Replies

When I first came to FR over two years ago, I received advice from a fellow physician that, until today, I have studiously followed. "Never engage a smoker on a smoking thread. There's not one thing that you can say, not one painful experience you can relate that will make them change their minds."

How true he was and how foolish of me to think otherwise...

When I first came to FR over two years ago, I received advice from a fellow physician that, until today, I have studiously followed. "Never engage a smoker on a smoking thread. There's not one thing that you can say, not one painful experience you can relate that will make them change their minds."

People on both sides sometimes forget that the important debate, in a political sense, isn't whether or not smoking is bad. It's whether or not the government should be banning it (or forcing private businesses to), in order to "protect" us from ourselves. The same point is often forgotten in the WoD debates.

-Eric

How true he was and how foolish of me to think otherwise...

And that's why you aren't on our puff list. For anything you throw at us, we can counteract with the truth. All you know is Junk Science, my friend!

We have researched this issue thoroughly, and the truth shall set you free!

We are a kindly bunch but your kind has turned us cranky. And no matter what you say, your going to get flamed. Sorry, but that's how it it.

If you thought you would come in here and turn our thinking around, you have another think coming.

If smoking is so bad, why don't they ban it?! It IS a legal commodity, you know. So get over it.

If my mother dying of cancer when I was 29 did not deter me, why would the claims of a cyber person whose real identity I do not know deter me at 58?

Next time listen to your friends.

BTW, there are several physicians who post regularly to the "puff list" smoking threads who do not see eye-to-eye with you. Understand, though, that this fight isn't about smoking, it's about freedom and the loss of private property rights and individual liberties. AND the right to engage in "risky" behaviors without government intrusion.

When I first came to FR over two years ago, I received advice from a fellow physician that, until today, I have studiously followed. "Never engage a smoker on a smoking thread. There's not one thing that you can say, not one painful experience you can relate that will make them change their minds."

I, for one, thank you for trying. I'm a smoker trying to quit and your words have helped me for this moment. I watched my mother and father-in-law die of lung cancer, both before the age of sixty. It is not pretty, and yet still I cannot put the d#@$ things down!

When I first came to FR over two years ago, I received advice from a fellow physician that, until today, I have studiously followed. "Never engage a smoker on a smoking thread. There's not one thing that you can say, not one painful experience you can relate that will make them change their minds."

I think at least part of the reason you're getting beaten up is that the thread, at least for some of us, is about liberty, not smoking. It is about a bunch of anti-smoking, anti-capitalism, anti-freedom creatures trying to crush free choice under the boot of the state. They are perfectly free to establish smoke free enterprises, but they don't. Rather, they proclaim they'll run yours the way they see fit.

Imagine the opposite. Imagine you decide to operate your practice in a smoke free setting, but the smokers arrive and tell you you must allow them to smoke in your office. When you refuse, they call in the police who tell you they can light up, and if you try to stop them you'll be closed down and prosecuted. Believe it or not, you'd find many of us defending your rights in that situation.