Do You Use Tobacco Products?

[Leah]

never will, but i do agree that smoking is bad, but please don't ban it, even if it's bad for them cuz then they wouldn't be happy and both there will be jobs lost and America would go into even more debt!

[Zapranoth]

I mean no disrespect to the smokers in this thread, but -- you can't really lump smoking into the same discussion (of ill health effects) as you can obesity, sedentary lifestyle.   Smoking is much worse than those things.

If it were a choice made in a vacuum, I'd say, smoke as you wish.  My concerns are,

1.  Secondhand smoke exposure, which is unconscionable,
2.  the health care costs of smoking, which I must partially bear.

Before you gripe about item #2, remember -- obesity is an indirect measure of other problems that worsen healthcare outcomes (diabetes and the like).  Obesity is NOT directly related to those things, not with the kinds of associations we find with smoking cigarettes.  They are not the same kinds of risk-taking behavior, and the price tag they carry are very arguably different.

On a more personal note, I think that of all the things I've seen, dying of COPD is one of the worse ends I've seen.  Living the last decades of your life with vascular disease, heart disease, or leathery lungs is just plain stupid, and very very many of the smokers I see would tell their younger selves, "don't."

[Pilgermann]

I don't smoke, never have.  I'd smoke weed before I'd smoke a cigarette (though I haven't done that, either).  Even though it's a stupid thing to do in the first place, I don't try and chastise others that choose to do it, they should know what sorts of horrible things it can do to them by now.  Something that really annoys me is how most smokers seem to flick their cigarette butts all over the damn place, even when an ash tray is 5 feet away from them.

I love that there's a local smoking ban in public buildings and workplaces, but I don't get why it's banned in bars; drinking and smoking kinda go together, right?

[The Burgomaster]

I'll smoke about 2 or 3 cigars a year, but that's it.  I've never been a cigarette smoker, but I always liked the smell of cigarette smoke in bars (too bad you can't smoke in bars around here anymore).  Never got into chewing tobacco . . . just look at a few pictures of people who have had their jaws, tongues, and throats removed because of mouth cancer and you'll kick that habit in a hurry.

[Trevor]

just look at a few pictures of people who have had their jaws, tongues, and throats removed because of mouth cancer and you'll kick that habit in a hurry.

Or Andy Garcia's character of Gray Baker in Dead Again...