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Everybody knows smoking kills people.
Everybody knows smoking is addictive.
Everybody knows Governments around the world are faced with huge bills as a result of smoking induced disease, premature death and associated health costs, but these are often more than outweighed by the amount of money Governments receive in revenue from sales of cigarettes. The obvious remedies are not very attractive.
Smokers are a significant minority, sometimes even a majority, in many democratic countries. Prohibition is almost certainly never likely to be approved in the first place and it is also likely to criminalize a huge proportion of the population. Smokers claim that they have "rights", a very dubious proposition at any time. As adults they claim the right to continue their addiction, which many even claim that they enjoy. So prohibition is not on.
Everyday new young people take up smoking, many of them will never be able to stop until, quite literally, it kills them. This is a situation that should be addressed. We need not breed another generation of smokers.
There is an alternative.
Here is the plan:-
1]
Remove all special taxation on cigarettes and tobacco. Governments must treat tobacco as simply another product, not a special source of revenue.
2]
Issue all smokers with permits. The permits will prove they are old enough to buy cigarettes, that is, they were over the age of majority on the day the permit system was begun.
3]
Do not ever issue more permits. If you are too young to smoke on the agreed day, tough, that is one right you will never be given.
4]
Permit holders cannot buy LESS than 200 cigarettes at a time. Cigarettes are addictive, if you are a smoker you will be a smoker, it is not a short-term, casual decision you are taking. By forcing the smoker to confront the true cost of smoking over the longer term more smokers will be encouraged to consider giving up.
5]
Make selling and giving away tobacco outside these regulations a crime on equal footing with selling hard drugs. Cigarettes are, after all, more addictive than any hard drug and non-smoking drug addicts are as common as Jewish pork butchers.
The Police cannot control the sales of even class A drugs, such as cocaine and heroin. This sort of draconian set up would just give drug pushers another source of income, and encourage others to join in. Smuggling tobacco is bad enough here in the UK with the high duties, make it illegal in any way... Your heart may be in the right place, wanting to see less people smoking, but it won't work this way.
Yes, you have hit the nail on the head, high duties give the opportunity for profitable smuggling. Gangsters need profits to make them move into an industry. The profit in cocaine and heroin is enormous, in comparison it makes even designer perfume look sensibly priced.
Have you really read what I have written? Where would be the profit in smuggling and illegal dealing if the only tax on cigarettes is a regular sales tax? That is the beauty of this even-handed approach. The first thing to do is make cigarettes cheaper and remove all the excess profit from them. No extra tax, just the same tax as on toothpaste or Coca Cola, these products do not attract gangsters to distribute them. Neither do banned books, the ban stops the legitimate trade and there is no incentive for criminals to distribute them. How long did the American mobs stay in distributing rum after prohibition ended? Gangsters need massive profits to make them interested in any commodity. Who would want to distribute cigarettes outside the law if there would be little profit in it? People who had a political motivation???
If the legitimate market consisted entirely of sales of packs of 200 or more the price competition would be very keen as buying cigarettes became a harder choice to make. Cigarettes would become cheaper, less ubiquitous, less glamorous. They would become associated with sad smelly old men who wheeze, make bad jokes and have their legs amputated.
To buy cigarettes without a permit would make you a criminal, liable to arrest at anytime. Can you really see people, even gullible teenagers, putting themselves at this risk for the dubious pleasures that nicotine offers? Who would sell cigarettes to teenagers? Anybody might, anybody who had a permit to buy them, anybody over 18. What kind of profit could be generated in a market like that? Little. Where would be the incentive to do so? Sell 200 cigarettes on and make the equivalent of an hour's work at minimum wage in profit, and risk five years in prison? Very likely, not. It won't happen for the same reason there is no second-hand market in lottery tickets among children, too many people could sell them, and nobody has any reason to do so.
As you say, the health problems caused by smoking are more than paid for by the smokers themselves, so why do you get so worked up about it ?
That is like saying that children dying due to poverty helps reduce the dangers of over-population, so why worry about it. I am concerned because my politics is about concern and having a better world. Also not all the problems caused by smoking are visited on the smokers. I hate the smell on my clothes, and I don't want to breathe polluted air, whether that pollution is caused by industry or socially sanctioned drug use.
In a free country, people do all sorts of odd things that cost a lot of money, smokers know only too well what it costs, but if like for instance, people who restore Ford Anglia`s, so long as they can afford it, what`s it got to do with you ?
There is no such thing as an action that has no effect on other people. Smokers cause problems everywhere they go. Grime, smell, fumes, litter. Smokers die young and leave families unprovided for and grieving. Smokers spend money given by the state for food and shelter on their drug habit, they suffer, their families suffer.
People who restore Ford Anglias also have an impact on the rest of us. They waste materials and fuel on the project; materials that are finite. They drive around for no reason disturbing traffic flows and in so doing help to convince each other that they have a right to do so and they have a right to drive, use irreplaceable hydrocarbons and drive vehicles without seatbelts, cushioned bumpers, air bags, effective brakes and catalytic converters. Every action has impacts on the rest of us, although that impact varies enormously.
It is the legitimate right of a government to consider what actions have too much negative impact to be tolerated. The right to push concrete blocks off motorway bridges is a fairly clear cut case, the right to smoke is less clear cut, the right to restore Anglias is further down that continuum and the right to take off your shoes in your own home is even further along. But all of those actions offer benefits to those who do them and costs to the rest of us. Politics is about getting the balance right. Pretending that your actions only concern you is juvenile and anti-social.
Everybody does NOT know that smoking pays for 10% of the NHS after costs are taken into account.
"Successive British Government policy has, by its own evidence, been the cynical exploitation of public health with respect to smoking"
Everybody does NOT know that government are more addicted than the 15 million UK smokers.
OK, maybe everybody doesn't but we both do, don't we? That is one of my points, it is like the Catholic Church complaining about sin in the Middle Ages when selling the sexual favours of nuns was one of its biggest earners.
Prohibition should be approved. Consistent positions, would be either to argue for a ban on the UK sale of cigarettes or to change the legal treatment of cannabis and other soft drugs to that of tobacco products. I argue for a ban
http://www.88honeylane.freeserve.co.uk/politics_smoking/index.htm
which taxes would you increase to make that £6,3 billion each year? which government services would you cut?
You have to ask? Income tax, the only fair tax we have. Which government services would I cut? The care of self inflicted disease caused by drug use and smoking, unless the smokers themselves opted in to higher taxation to pay for it, a smoker's levy included in their tax code. It is not fair that smokers pay for the services that we all use, neither is it fair for me to pay for their self inflicted disease.
So far as I can tell, drugs prohibition has caused exactly the same type of problem (although to a much higher degree) as did the short-lived alcohol prohibition in the US - namely, to turn the> prohibited substance from a minor social inconvenience into a major social problem, to encourage the rise of wealthy and powerful criminal organisations, to corrupt institutions of state, to create a class of "offence" where the "victim" was as "guilty" as the "victimiser", and, generally, to create and pay for an enormous amount of totally useless work for police and lawyers.
So yes, I am indeed against drugs prohibition.
That is why I do not propose a simple prohibition. If cigarettes are available cheaply to everybody who is currently old enough to buy them a black market could never develop.
Excuse me, but you talked about regulating who can smoke. The illegal trade would exist, and it would be for those you chose to exclude. You can prohibit the distribution of a drug, but you cannot prohibit people's desire for it! Smuggling of coke etc. exists because they are banned, not because of high duties. You make a thing illegal, and then see what happens, and that IS what you are saying - make it illegal to purchase tobacco without a permit. Thos not allowed permits will want the stuff all the same, and it WOULD be supplied by smugglers at high prices.
"If the legitimate market consisted entirely of sales of packs of 200 or more the price Competition would be very keen as buying cigarettes became a harder choice to make. Cigarettes would become cheaper, less ubiquitous, less glamorous. They would become associated with sad smelly old men who wheeze, make bad jokes and have their legs amputated."
Um, you forget the fact that cigarettes used to indeed be very cheap, and they were glamourous then...
Ad campaigns against smoking always use such imagery, but never to any success. This is because the young posess a sense of immortality. It is akin to why capital punishment is not a deturrent to murder, because criminals never think that they are going to be caught in the first place!
"To buy cigarettes without a permit would make you a criminal, liable to arrest at anytime. Can you really see people, even gullible teenagers, putting themselves at this risk for the dubious pleasures that nicotine offers?"
Can you envisage the number of police needed and what that would cost, both in terms of money and our sense of freedom (in having a virtual police state). The police cannot control the illicit drug trade we now have...
It is not policeable.
Who would stop the sales? You gonna post a cop in every shop?!
Your solution is a policing, legal, social, libertarian, and ethical minefield. Not even Stalin could have got away with something as draconian as this!
The only thing which can possibly work is simply to take the time to disuade people generation after generation not to smoke, and to do this by persuasion not coersion and definately not by legislation (making anyone into a criminal). That method, although slow, will I believe truely work. The proof is there already that this approach works, because in the developed world there are fewer and fewer smokers year on year...
Point one the initial post in this thread was a deliberately provocative post designed to get people to think, not the manifesto of a party thrashed out over weeks of careful planning, so it probably does have lots of holes in it, like a ventilated filter tip. ;-)
In making cigarettes cheap (cost price plus retail profit plus VAT) and by making them potentially very available by having millions of smokers legitimately able to buy them the whole potential for a black market is dissipated. There could never be surplus profits to be made from avoiding the legitimate channels because there are millions of potential profiteers (existing smokers) with the means and opportunity to supply them illicitly. So if a black market did develop it would rapidly collapse again because the customers would not be prepared to pay inflated prices and the suppliers would not be prepared to supply without them.
Remember, by definition we are talking about non-smokers wishing to become smokers and so embarking on a lifetime of crime, to buy fags???
"Get real mister, why would I want to pay you wrinklies and crumblies over the odds for bloody cancer sticks, just so I can look like you losers and cower outside the office door? And if I did buy 'em, where can I smoke 'em without getting arrested? You think I want to become an addict like you lot? Sad bastards. I have as much desire to be a smoker as I have to go bloody line dancing."
Smoking would very rapidly lose any appeal it might previously have had. Underage smokers would not be allowed to smoke in any public smoking areas and they would not be allowed to smoke at work. No company would allow its employees to break the law in the company's time. As no new permits would ever be issued a generation would grow up facing the choice of being addicted outlaws, slaves to the lousiest drug known to man or not taking it up and having the self-satisfied smug approach of the non-smoker laughing at all the poor sad OLD smokers. That would put a new slant on the generation gap.
You think that the current persuasion methods work? Where have you been recently? There are new smokers being recruited among the young all the time. I knew smoking was dangerous and disapproved of as soon as I was old enough to appreciate what it was. I had a thorough education in the evils of smoking. It didn't stop me smoking from 15 to 26. I gave up quite easily once I had the motivation, I could see no future in it. My grandfather before me had done the same, he had been smoking up to 100 per day, then he suddenly realised that he didn't actually enjoy it, all the cravings he had were chemically induced and had nothing to do with a real desire to either smoke or be a smoker. The feeling of being in control again is far better than any feeble buzz that nicotine gives you.
Yes, people are giving up all the time, that will surely continue. We must address the crucial point of what makes non-smokers want to be smokers. We need not bother about existing smokers, they will either kill or cure themselves, and for the most part they are adult enough to make that choice themselves. In a way the more we hector them the more they feel they have their backs against the wall. Ignore them, they will come to their senses, or not.
We must look at stopping more smokers being recruited. While many people believe smokers have the right to be smokers who is really seriously in favour of letting our children have that "right" in perpetuity? I see no reason to defend the dubious notion of rights for such a pitifully small addition to human happiness. I am thinking about my children and protecting them from their own folly, as a father I see no reason to apologize for being paternalistic. I admit that my suggestions have gone beyond the normal scope of liberal politics but perhaps they do contain some germ of a sensible strategy.
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The following post was posted to alt.smokers (and alt.smokers.are.addicts and alt.smokers.suck-harder just to wind them up some more.) First post 10 October 2000. This was another trolling exercise to generate a little response. It worked fairly well.
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You really like the taste of tobacco smoke? I think you are deluding yourself.
Tobacco smoke is an acquired taste, a taste that is only acquired when reinforced by the addictive qualities of nicotine. Think about another drug filled plant extract that people actually do enjoy the taste of, coffee. Coffee is a flavouring used in non-caffeine containing food and drink, including that terrible stuff, decaffeinated coffee, along with chocolates, cakes and many other products, including, interestingly enough a coffee scented snuff.
Snuff is a wonderful illustration of why tobacco smoke is not an enjoyable taste. Snuff is ground tobacco that is inhaled. The user gets the nicotine and no tobacco smoke taste. I am unaware of any "smoke scented" snuff although you can get menthol, mint, lavender and as I said, coffee. (I think this is in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's most expensive snuff, Café Royale, by Smith's the snuff shop in London, I can recommend it to any nicotine addict, it can still cause you to lose your legs through circulation problems but at least you don't smell like an ashtray all day.)
Mint is another chemical produced by plants as a defence mechanism that we have taken a peculiar pleasure in consuming. It is not a drug but we simply enjoy the taste so we put it in thousands of products from foot sprays, condoms and chewing gum to chocolates and liqueurs. If tobacco smoke is an enjoyable taste why are there no tobacco smoke flavoured products except cigarettes and other forms of taking the drug nicotine? Simple. We don't enjoy the flavour unless we get the drug. It is a lie that we tell our selves. The body wants the nicotine. The self is left with an urge to smoke and needs a reason to justify it. Justifying urges is what the self does.
The self is a master deceiver out of necessity, it does not know how the body runs, or why it runs but it knows it is making all the decisions, or if it isn't in charge it has no reason to be. So the lie that you enjoy the taste of tobacco smoke is simply one of thousands of lies your self is telling constantly. It is all part of the defence mechanism of the self. Everything that your body does needs to be justified by the self. When your body gets an urge to do something it does it, half a second later the self thinks up an explanation for the decision it has not taken but must have taken, because the self must be in charge.
Very few people smoke anything that is not a drug. No culture on Earth smokes a substance that has no effect on the brain or body. Only a tiny minority of reformed cigarette smokers use non-tobacco smoking materials. The fact is that smoking is begun for social reasons; peer pressure, rebellion and the proclamation of coming of age, it is continued because it is chemically addictive and part of a social scene. No smoker ever starts smoking or continues smoking out of an Epicurean delight in the act of smoking. Naturally I also expect that many will never admit it just as I do not expect many priests and monks admit freely, outside the safety of the confessional, to masturbating. You tell yourself more lies than anybody else tells you.
The taste of the smoke is a trivial matter. The reason to chose one brand rather than another.
The reason for smoking has nothing to do with taste and everything to do with nicotine.
What's to debate? You put forth some nonsense and you expect some sort of serious debate? Stop taking yourself so seriously.
So, no real response then? Just dismiss it all as nonsense.
What about a simple answer to the main point, if cigarette smoke tastes so great why is there no other product out there to tap into this market? Billions of people smoke, many of them say they do it for the taste. So.... Where are the other products that taste of cigarette smoke?
To me the answer is simple. There are no cigarette taste-alikes for the same reason there are no pussy taste-alikes. People don't do it for the taste, that is a rationalization for their behaviour.
Naturally there is a taste to cigarette smoke and it is not particularly unpleasant, over time the flavour of cigarettes has been worked on to make them more palatable. But the flavour is not a reason to smoke, it is merely a reason to chose one brand over another. Similarly low alcohol drinks are never going to be a huge market because most people drink wine and beer because of the alcohol not principally because of the taste. You can never separate the motivations completely but I think the clues are rather strong. No society that I know of smokes anything that does not have a drug effect and I am unaware of any product that tastes of tobacco smoke. You can dismiss that as nonsense and coincidence if you want to but I think most independent observers (on this newsgroup there are, of course, no such thing) might consider that I have a point worth considering.
Sorry Martin.....But taste is a big factor in cigarette selection. Generally the higher the tobacco quality...the better the taste. I have found the best tasting cigarettes to be: AMERICAN SPIRIT, VIRGINIA LEAF 100s, & MARLBOROs. Most all the rest use lesser quality tobaccos, so they do not taste as good.....
OK, take my challenge then, name me a product that tastes of cigarette smoke but does not contain nicotine.
The many herbal blend cigarettes taste like 'cigarette smoke' but do not contain nicotine. But these are like drinking decaf coffee.. why bother ? Nicotine is a wondrful substance in my opinion. I feel great after a good smoke....as I do also after a great cup of coffee. Not everyone is a chain smoker as you might imagine. There are about 2.5 billion smokers in the world....and believe it or not, we enjoy it.
I think this is the nearest thing I have received to a coherent reply.
I too have smoked herbal cigarettes and thought "why?" My body didn't like them and reacted in a similar way to when I drink fizzy apple drinks "here, mate, I don't like this cider much, too sweet and no alcohol."
Yes, nicotine is a drug. To my mind it is a drug with effects that are too small to justify the harm it causes. On a personal or society level. Obviously many others disagree. My main point is that many people are addicted to nicotine but deny it. If you cannot understand the real reasons behind your actions then you are not really in charge of your life. I do not want to force people to stop smoking but I would like to look at ways of preventing new generations from making the same mistake in perpetuity. Ideally simply by education, but I fear that may not be enough. As one of my former bosses used to tell me on a regular basis keeping on doing the same thing and expecting something different to happen is madness.
Gerberg's Tobacco-flavored Smoked Ground Ham. Contains no nicotine. My kids were fed that as baby food, and helped them to aquire the taste for cigarettes at an early age.
I won't comment on your parenting skills.
All I can say is this is the first suggestion I have ever come across that such a product exists. I don't know whether you are trying to wind me up or whether it is real but either way I don't think that a single product would disprove my point. With 2,500,000,000 or so smokers out there suppossedly doing it for the taste a neutral observer might expect a few more well known products to tap into that market.
Now would you kindly take my challenge and jump off the top of the Millenium Dome?
I can't afford the train fare. I suspect that jumping off a dome could be quite fun. Probably more fun than going inside.
I take it you refer exclusively to cigarettes. You must do because when it comes to cigars and pipe you are so off-base you have fallen off the edge of the map.
I smoke cigars for the taste. My choice of cigar is greatly influenced by the wine or fine spirit it is to accompany. I can identify the country of origin by taste alone, and in the case of special favourites even the brand. Smoking my cigar enhances my epicurean pleasure of the other fine consumables civilised life has to offer. It is a social activity and enhances my pleasure in convivial occasions. It improves my frame of mind.
What you are saying is that the taste of grapes is enjoyable but the taste of wine cannot be, that milk is tasty but cheese can't possibly be.
No, that is what you are saying. It is quite easy to spot the difference, what I am saying is contained in the stuff that I write.
Snuff and cigars are products whose only relationship lies in their use of the same base material, about the same as cannabis and a hemp shirt. To make comparisons invites questions as to what you have just smoked yourself, and could I have some, please.
This is a bit disingenuous. Snuff, pipe tobacco, chewing tobacco, cigars, cigarettes and those bandit things are all made from tobacco and all deliver nicotine to the body. Snuff was used in the eighteenth century for exactly the same purpose as nicotine replacement patches. Snuff is also widespread among miners who cannot take any matches or lighters with them but want to feed their nicotine habit. The hemp shirt argument is bogus. The hemp used has been deliberatly cultivated to have near zero levels of THC.
I do not know what the nicotine levels in cigar tobacco are but I suspect that over time such tobaccos have been developed to deliver a consistent amount of nicotine in a pleasant tasting product. I aslo strongly suspect that if a low nicotine cigar were developed it would be found to lack the appropriate subtle flavours, as soon as the smokers discovered the lack of effect. Naturally they would not mention the lack of nicotine but neither would they buy the product.
On the subject of getting a drug buzz from nicotine I will pass on this great tip. A former collegue of mine tried to use nicotine replacement patches when he was trying to give up. He found that if he left one on at night he had really amazing dreams.
Smokers these days are pretty enlightened about the risks. We know we run a risk. Thus we are streets ahead of morons who consider themselves safe when they eat that double cheeseburger with bacon.
So where did you think I was going? You seem to have automatically assumed that I must be an anti-smoker and working to some hidden conspiratorial agenda. My motives are quite clear. I enjoy debating and I want to publicize my URL. I pitched my views in a way designed to make a bit of a splash. Many people reading my posts will then have the urge to prove me wrong, and therefore visit my site and so further my basic aims.
The only way I can fail is to say something that everybody agrees with, which is hardly likely, I have a copious supply of contravertial views, some of which are even well thought out.
This too is part of the plot, like Cassius Clay or any of the grotesque monsters in American style pro wrestling it doesn't matter if you want to see me win or lose.
Any nicotine rush is a negligible side-effect to a good cigar. If cigars were nicotin-free, I would still smoke them (or not, as the occasion and the menu dictate).
All I can say is that is exactly what an addict would be expected to say. (Not that I am calling you an addict.That would not be polite. But if the cap fits... :-)
Whisky drinkers are always talking about the subtle flavours of peat smoke and the quality of the water. If they want the flavour of peat smoke dissolved in spring water why the 40% alcohol? All the talk about subtle flavours is a smoke screen. Nobody gets all high and mighty about which side of the hill the beef in their burger has been raised on or can tell what type of malt was used for the vinegar in their ketchup. The only things that "connoisseurs" get involved in are drugs. It hides the truth from everybody, including themselves. The exceptions to this are also enlightening, foods such as cheese and caviar, I shall refrain from any more pop psychology but I suspect that many of you would know where I could take that line.
You can think what you like. If what you think works for you, fine. Enjoy it. Why do you find it necessary to launch yourself into a pro-smoking ng in this way? Looking for conversions? Bored? What?
All of the above.
Sorry I missed this reply earlier. It got buried among all the fan mail. I suppose your popularity on this group is something to do with your higher intellectual calibre. In the land of the blind the one eyed man is King and all that.
BTW.. Have you ever smoked yourself?
Sure have. You name it I have smoked it. I started with cigars at age 15. Then cigarettes of all kinds, pipes, cannabis and a whole range of other stuff even I am too embarrassed to list.
I looked at your website... you've worked hard at it. Congratulations. I can live with it, just as long as you never lose sight of the fact that everyone is entitled to their view and yours are simply your own. Be careful not to swap one religion for another. Easy to do, not so easy to realise that you've done it.
Very true. Nature abhors a vacuum and all that. I try to keep aware of the danger by questioning everything, including my most cherished beliefs, several times a day.
I note that you're a big fan of Susan Blackmore
- the well-known British anti-psychic who seems to be driven by a desperate
urge to destroy any belief system that just might be helping someone to
get through a very tough life, regardless of the devastation she leaves
in her wake. I find her arrogance phenomenal. There are people in the
world who have weighed up all the options and concluded that they'd rather
be happy than 'right' in accordance with the 'thinking of the day', doncha
know. If your new belief system makes you happy, fine, but be careful
not to presume too much with regard to the lack of reasoning and/or evidence
behind the conclusions reached by others - simply because they differ
from your own. Life is short and to be enjoyed where possible - the approval
of Ms Blackmore and her ilk is not necessary - indeed is wholly undesirable
- for many people, and thank
I don't care about the thinking of the day, I suppose in a little bit of a sick way I would like to think about future generations looking back and perhaps noticing that not everybody in our era was totally barking mad.
Sue Blackmore is not the fount of all wisdom for me but I do appreciate her thinking on memetics, although I don't agree with every detail. I don't know much about her other work but I suspect that her de-bunking activities in the fields of para-psychology or alien abductions are what you are refering to. Such things do not interest me too much. All such fields of research are contravertial and I get the impression that all sides of the debates are prone to self delussion and manipulate what little evidence there is to suit their cause. I wouldn't trust anybody working in those fields too much. As for whetherThe Meme Machine is her latest book I am not sure. The last time she contacted me she was off to some Buddhist retreat and busy on work at the University.
To return to your point.. a little delusion here and there may be necessary for happiness in some cases. I would suggest that it is not a crime and that you yourself are probably as susceptible to it as anyone else, given the right (or wrong) circumstances.
Do you honestly believe that all that is considered logical and rational today is all that will ever be so considered?
No. I have a fairly clear idea that probably about 20% of the current lunatic fringe will probably in time become accepted as true. That seems to be the pattern of the history of science. I wish I knew which 20%.
Do you honestly believe that the models used in science can be relied upon to reflect absolute reality?
No. But they try. The alternatives do not even try.
There are scientists out there who vocally disagree on both points. They might even suggest that to think such things would suggest that one is deluding oneself ;)
I wish you well in finding happiness and fulfillment, Martin, and trust that you know when to leave others to do the same... in their own way... ;)
What great sin have I committed? I have merely expressed my views in a public forum. I have not tried to stop anybody finding their own happiness their own way. I get the impression that many smokers on this group are like dogs that have been kicked too much, they treat any unfamiliar approach as hostile and respond accordingly. If I have touched a sore point it was not me that made it sore.
So, all you smokers out there, enjoy your habit, but be considerate to those, especially us ex-smokers, who find second-hand smoke unacceptable. I have no problem with people smoking as such. My objections are to the side effects and the lies that pollute my space.
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And to people saying TOUGH like that.
So now you're going to tell people what they like and what they don't? And your expertise comes from...where? Please explain exactly what makes you such an expert on this subject.
Experience of inhabiting a human body for 37 years and taking in chemical stimulants of varying degrees of potency and effectiveness. Coupled with a broad general knowledge of many alternative explanations and theories. A social science degree and further reading. What sort of expertise do you need to post on a newsgroup? A doctorate?
Scotch is also an acquired taste. Are you going to tell us that Scotch drinkers don't really like the stuff? Does the absence of Scotch flavoring in other things prove anything?
Well what do you think? I prefer a sweeter whiskey myself when I can afford it, but I wouldn't drink alcohol free Wild Turkey. Who would? I drink whiskey to take in alcohol in a pleasant way. I drink cheap cider more often to take in alcohol in a cheap way.
Where are the milk flavored products? The scotch favored products? Can we assume no one really likes the taste of spinach, because nothing is spinach flavored? I have yet to see beet flavoring, turnup flavoring, carrot flavoring, brussels sprout flavoring, etc. Does that mean no one likes the taste of them? For that matter, while beef flavoring exists, there's nothing designed to recreate the exact flavor of a good London Broil, or Pork Chops, or Duck. By you're "logic" that means no one likes those flavors.
Not at all, it doesn't prove anything, it just makes me wonder. Many foods that we eat are eaten for their food value and their texture. Many foods are eaten because they are good for us, we often endure the flavour rather than enjoy it. But there are also many flavours that we obviously do enjoy because we spread them into other things e.g. Garlic, chillies, oregano, anchovies (some of us!), aniseed, peppermint, coffee, orange, lemon, ginger, sour cream and chives and cinnamon. There are products that have smoke flavours added, such as bacon and salmon. Even some alcohol flavourings are spread around into other products, such as wine in many foods and rum in several sweet confections.
None of this proves anything as such, but it does leave the idea that people smoke for the flavour alone seen a little bit out on a limb. Especially coupled with the observation that no society on the planet smokes anything that does not offer some kind of a drug effect.
How do you explain cigar smokers, and pipe smokers, who get very, very little nicotine from their tobacco consumption? I have dozens of different brands, sizes and shapes of cigars within reach, why do I, and most other cigar smokers, bother if not for the flavor? Pipe smokers typically smoke several different blends depending on their mood or a variety of other factors - why bother if it's for the nicotine, which they're barely getting anyway?
What makes you say that cigars give you very little nicotine? Have you seen any evidence? I have smoked all kinds of things in my time: tea leaves; cheap cigars; several types of pipe tobacco, French, Italian, American, and Turkish cigarettes; hand rolled cigarettes; hashish; herbal cannabis and fine cigars that cost as much as I currently earn in a whole morning. And also several other plant materials that have been recommended to me by people who thought they knew what they were doing and some who were testing my gullibility.
From my experience cigars give me quite a powerful nicotine effect even when just washing the smoke around my mouth. I can only go off my own experience, but I have had plenty.
I no longer smoke cigarettes but I do have a couple of cigars a year. I enjoy it a bit but I hate the smell that sticks to me. I only smoke mild flavoured cigars. In a way I am an occasional smoker for the same reason I started at age 15, to practice the skills of smoking so I can one day use them on a drug that is worth smoking.
Do you think you have a clue? If so, that's just one of the thousand of lies your self is telling constantly.
Thousands of lies, you say? How about listing, say, five hundred, just to prove your point. Or even one hundred?
I don't think anybody really has the patience for this. The self lies all the time in ways like this "I am scratching my head" when really the truth is more like "my hand is scratching my head and as nobody else is supposed to be in charge of my hand except me I will defend to the death (preferably not my own) my assertion that I have chosen to scratch my head and am determining every move those fingers make." Or "I was walking along, in charge of every single stride, every flex of every muscle, when for some reason my feet decided to ignore my instructions and caused me to trip up, fortunately I have the lightning reflexes to regain my balance with minimal loss of composure." When the reality is that your self was barely aware of any act involved with walking, except possibly the destination and degree of urgency in getting there, and only knew about the trip after your body had performed the adjustments. Do you want another 98 like that? I doubt it.
"It is all part of the defence mechanism of the self."
And your expertise on this subject comes from...where, exactly?
Books. Good ones. And good ideas on other websites and other newsgroups.
"The reason for smoking has nothing to do with taste and everything to do with nicotine."
The reason for assumptions has nothing to do with smarts and everything to do with ignorance.
And what is your qualifications to comment on that? I was making an assertion with the idea that it might well be contradicted. Some of the people reading the original post would be able to see that it held some element of truth. Others who look with the eyes of persecuted addicts see everything that is not positively reinforcing their own world view as a personal attack on their inner being.
People who say that cigarettes are harmful are portrayed as liars, people who say that smokers smell are seen as twisted. This newsgroup is not the real world. On this group people are rapidly categorized into "us" and "them". Anybody who makes a statement that suggests that they do not think that smoking is the greatest boon to human life since the discovery of fire are then fair game to be vilified in any way. It does not matter whether their arguments are good bad or indifferent, all that matters is which camp they are in. The mob then joins in, applauding every point made by their side no matter how good, bad or incoherent it is.
(But what am I whinging for? I knew that before I started.)
> > > >You really like the taste of tobacco smoke?
> > > > > > Yes.
So what else do you like the taste in? Apart from everything you eat, naturally. What else tastes like tobacco smoke that you like?
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I fail to see where you're going with this "taste" crap.
Well I am sure it isn't the first time you've missed something.
Anybody else know where this guy's headed?
Hey, I make a point of nobody knowing where I'm headed. I don't relish the idea of getting ambushed.
When I was young I used to watch Dr Who. There was a particular series that really scared me. There were spiders on it. The spiders were huge and they jumped onto your back and then turned invisible and infiltrated your thoughts. It was terrifying. The idea that anybody you come across could be controlled by this alien invisible force.
That is how addiction appears. The addict seems perfectly normal and does not change in way that you can see except that they are no longer in control. Their addiction is controlling their thoughts and actions. The addiction makes their bodies act. Their self finds an action happening. Now the self cannot handle this, it is not on. All actions must be caused by the self, the free will, the inner controller, or in other words, you. The soul, the inner being, you. No other cause is allowable. A decision to light a cigarette has been taken and so the self rationalizes it, "I have decided to smoke a cigarette". If that decision or the motive is questioned the self is on the defensive. " I smoke because I choose to smoke, I choose to smoke because I enjoy it. Why do I enjoy it? Obviously because I enjoy the taste, stupid."
Put your hand on your head.
In the unlikely event that you followed that instruction what actually happened was this. Your eyes saw the words, your brain read them and translated them into an instruction. Your body then put its hand on its head. While it was starting to do that your self *decided* to do it. That may sound like Alice in Wonderland nonsense to you but it has been proved hundreds of times in laboratories.
Bodies act on instructions from brains, but the whole brain is not involved. You live in the whole brain. The self that you defend and recognize is a whole brain phenomenon. That is why YOU can go to sleep and your body does not die, your body does not need you to do most of the stuff it does, in fact, you don't even know how to walk or talk you simply claim to control a body that does know how to do it. Every body, even smoker's bodies, are brighter than the people running them. You, yourself, the inner core of your being is just the voice in your head that claims it controls your body. Put to the test the self is shown to be a fraud. The body starts to act before the self decides.
So when you smoke it is not the inner you that does it. When challenged you will always defend your decisions because they are your decisions, they have to be, you are the only agent with access to your controls. However there are exceptions. When you trip up you blame your feet. When you slur your words you blame your teeth or tongue. When you come too quick or bed the wrong person you blame whatever you blame. You can decide to distance yourself from your actions. This thought can be a way to wean yourself off an addiction.
Just start to think for real. Why do you do it? What does the inner you gain from the activity? You were not born a smoker, you were not born to be a smoker. Something made you take a decision to start. Continuing smoking takes no skill or effort. The addiction drives you. The addiction comes in several pieces. There is the chemical addiction in the brain. There is the habit of body. There is the habit of mind. There is the identification, "I am a smoker because I enjoy it".
I have no doubt that many smokers will have hysterical reactions to this. It fits the pattern. There is nothing more annoying than somebody else telling you why you think or act the way you do.
I know it really gets on my nerves.
(shhhh! Whisper it, That is why I have done all this, and you lot have reacted. You could have just ignored me.)
Anyway. I'll be gone soon, I'll be headed on back to the unrewarding real world for a few days. I may return in a little while. Or maybe I won't. I don't even know myself. Have fun. Don't do anything I wouldn't do, but I suppose you will. :-)
Martin