Are smokers the modern day leper?

Question

At work they make them all huddle in a corner. I can't help feeling sorry for them.

Answer 1

It's looking that way. We can thank the new religion of the medical/health/drug industry for this one...

People need to quit worshipping doctors and medical practitioners. It's just more of this society's decline in personal responsibility.

Answer 2

Hard drug users and dealers are so far down the social ladder from smokers, it will never likely put the smokers any where near "leper" status.

So they are huddled into a corner, or made to smoke outside. Still, when they put out their smoke, they are welcomed back into the office, the home, the school and the restaurant.

Even smokers can kick the habit. Once branded a leper, that person could NEVER make it back into society.

Think about others, lower in caste than smokers. Pedophiles, convicted felons, scandal tainted ministers, mothers who abandon their children, drunk drivers, etc. The list is even longer.

Lepers? No, not yet.

Answer 3

smokers have become the modern day pariahs. I find the legal maneuvers of the anti-smoking crowd maddening, and I am a non smoker. We've become a nanny state. I see smoking as a slippery slope to other behaviors the nannies deem offensive.

Smoking is legal, as is booze, as is many other things. What about the punk kids driving around with 1000 watt amps blowing their HIP HOP crap out the windows? What about the person on the cell phone in it car with a burger in the other hand? Eating Junk food? We could go on ad naseum.

Leave the smokers be, or next time it will be you on the receiving end of the nannie fascists.

Answer 4

What I think is ridiculous is how non-smokers use the argument that they're going to get cancer from second hand smoke. OK, firstly...walking past a smoker on your way into the mall isn't going to give you cancer. And just exactly what types of places are you hanging out at that you're around second hand smoke all the time? A bar? If that's the case, you have far bigger problems than second hand smoke, sweetheart!

Answer 5

It is working that way...

You will notice over the past few years there is a lot more being done to turn people against smokers – nicorette adverts I think are the prime example of this, showing smokers as idiots, this does nothing to help people quit smoking, nicotine replacement itself does nothing to help people quit, all it seems to do is fuel the idea of smokers being stupid.

Our society is becoming more and more anti-smoking, where as we should be trying to encourage society to be pro-quitting to help get rid of the problem of smoking by supporting smokers not making them out to be either stupid or selfish. Smokers cannot help their addiction, fair enough they shouldn't put other peoples health at risk and there are smokers who are selfish towards non-smokers, but it feels as though smokers are having their rights stripped from them.

The idea of no smoking in public spaces I support, such as within malls or resterants, but when I heard about smoking being banned in pubs I was not amused given as pubs are for smoking and drinking – their argument was that pub staff are put at risk, I fail to see why smokers should be held responsible for their health, when they are free to care for their own health by avoiding working in a place where they know there will be smoking – more non-smoking pubs would be the answer to that.

I hear now they are trying to ban smoking in groups, so say outside of buildings, this is yet another step in the wrong direction, smokers do need to smoke if not within public buildings then it will be outdoors together, in smoking areas or outside of the pub doors where they are not allowed to smoke inside with their friends enjoying the trip to the pub. Essentially they are trying to stop smoking everywhere by banning smoking, rather than stopping smoking everywhere by getting smokers off the addiction – it's very unfair to smokers and totally ignores their rights.

It also does not help that pro-smoking groups are just that - pro-smoking - and have people like Antony Worrall Thompson on TV claiming second-hand smoke isn't a health risk. There need to be more groups and people looking out for the rights of smokers to smoke and to support quitting.

Answer 6

Yes. We are now the minority. God forbid some smoke should get on an anti-smoker or something. When I lihjt up, I even get dirty looks. Here's another question: Why can't people just mind their own business and let me kill myself w/ smoking. It's my choice. Also, most mothers smoked while they were pregnant in the 60's and 70's anyway.

Answer 7

Well, the fact that smokers have always had special treatment, and it's now starting to come back on them.

For example, at work, smokers always were able to take a "smoke break" to feed their habit. Because I didn't smoke, i had to keep working. That wasn't fair to me. These smoke breaks were unofficial and were in addition to the normal breaks everyone else received. This has gone on for years. And now, they're treated like everyone else and begin complaining that they can't smoke anywhere. Please! Get over it.

Personally, I don't care if people smoke. It's their choice. But when they do it in a crowed room or around children, that's when I draw the line. If you want to smoke, that's fine, but don't do it around me. The second hand smoke bothers my eyes and harms my health as well as my childrens' health. Yes, it's legal, just like drinking, but drinking only affects the person doing it (assuming you don't drive afterwards), and not the people in the immediate vicinity. Smoke, on the other hand, fills the entire room and harms other people around you.

Answer 8

Yep. The antismokers have won a huge victory. Now, these same people will be looking for someone else to browbeat. Not sure who it will be, but you can be certain that these people won't stop with smokers. Perhaps certain hair styles? Or clothing styles?

Answer 9

The non-smokers are trying to help keep the smoking loonies alive - get real!

Answer 10

Yes to a point we are, but so are drinkers and the overweight, just another thing for us Brits to whinge about I guess, I smoke, I'm overweight and I don't work because of a disability, my goodness what next for me the firing squad.