 A vast and building resentment
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Aug. 23rd, 2011 @ 08:27 am 
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I am developing a serious, intense resentment of smokers.
I am going to rant here for a while. It is possible the terms of this rant will include people who read this. The thing is... there's only so much I care, because you see, this is essentially the perspective of someone in the category people not you, and if it bothers you to hear how an activity you partake in causes major problems for other people, well, the problem essentially is that you partake in an activity that is bad for you and bad for everyone else, and I'm not going to apologise for bringing it to your attention that it is what it is.
If you read this and you're offended because you smoke... how about next time you go to buy a packet of ridiculously expensive poison-sticks, you buy some nicotine gum instead, and you quit smoking, for the benefit of yourself, people who love you, and people who share the air and the planet with you? If you don't want to go through the suckitude of overcoming nicotine addiction, that's cool, you can stay on the gum for life. You walking past an asthmatic child while chewing gum has zero risk of triggering a life-threatening asthma attack for the child. Or me. Smoking, not so much.
Save the money you normally spend on cigarettes, which is likely to be a lot, and spend it on something really cool and shiny. (Seriously: If you're a smoker, keep a tally of how much money you spend on cigarettes. Then think about all the things you could have done with that money instead of near-literally burning it.)
(Edit: Actually, this also applies if you're a regular drinker of alcohol, except that the sentence ends with: "... instead of near-literally pissing it away.")
And now the rant.
This transition to active resentment is caused primarily by the fact that our neighbourhood appears to contain a lot of smokers, with all sorts of schedules, resulting in the effect that we can't open a window in our own bloody house, ever. Because it's guaranteed that within 15 minutes, tops, smoke will be drifting in from outside.
Since I like being able to breathe, the window gets closed.
This ends up with some really annoying secondary effects - like needing to run the air conditioner a lot more, either to prevent our house being a stuffy, overheated hell, or, sometimes, just to get some non-smoke-filled air into the place after another damn wave of smoke has filled it because we dared to open A WINDOW IN OUR OWN BLOODY HOUSE.
There is a special circle in the hell of my hate for the neighbours who smoke way, way, WAY too much pot, way, WAY too often, as well. Particularly because of the fact that this can happen at any hour, day or night - 4am, 3pm, eight o'clock in the fucking morning - random pot smoke attacks.
That's why I'm developing my intense and profound resentment - the lack of breathable air in the vicinity of my home. But really, annoyance at the sheer unremitting selfishness of smokers has a lot of other trigger points. Most of which revolve around...
Smoking in public spaces.
I'm lucky - I live in Perth, where for some years, it's been illegal to smoke indoors in public buildings, in theatres, even in sporting venues. When I went to the rugby, at Subiaco Oval, I enjoyed the whole game without anyone nearby lighting up.
And then the game ended, and I left, and I had to hold my breath and hurry the first 50 metres out of the gates, because of all the stupid addicts who have to smoke right outside.
If you go into the city, indoors you're fine, outside there's smokers all over the place, polluting the air with their special blend of asthma triggers and carcinogens.
And then - and then - they complain about how unfair on them it is when it is suggested that smoking should be banned anywhere else. Complaints about freedom and personal choice and fuck you, smokers. Why should your "freedom" to "choose" to smoke be more important than my freedom to choose not to? Given that, you know, your choice causes cancer and other ailments, and mine doesn't, I really think that my not-smoking should take priority over your smoking. Mine, and every other passer-by, including the asthmatics and the newly-quit smokers and all the people who aren't committing suicide by slow poison that for some reason they feel the need to share.
Recently I read an article about a proposed ban, in Wales I think, on smoking in cars containing children.
If you don't think smoking in a car with a child in it is child abuse, then you are wrong, and don't bother commenting to tell me otherwise, because if we're friends, it will disappoint me to learn that you are that goddamn thoughtless and stupid, and if we're not, then it will preclude any possibility of that happening, and also I don't care what you think.
What really enraged me was the comments on the article, with, among other things, their self-righteous hypocrisy. Especially the "smokers' rights" campaigner who piously declared that the vast majority of smokers wouldn't smoke in a car with a child anyway.
Well then banning it won't affect them, will it? So shut up.
Despite the fact that, as a motorcyclist, I am one of the few people who actually suffers exposure to secondary smoke from people smoking while driving, I am, overall, okay with people doing it. But not if there are children, you worthless scum.
If it were up to me, smoking would be illegal in all public spaces. And enforced, with harsher penalties than there currently are, especially for those putrescent pustules who light their cigarettes standing directly under the "No Smoking Anywhere On Hospital Grounds" signs outside Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, or for that matter the ones who light up under the "No Smoking" signs at Perth Train Station.
People can smoke at home. (As much as I wish my neighbours wouldn't, or at least wouldn't do it outside, I am not out to ban that. I'll just continue resenting it.)
In public spaces? For all the addicts who can't bear not to smoke, we could have smoking rooms - we can expand safe heroin injecting rooms, which are a good idea, to have enough room for the smokers to go in there too, in city centres. Just have an Addiction Centre, with good ventilation (filtered to the outside world), clean needles, medical supervision, and lots of resources available for people who want to quit before they kill themselves.
Because I agree with Isaac Asimov: your right to smoke ends at the point where it interferes with my right not to smoke.
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| From: | ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) willow |
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August 23rd, 2011 05:05 am (UTC) |
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There was a William Shatner tv series called TekWars; where indeed there were Smoke Clubs. And those were the ONLY places where people could light up - not in their homes affecting other people, not in public, not in public or commercial buildings. Just in those smoking clubs, for which they paid an entrance fee to boot.
I thought it was BRILLIANT.
I loathe the fact that people can't smoke inside a place, but wait right outside, so your hair and clothes get stinky anyway and your lungs get triggered as they form a fricking prison barricade around the place you need or want to be.
I loathe smokers at bus stops, especially those who don't even think to move DOWNWIND and side-eye me, or anyone else who starts coughing or sneezing or heaven forbid wheezing at the smoke.
There's the fricking gums and the patch and there's always been chewing tobacco. The cancer companies have diversified to still keep their money. So just ban the damn cigarettes already.
Oh the things I loathe; walking into what's supposed to be a smoke free hotel room and smelling smoke; the various personal compromises I've made to spend time with someone who does smoke - which now seems ridiculous because since I was five I'd been bugging my own father to quit smoking and he eventually did, so if I didn't put up with it for my own dear FATHER, why am I compromising for acquaintances (or people I had thought I wanted to be friends).
Not being able to open a window sounds bloody awful when there's expectation of fresh air and tolerable noise level and the like.
Something else that boggles me? Schools have huge 'drug free' zones. But people can still sit outside a SCHOOL and smoke.
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| From: | sami |
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August 23rd, 2011 06:17 am (UTC) |
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Seriously. And people point out that if cigarettes were introduced today, there is no way in hell they would be legalised, and yet, somehow the fact that they're not a new drug means that we should make exceptions to all the public health issues that would otherwise apply.
I mean... if it was a new activity, that amounted to, "Hey, I want do do this thing, that will cause serious damage to my own health, damage to the health of anyone around me, and has a small but definite chance of causing immediate, life-threatening seizures in small children who happen to pass by," that shit would be criminalised instantly. Instantly.
It's been well-established that prohibition doesn't work, but no-one's really trying to prohibit nicotine. And "freedom" and "personal liberty" shouldn't apply to activities that harm other people.
Not being able to open the windows does, indeed, massively, utterly suck. Because otherwise, yeah, we would have fresh air and tolerable noise level most of the time, and I want to open my windows and my resentment for the near-constancy with which I can't is boundless.
When it comes to making compromises to spend time with someone who smokes - when I've done it, it's generally been in a group situation, and there's this distinct "... but you smell" aspect to it. And it ends up that I've never yet become close friends with a smoker, really, because the stinkiness and unpleasantness are just this huge great barrier to the possibility of true affection.
Not to mention that, with one exception who is a friend I've known since I was 12, I just tend to think slightly less of people if they smoke. Smoking says, "I have, knowingly, chosen to develop an addiction to an expensive, toxic habit that will definitely have a moderate negative impact on my health, and potentially, in the long term, condemn me to an agonising and unpleasant death, and in the interim will make me smell unpleasant and pollute the air in my vicinity."
Smoking is a way of announcing to the world that you're a selfish arse with very bad judgement.
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| From: | willow |
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August 23rd, 2011 06:37 am (UTC) |
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I think I still have the mentality that people get hooked as teens and then... Except in the US at least there's SUCH an awareness of the harm it does and all these TOOLS to help quit or keep the nicotine addiction w/ less health risks for everyone around.
My Dad quit the old fashioned way - cold turkey and the determination that when we next met up, he wanted to be able to tell me he had (and because of our complicated situation, he also quit so he'd be ALIVE in order to meet up w/ me again in the future).
So I think it depends on the AGE of the person involved and their access to media that shapes how I view their smoking. People over fifty and sixty, lots of things come into play. People in the 30's and early to mid 40's? I'm way more side-eye 'Are you for real?!'
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| From: | sami |
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August 23rd, 2011 06:59 am (UTC) |
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Yeah, my grandfather quit cold turkey, too. In his case his doctor told him that if he didn't quit he'd quite possibly be dead in six months. Grandad threw the rest of his packet in the bin, and just never touched another, even while his wife still smoked.
People with access to nicotine gum, patches, etc, just have no excuse.
The thing with people over 50/60 is... dudes, it's been decades, your excuses ran out an awfully long time ago. Time to grow up and quit. (My parents are both over 60, both smoked, and both quit about thirty years ago.) Anyone of their generation, to me, just qualifies as old enough to know better.
I get that breaking an addiction sucks. I went through hell breaking my own dependency on opiate painkillers a few months after my bad accident. But I did it anyway, and I was still in pain - it wasn't even recreational drug use.
People saying they've tried to quit smoking and they "just can't" - given the available resources, to me that seems more like an admission of inadequacy. They can. They just can't be bothered.
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| From: | willow |
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August 23rd, 2011 07:08 am (UTC) |
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See, I think it's genetic, how one deals with addiction. I was able to slow wean off caffeine; because it disturbed me that my doctor thought it was a 'safe' addiction. How can any addiction be safe? And I have slips (hopes and misremembering) with various food stuff and losing all my usual comfort foods etc. But even while my personality can quit some things totally cold and move on for the sake of my health; sugar for example? I cannot imagine a life w/o any sugar at all.
So it could depend on the addictive substance and how genetics leans one towards it. I guess I have less of a problem with people saying they can't quit - back when the ONLY way was cold turkey. But the addictive substance is nicotine and there are options for that NOW. So, yeah, I can't get anyone not just switching over AWAY from the health problems of tar and filter carcinogens.
And I have problems with people who aren't really admitting they have an addiction. Who use it as an excuse. I'm not really a big fan of 12 step programs. But I do believe the first step in stopping something is to admit it has a hold over you. You may want that hold not to be permanent, but if you don't admit something currently has you in its grips and come to terms with that, then everything else will just be excuses and flailing in my mind; pretending to make progress to hide the fact you aren't.
People who say 'I just can't - whatever' and don't find it disturbing that THERE IS SOMETHING CONTROLLING THEM?! Then I start getting twitchy. Because to me, that lack of looking inward is a kind of extreme selfishness, they don't even give that much of a damn about themselves, y'know? That I find fearsome.
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Dropping by from network to say "Sing it!"
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There's a ban on smoking in public places here, too -- which means that getting in the door often means going through a visible fug. The part that I hate is that any outdoor seating has now de facto become the smokers' seating -- for people who cannot stop smoking long enough to drink a cup of coffee, wtf? -- so even on a gorgeous day, you can't sit out in the sun without getting seven different kinds of secondhand smoke.
The *other* thing that winds my crank is this sequence of events: light cigarette. Smoke cigarette. Drop butt on ground and grind it into the pavement (or just let it smoulder). I mean, if it was a sweet wrapper, *kids* know to throw those out properly. But nasty old butts? Just drop 'em anywhere. It's like spitting on the ground, except it sticks around for ages and then someone else has to come pick it up.
(IDK about Wales, but the idea of forbidding smoking in a car with children has certainly been mentioned here (Ireland).)
Hear, hear! I was SO GLAD when they introduced the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces here. It came in in Scotland first and I was at a con there: I could wash my hair during the con without spending hours in my room after, yay!
Before the ban, some places had designated smoking zones and hadn't bothered to figure out which way the ventilation went, d'oh.
Some places have designated smoking areas that aren't next to the door. If I have an interview somewhere where I can tell the smokers cluster round the door, that's a big DNW right away.
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| From: | trialia |
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August 23rd, 2011 01:09 pm (UTC) |
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THANK YOU.
Seriously, I was sitting in the waiting room at my GP's yesterday, and I had to stand up and move as far away from the woman who sat next to me (in the special seats there for disabled people, no less, and she wasn't visibly disabled or using an aid, or even moving carefully!), as I could, because the stench of cigarette smoke coming off her was giving me an asthma attack. Despite the fact that it causes me extra pain to stand for more than a minute or so, and I have a walking stick to show I have trouble with that.
People are so fucking selfish.
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