Posted on 07/24/2023 8:01:34 PM PDT by DoodleBob
Blah, blah, blah. Nothing but liberal nonsense. Always wanting to tell everyone else what to do because you’re liberal and dumb enough to think you know better than everyone else.
Your anger at yourself comes through loud and clear. You make bad decisions and project your anger about making those bad decisions towards everyone else. That’s easy to spot. Childish anger is what creates tyrants, and our constitution helps protects us from such childishly tyrannical people.
“Cigarettes are nothing but poison, and cigarette companies only exist because they were subsidized by the Federal Government for generations, while they spread nothing but death and destruction.”
That same argument is used about guns, cars and trucks, go carts, lots of toys, etc etc etc.
In moderation cigarettes are not poison. That is a CDC myth.
If you smoke like a chimney then you have a real health problem.
My grandmother smoked one cigarette a day after dinner for decades.
The “poison” must have killed her—when she died at age 106.
If she had not smoked she might have lived to 107!
As a matter of Constitutional fidelity and regarding original intent, criminalizing marijuana federally without an amendment is wrong.
In terms of liberty, the same holds true.
But just as with alcohol, it would be absurd to say there is NO downside to mind-altering substances. Indeed, I’m told the cannabis of today is waaaay more potent than the grass of yesteryear.
However, just because some people can’t handle free will doesn’t mean Leviathan needs to step in. Further, there is usually a REASON people get messed up. I would submit, that the destruction of the family via divorce, which likely begets substance abuse, is in greater need of focus than many things in this thread.
I don’t doubt that there are many benefits to legalization, and criminalization has proven to be rather futile. But it’s disingenuous to say that smoking cigarettes or pot is riskless.
That is pure insanity.
I totally agree with you.
My main pushback on this whole article was the OP saying "I hope smoking comes roaring back".
Looking back at the subsidization of tobacco by New Deal programs, the absolute corporate evil perpetuated by the cigarette companies, and the death toll cigarettes took on the modern world, I couldn't fathom why anyone would want to see more young people killing themselves.
I used to think drinking whiskey in a casino while smoking a cigarette meant you were living in a "free" country. It takes some life experience with seeing friends lives destroyed with addiction, and seeing how much government is involved in the business of addiction through taxation and government grants and subsidies, and the corrupt corporate culture pushing addictions on people when they're young, whether it's alcohol logos and commercials on television and in every public place, sports gambling, or prescription drugs.
Even something as seemingly inoffensive as scratch off tickets should disgust decent people. Every time I'm in a convenience store, I see people who are clearly struggling (economically, psychologically, or otherwise), shuffling their coins and cash around to buy more lottery tickets. The whole idea that the government runs a numbers racket and uses it to fund "education" should be a warning to everyone that it's the Deep State that is pushing this crap on people. If you want to waste your rent money on the lottery, be my guest. But the government shouldn't be running it.
The Deep State wants us addicted, sick, and broke, and it was surprising to see Freepers conflate more smoking with more freedom, especially when it's spouted by some ginger leftist at The Guardian.
Criminalizing marijuana federally without an amendment is wrong.
It’s not an FDA approved drug the states bypassed the rule in hopes of scoring tax money of the deal and lost their asses the cartels own that business.
State approved growers are going bust.
Alcohol is not a drug
GunRunner is correct.
But what knee jerk reactions to any suggestion that smoking be avoided reveal is that some people don’t understand the difference between people with no money don’t need to be wasting it on cigarettes and people who live in public housing CAN’T spend the money on cigarettes.
He never said *can’t*. He said *don’t need to* and there is a big difference.
People who don’t have enough money to support themselves don’t need to spend it on drugs, alcohol, the hairdresser, getting their nails done, or any one of a number of non-essential things.
However, if they do that, they forfeit the right to whine about how impoverished they are.
Just because those arguments are wrong, doesn't mean that the argument isn't correct when it comes to smoking. Would you make the same argument about cocaine and heroin? Cocaine and heroin are not poison because some people also call other things poison that are clearly not? Nothing can be poison because some people call guns poison?
This is a nonsensical argument. It's a form of straw man.
A tautology may help you understand; I'm only making the arguments that I'm making, I'm not making the arguments I'm not making.
In moderation cigarettes are not poison. That is a CDC myth.
What you're clearly not aware of is that the cigarette companies do not make money off of someone who smokes "in moderation".
Cigarettes are designed to be as addictive as possible, and their marketing is geared towards creating young addicted smokers who start smoking when they're in their teens and create a cash flow for decades, while the smokers carry the burden of the health consequences. These companies literally profit off of death, and you're apologizing for them.
If all smokers, or just a small percentage, smoked like your grandmother, cigarette companies would have gone bankrupt generations ago, and they would be small niche industry like cigar companies.
I'm sure heroin is great in moderation too. But I don't conflate shooting up heroin with freedom.
I'm not projecting anger, but love.
You're clearly angry that anyone would call into question your addictions, and anyone making a case that addiction is destructive is a threat to you, so you lash out.
Again, my only objection to the thread was the OP saying that he hopes "smoking comes roaring back". I can't imagine wanting people to destroy their health and lungs as a mechanism of freedom, and am suspicious of a leftist rag like the Guardian saying:
If you care about the safety of generation Z, you will stand outside in your slippers and chainsmoke a pack of cigarettes every morning, you will find the nearest impressionable 20-year-old and lean in with your morning breath as you offer them a nice fag, or cough wetly on a train. Light up, adults. We owe it to our children.
My issue is with the CDC and their blatant lying.
I also take no issue with your comments on the despicable cigarette company advertising.
Moderation is doable for most people.
Some folks have addictive personalities and can’t handle much of anything.
That is no reason to go full fascist and propagandist on everybody else.
Moderation isn't tenable to the corporations who push this stuff. If people drank beer, liquor, or took prescription drugs in moderation, there wouldn't be any cigarette, alcohol, or pharma industries. The "Drink Responsibly" campaign by the booze racket is only the latest phony PSA messaging to come out of corporate death merchants. In reality, they want you hooked.
Maybe I'm not literate enough in British humor, but I can't really tell if the Guardian author is serious or not. Maybe she's making a joke, but my only objection to this whole thread has been the cheering of the comeback of smoking cigarettes, an addictive product packaged and sold to young people by corrupt corporations who don't care if proper use of their product kills you, and who are nothing but an earlier generation of Purdue Pharma and Pfizer.
Self-government requires a healthy population in mind, body, and spirit, and participating in the ubiquity of vice doesn't ensure anything but sick, lazy, addicted people who see slowly poisoning themselves as a virtue in and of itself.
Getting whiskey drunk and smoking cigarettes doesn't stick it to the Man; it enables him.
“In reality, they want you hooked.”
Yeah—they do.
Free people might actually decide what they want—not what the corporations want, not what the governments want, not what you want.
Maybe so for some things, but when it comes to something that is literally physically addictive the chances of that happening are far less.
Cigarettes are addictive and destroy your nhealth. PEople have known that for years and it's not propaganda to recognize it. The propaganda is the cigarette companies telling us it's not.
I cannot fathom *celebrating* someone starting an expensive, addictive habit that will destroy their health in the long term
If they want to do it, it is on them, but pretending that it is harmless is disingenuous.
“The propaganda is the cigarette companies telling us it’s not.”
Such claims have been banned for decades—at least in the US.
All we have is CDC hysteria—one puff will kill you.
That is why so many Karens freak out so easily.
Leftist Karens freak out so easily because they are narcissitic, control freaks who cannot stand the thought that someone might be doing something of which they disapprove.
It matters not whether it is based on facts or not. It would not make a difference to them if it took a million puffs to kill someone.
I hope smoking comes roaring back, and the anti- smoking Karens and Brandons lose their mind.
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After smoking from age 13 to age 63, I quit smoking 15 years ago and have no intentions of ever starting again but I’m with you on this.
Governments are fining people through exorbitant taxes to force them to quit.
Ah, the "illusion of choice" in our wonderful corporatist oligopoly.
Yes, do you want lung cancer from Phillip Morris or RJ Reynolds? Do you want obesity and high blood pressure from Coke or Pepsi? How about liver disease and rehab costs from either Diageo or InBev?
All these great "choices", all owned by the same conglomerates and VCs, protected by politicians, marketed to us by the same Madison Avenue whorehouses, and pushed to the masses by the Deep State.
Thank God we have all these choices.
Some apartment and condo buildings are now smoke free .
….
well them too- patches and stuff dont work- i tried quitting using patches- but ended up wearing the patch and still smoking just as much till i got sick- then i cut down on the patches- not the ciggs-
in the 80’s When i was in hospital as a patient, i’d sneak ciggs in the bathroom in the room- the nurses knew what was goign on- and didn’t say anything- today though they are all nazis
Ah, no. Your right to spread smoke stops where nonsmokers’ breathing begins.
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