Fine. Just don’t ask me to cover your hospital bills, support your health insurance, etc anymore.

I have private health insurance you prole…

Man, some nonsmokers are like kids in the playground aren’t they, ‘nah, nah, nah, I don’t smoke, I’m gonna live forever, youooo smoke, you’re dead tomorrow…I’m telling teacher’

And if walk five meters away from you to have my cig, you’ll get as much toxic fumes from my cig, as from the next car driving past.

Oh and Caio, good point about the high taxes on cigarettes!!! ‘Oh, we don’t want to fund you’re treatment in 20 years time,’ generic non-smoker comment. Don’t worry…you’re not.

Call the fucking waaaaahmbulance. I’m a smoker! I get discriminated against! I’m not hurting anybody!

Good for you if you segregate yourself. But I do pay for you. I have insurance through my employer as well, and my fees are higher to help pay the costs of the smokers. My private life insurance is as well (yes. smokers pay more, but they pay less than the odds should make them) Smokers not only are more likely to be less healthy than nonsmokers, but they spend more time in the hospital than nonsmokers on average, it takes longer for their wounds to heal, longer to recover from surgery, more back pain, more missed work days, etc. And I have to pay more for my insurance to cover their addicted asses! Just because they don’t have the willpower to quit (admittedly, it isn’t easy).

I live in Kentucky and work at a university’s hospital’s cancer center (research wing, not patient). I occasionally see someone smoking through their neckhole because they can’t give up the smoke. ‘No smoking’ signs in the courtyards are used to lean against while smoking. A nice medical campus is covered in butts. The city bought a machine to clean the butts off the streets and sidewalks, it is so bad. You can’t walk between cancer center buildings without breathing in smoke. We kick high risk preggers out of the maternity ward if they go for a smoke because of the risk they put themselves at (and their unborn whelps). Even the docs and nurses go outside for a smoke because they can’t kick the habit.

I grew tobacco as a way to put myself through college. I have had more nicotine in my system from contact with the leaves than any of you have ever had at any one time (and was sick as hell). We call it green tobacco sickness. And I want nothing to do with it ever again.

Hell. Anti-smoking laws aren’t strong enough here. I have to pay for addicts who can’t quit, and when they do get sick (or their family members), I have to watch them continue to be exposed to what put them in the hospital in the first place. The only way to effect change in public health is to legislate it. Tax cigs until people can’t afford to smoke, and get them out of the bars, offices, workplaces until they get the message.

Quit smoking, and you can be part of society again.

In the mean time, enjoy throwing away your money.

It is what drives public health policy. Why do you think cruise ships have life boats? They are required to.

The slippery slope argument may work with some people, but it is just utter bullshit. Yes, some people will smuggle smokes, but if fewer people start smoking, demand will drop, and there won’t be profit for smugglers.

Taxing doesn’t make it illegal, just more expensive.

I’m all for legalizing and taxing illegal drugs. It would be stupid to keep letting the drugs win the “war.” Regulate them, discourage their use, tax them, and encourage people to quit using with effective programs.

Nobody wants to ban unprotected sex, but if you knowingly spread an STD, you are endangering others, and can be prosecuted for it.

Don’t want to wear a motorcycle helmet? Guess what, you can either wear it, or if you don’t, pay extra fines and if you are in an accident, you are 10 times more likely to die.

Want to skip vaccination? OK, but it puts you and those around you at higher risk of getting serious infections. That risk to others can keep your kids out of public schools as it makes it easier for disease to spread (vaccines don’t always take, depending on the vaccine, it can vary, and some wear off with time).

Want to drink? Fine, but don’t drive. If you drive drunk, you increase your risk of ending up as bugbutter, but put others at risk as well.

Want polyunsaturated fat fried food? OK, but you can’t get it in restaurants anymore, so you can do it at home. Other blends of safer oils taste just as good, and only raise the cost of production by a tiny amount per box of fries.

Want to smoke? Fine. But expect to pay taxes and have to go outside to pollute your lungs and the air around you. If people actually had to pay the real costs of insurance for smoking, a lot fewer people would.

Walk around the outside of a cancer center sometime. People sitting outside in hospital robes, with IV drips, vital signs monitors, panic buttons, drainage catheters and bags, and cigarettes. Why? Because they got addicted and can’t kick the habit.

And I could opt out of my health insurance (offered as an employment benefit at a reduced price (would be free if I wasn’t subsidizing addicts)), but that would just be stupid. Almost as stupid as smoking.

Well, robster, looks like you really followed my idea about having some perspective, and not just going off half-cocked on some self-righteous rant…but tell me, what do you get out of all your belly-aching?

Magnus, have a problem with teh gay? How grade school.

Who said anything about curing death? Yes, obesity is bad, but this is about smoking.

Stalwart, I get a klondike bar. And here, with the anonymity of the interbutt, I can be as much of an ass as I like, and I don’t get to do that with patients or students at work.

I’m gald for your employer. Good luck to you as well. Just think how much more money you’ll have if you just cut your smoking in half.

And those darn statistics. Who are those researchers to gether data and use math, anyway?

Part of being in a democratic society is that you have a social contract with said society. I feel that a commitment to public health is part of that contract. To do otherwise is simply irresponsible.

Dr Robster.

Dr Robster to the elitist prick ward for an emergency ego transfusion.

Dr Robster.

I like how you pepper your diatribe with little wee wee humour to try and make it seem like anything other than the posturing of a half wit backed into a corner.

Here’s one for the old noodle you clod, the people bitching about smoking are more often than not guilty of other vices like obesity. Maybe that’s why it was brought up? Because it’s a much worse problem but you can’t go around pointing fingers because of the social stigma. Poor fatty can’t help it but that fucking smoker over there should be lynched. Well fatty makes up way more of a percentage of the population and being a fatty is way worse. So turn that hand around and fix yourself before you try and heal the world.

Who are the researchers? Every single PHD who didn’t go on to med school. What do you think those people do with their educations? They go in research. Jackass.

Just think how much money the average waddler would save if they ate half as much?

Lastly, why do people leap up onto their high horses about calling someone gay and meaning it as an insult now. I don’t have a problems with fairies but in case you just got out of your cryogenic chamber fruits have a pretty good sense of humour about themselves and love them for it. You don’t need to get all sensitive for them just because you don’t really have an argument here other than to barf up all the bullshit media you’ve been force fed.

The bullshit media funded by tax relief “charities”.

I don’t endorse chain smoking though. Anything in excess becomes a crutch rather than luxury.

But if someone wants to have a cigarette to calm their nerves I certainly don’t see any problem with it.

I didn’t say you were fat. I am now though lardass.

btw: it’s not a complete and utter lie you jackass. By definition it’s not a fact because while A + B maybe often = C they can’t prove cause and effect. They can’t say this cancer was caused by this chemical from these cigarettes. Get it? Search my taint you blowhard.

Smoking to calm your nerves isn’t a crutch. I think you need to read more fella. A crutch is something you need to get by. There are people who can be casual users (see casual alcohol consumption) without becoming froth faced addicts. I don’t smoke a cigarette every day. Hell sometimes I won’t have one for weeks or months. If I feel like having one though I don’t need some bloated windbag judging me for it.

I’m sure you have your own vices, they’re just probably not publicly permissible to attack you for. I hope that some day it will be okay to make jokes about fat people and not get shit on for it because I have a million of them.

So fuck you fatty. I’ll smoke when I want and you should be thankful I don’t butt it out on your stretched out man tits.

Hmmm….smokers lungs on the left, non-smokers on the right. What’s wrong with this picture? They’re *both* dead! \o/