body.

If shit was Bush's fault, this is Obama's fault. You can't have it both ways. When bush curbed your rights (albeit to a greater degree), it was the worst thing ever. When Obama does it, he is just trying to protect us! its ok! stop hypocrisy and stand up like fucking men on this issue.

You'll have to point out to me when "the right to smoke" was added into the Bill of Rights. Privilege != right. A bill was introduced that cuts down on the ways people can kill themselves and others. Forgive us if we don't think it's as bad as making illegal wiretaps legal.

And stop being little vaginas about smoke. Not to mention second hand smoke surprisingly has very little data actually saying it's bad for you

One of the dumbest things I've ever heard.

Secondhand Smoke: Questions and Answers - National Cancer Institute
Secondhand Smoke Fact Sheet - American Lung Association site
Secondhand Smoke | Effects of Secondhand Smoke

Approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths occur each year among adult nonsmokers in the United States as a result of exposure to secondhand smoke (2). The Surgeon General estimates that living with a smoker increases a nonsmoker’s chances of developing lung cancer by 20 to 30 percent

[Dimmauk]

Christ there are some stupid arguments in this thread.

Cloves and even fucking fiberglass is not the problem here. It's cigarette addiction. This ban does nothing to curb addiction or make people quit.

The government's job is not to decide how we live our lives. Honestly, if I want to kill myself slowly for the next 40 years with cigarettes, I should be able to. Big mac's are never good even in moderation, and neither are swiss cake rolls. How about vodka? This is the biggest problem with the government taking over things that used to be public - now they get to tell us what to do. In 70 years our couches might tell us to stand the fuck up and do some running after we sit on them for more than 2 hours and then fold up so the government doesn't have to pay your bill to check your obesity.

If shit was Bush's fault, this is Obama's fault. You can't have it both ways. When bush curbed your rights (albeit to a greater degree), it was the worst thing ever. When Obama does it, he is just trying to protect us! its ok! stop hypocrisy and stand up like fucking men on this issue.

And stop being little vaginas about smoke. Not to mention second hand smoke surprisingly has very little data actually saying it's bad for you

There has been alot of people that quit because it too fucking expensive to buy cigarettes.

You think that Bush's destruction of the Constitution, Habeas corpus, and the Bill of Rights is the same thing as this current piece of legislation being discussed in this thread? Really? Really? Wow, I've seen some dumb shit posts in my life, that has to rank up there.

I think all of the smokers should storm D.C. and throw burning packs of cigarettes at the White house!

WHO IS WITH ME?!!!

[Absolutely Virtue]

There should be a pledge:

You can continue to smoke to your heart's content, as long as you're willing to forego health insurance or medical treatment for your smoking-related illnesses.

You can continue to weigh 300 pounds, as long as you're willing to forego health insurance or medical treatment for your fattass-related illnesses.

Everybody happy? Good.

(in before "it's not my fault!")

[Olo401]

Christ there are some stupid arguments in this thread.

Cloves and even fucking fiberglass is not the problem here. It's cigarette addiction. This ban does nothing to curb addiction or make people quit.

That's part of what I mentioned earlier.

Edit: BTW I mentioned in ^ that the bill doesn't affect smokeless tobacco, loose tobacco or blunt wraps. After reading through some of the text of the legislation it seems that isn't necessarily the case, but the particular emphasis on flavored cigarettes is much clearer to see.

I think the real difference here is that in an effort to catch the real trouble makers (namely flavored cigs like Pink Camel #9s which were directly advertised to young women), legacy kretek makers like Djarum (who I have NEVER seen an ad for in this country, and aren't even up front & center in a cigar/smoke shop display) are getting caught in the net.

One more thing.. there's some buzz about that Djarum and other Indonesian kretek manufacturers plan to file a World Trade Organization complaint against the US government because the law allows menthol but not clove, which gives a market advantage to US manufacturers.

[Andarvi]

There should be a pledge:

You can continue to smoke to your heart's content, as long as you're willing to forego health insurance or medical treatment for your smoking-related illnesses.

You can continue to weigh 300 pounds, as long as you're willing to forego health insurance or medical treatment for your fattass-related illnesses.

Everybody happy? Good.

(in before "it's not my fault!")

Been saying this for a while now myself. Any type of universal or free healthcare would have to be thoroughly screened to weed out the self-inflicted illnesses that the common taxpayer has no business paying. However, doing this would be time and cost intensive and overall would be tough to do.

[Demosthenes11]

Comparing fatty foods to smoking? Really? If you eat a Big Mac a day and hit the gym every day, it balances out. There is no "balancing out" the effects of nicotine and smoking on one's body.

One of the dumbest things I've ever heard.

Secondhand Smoke: Questions and Answers - National Cancer Institute
Secondhand Smoke Fact Sheet - American Lung Association site
Secondhand Smoke | Effects of Secondhand Smoke

You are only looking at fatty foods as a physical thing. You eat fatty foods = you become fat = you burn it off by working out! Sorry, it doesn't work that way. The processing and long term effects of those foods go way beyond weight. Ask your liver and kidneys

Passive Smoking Doesn't Cause Cancer - Official
as an introduction to it. My brother wrote a paper on it a few years ago for grad school and he said what he found pretty much says there is no proof second hand smoke does anything harmful, and he definitely didn't believe that to start. It does make sense though if you know how cigarettes are burned and smoked

I'm not for a moment saying this is as bad as wiretapping and shit, but I can't fathom how this is a no outcry issue

[Cephius]

So now FreeRepublic.com and a term paper your brother wrote are more reliable sources of information than the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association. Right. How many doctors agree with you?

[Tristam]

You are only looking at fatty foods as a physical thing. You eat fatty foods = you become fat = you burn it off by working out! Sorry, it doesn't work that way. The processing and long term effects of those foods go way beyond weight. Ask your liver and kidneys

Passive Smoking Doesn't Cause Cancer - Official
as an introduction to it. My brother wrote a paper on it a few years ago for grad school and he said what he found pretty much says there is no proof second hand smoke does anything harmful, and he definitely didn't believe that to start. It does make sense though if you know how cigarettes are burned and smoked

The WHO could have withheld a study for a variety of reasons, possibly related to bad practices within the experiments or an undisclosed conflict of interest. That article is a bit short on information

Not knowing enough about that 2002 (read: old) study, however, does nothing against the volumes upon volumes of evidence showing that secondhand smoke is a significant contributor to early mortality and decreased quality of life in people with consistent and/or early exposure.

I'd be very interested to read your brother's paper. When did he write it?

edit: Also, fatty foods are not nearly as addictive as cigarettes.

[Abandon]

Yall gonna die. Good riddance, I say.

[Demosthenes11]

Think it was 2 years ago or so now. I know it sounds completely ridiculous that I am citing him as a source but honestly I wouldn't put this much confidence in it if he didn't put as much time and effort into it as he did + how surprised he was at some of the shit he found. I'll email him and see if he still has it saved on his comp

[Moridam]

So now FreeRepublic.com and a term paper your brother wrote are more reliable sources of information than the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association. Right. How many doctors agree with you?

On general principle, I wouldn't be so quick to write off what the guy's brother did. If it's a grad school paper, chances are it probably had some semblance of rigor and involved reviewing empirical research.

You can find some pretty interesting stuff when you start digging into the actual articles instead of relying on third-party interpretations, and that can extend to the study authors' own interpretations of the data, especially in touchy subjects like smoking.

To add my own little anecdote here, for my developmental psych course a year or so ago, we had to review and critique a research article cited by our textbook. I ended up going for a citation on negative consequences of marijuana, and in short, not only did the citation overgeneralize the study results, the study's own conclusions and design were pretty badly flawed. After the assignment, strictly out of curiosity, I poked around a bit more into some other articles and found a lot more of the same.

I don't know if that type of stuff is prevalent in this particular area of research, I haven't looked into it in any fashion so I couldn't say one way or another. My point is simply that research into controversial topics requires a bit of special attention to get an idea of what's really going on. There's a tremendous amount of misinterpretation, overgeneralization, skewing etc. that can go on, and it requires a bit more care than falling back on appeals to authority or financial conflicts to get an idea of the actual value of a given piece of research.

[Demosthenes11]

that and I think our society is way too eager to shit on smoking and smokers and any evidence which may refute the legitimacy of said shitting is thrown out so more shit can be shat

[Seraph]

I think smokers should be able to smoke wherever they want, as long as they don't exhale.

[Gregorio]

You'll have to point out to me when "the right to smoke" was added into the Bill of Rights. Privilege != right.[/url]

God people need to stop using this argument. The Constitution does not grant us rights, it restricts government powers. I really think the Federalists were right on this one...where we may have been better off without the Bill of Rights. Which is the reason for the often ignored 9th Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Right there is my right to smoke.

And for even more proof against the "if it's not in the Constitution, you don't have the right to it!" argument...The word "privacy" does not appear in the Bill of Rights. Try to deny that we have the right to privacy.

[Cephius]

God people need to stop using this argument. The Constitution does not grant us rights, it restricts government powers. I really think the Federalists were right on this one...where we may have been better off without the Bill of Rights. Which is the reason for the often ignored 9th Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Right there is my right to smoke.

And for even more proof against the "if it's not in the Constitution, you don't have the right to it!" argument...The word "privacy" does not appear in the Bill of Rights. Try to deny that we have the right to privacy.

I agree, but you're taking my (sarcastic) statement a bit too far. I was responding to the "its mah body I do wut I want" statement that was thrown out there. A smoker directly and indirectly affects other people, which is why I resented the "government can't tell me what to do with my body" argument.

And I'm all for research that debunks or challenges things that people assume to be facts. But there are study after study done that shows that people who inhale secondhand smoke consistently (and especially at an early age) are many, many times more likely to develop lung and heart diseases. I don't see how one can dispute that with all the evidence and 99% of the medical community backing up that evidence with their personal expertise.

[Furionstormrage]

There are plenty of studies that show that smoking actually costs healthcare providers and the government less (by the smokers dying earlier) than paying to keep non-smokers alive years or decades longer.

This is often ignored or refuted by anti-smoking groups, but it does need to be considered.

The BIG LIE That Smoking is an Economic Burden To Society

I'm not one to say that smoking isn't bad for you, of course it is. So is hundreds of other activities that people chose to engage in on a daily basis, and for me that's why I prefer to live in the US, we have been given the choice to kill ourselves in any fashion deemed legal by our government.

What scares me more than anything is government encroachment into personal lives, because once the government sets a precedent for telling us how to live or operate our businesses, it opens the floodgates for further legislation.

Obviously laws should be in place to manage illegal activities, but as of this post, smoking tobacco products is not illegal. However, our government now says that it is illegal to smoke in certain establishments, thus pushing their fingers into private business owners affairs and forcing them to ban a legal activity from their privately run and privately funded business.

That's what scares me the most, and this bill also creates a nice monopoly in the market, forcing "niche" tobacco manufacturers to either produce non-flavored cigarettes, making them direct competition with multi-billion dollar companies like Phillip Morris, or go out of business.

There's also the matter of FDA funding to manage this new addition to their line of responsibilities. Who's going to pay for this? Raise taxes on cigarettes, that's obviously the plan and has been for some time, and I don't disagree that smokers would be the most obvious people to pay for the regulation of their addiction/habit. What are the side effects of that? Eventually the FDA, like most organizations, are going to come to the government for additional funding, said funding will come right out of your pocket, smoker or not.

[Dimmauk]

I'm sure all the health costs that happen before that person dies of cancer, is just chump change right?

[Demosthenes11]

I'm sure all the health costs that happen before that person dies of cancer, is just chump change right?

he's saying it costs more for the person to be alive than to die from cancer, not that there is no cost

[Absolutely Virtue]

I love how the smokers are up in arms about the government controlling their lives, but they have no problem shelling out $5/pack to Joe Camel, the Marlboro Man, or any other gigantic corporation. These companies have a decades-long history of scheming to make their products as chemically addicting as possible, yet you still defend them.

So you're against Bush, Obama, and all the bullies in government. Good for you! Stand up to the Man!

Just keep on taking it in the ass like Big Tobacco's bitch.