Smoke Or Not To Smoke

[Chip Monk]

I get your point and you are correct, however if we were to able to compare the "innocent" deaths/injury attributed directly to both habits I'm guessing alcohol would win.

Good point.

Binge drinking has become the scourge of the English (British?) town centres at night.

If they had only just invented alcohol, it would be a banned substance. I dunno what the answer is.

Wow, let's be thinking about that. We can discount people who die/are injured as a direct result of their own drinking. The same as we do for smokers. So what are we left with in terms of people who are directly affected by the drinking of others.

It is impossible not to be affected by someone who is smoking in your direct vicinity. The more it goes on the greater the effect, the closer to them the greater the effect. Tho' possibly not as directly proportionate as one would have thought. Once the room is full of poison it's pretty much full of poison.

However it is entirely possible to sit in a room with other people drinking and for it to have no effect at all, other than having a laugh. It happens to most people, most of the time. Even if there is fighting or whatever it is entirely possible to walk away from it.

Yes some people get caught up in it, however my "guess" would be that less poeple are affected by others drinking than are affected by others smoking.

The pictures of boys fighting in the street are dramatic, however in the overall scheme of people taking a wee shandy, just how big a percentage are we talking here. It is also a reasonably specific demographic we are talking about here. 40 year old woman rarely rampage through the streets of Auchterarder.

Again I have no figures to support this, just an intuitive reaction. I suspect the survival rates from an A&E on a Saturday night are significantly better than the oncology ward in the same hospital.

[Barbarossa]

Good point.

Binge drinking has become the scourge of the English (British?) town centres at night.

If they had only just invented alcohol, it would be a banned substance. I dunno what the answer is.

Wow, let's be thinking about that. We can discount people who die/are injured as a direct result of their own drinking. The same as we do for smokers. So what are we left with in terms of people who are directly affected by the drinking of others.

It is impossible not to be affected by someone who is smoking in your direct vicinity. The more it goes on the greater the effect, the closer to them the greater the effect. Tho' possibly not as directly proportionate as one would have thought. Once the room is full of poison it's pretty much full of poison.

However it is entirely possible to sit in a room with other people drinking and for it to have no effect at all, other than having a laugh. It happens to most people, most of the time. Even if there is fighting or whatever it is entirely possible to walk away from it.

Yes some people get caught up in it, however my "guess" would be that less poeple are affected by others drinking than are affected by others smoking.

The pictures of boys fighting in the street are dramatic, however in the overall scheme of people taking a wee shandy, just how big a percentage are we talking here. It is also a reasonably specific demographic we are talking about here. 40 year old woman rarely rampage through the streets of Auchterarder.

Again I have no figures to support this, just an intuitive reaction. I suspect the survival rates from an A&E on a Saturday night are significantly better than the oncology ward in the same hospital.

There are loads of secondary effects from binge-drinking. I'm going to list them as I think of them.

1). People who live on the main routes to and from a pub routinely have their cars vandalised, their letter-boxes pishes through, and their trees sicked on.

None of the above has actually happened to me, but once someone dived headfirst into one of my flowerbeds as a result of being drunk, and flattened all my daffodils.

2). Staff at A&E have to deal with rude, aggressive and violent patients as a result of excessive drinking, putting themselves in danger at their place of work.

3). Bouncers in clubs often have to break up fights etc, not knowing if whoever they are man-handling is going to suddenly pull out a knife and stab out, in their stuporific rage.

4). Taxi drivers who are picking up people at the end of the night are at risk from vomit and violence.

5). Police have to dedicate resources to patrolling known trouble-spots at night, rather than catching burglars and paedophiles.

6). People dive headfirst into your daffodils FOR FUCKS SAKE. That alone should be enough.




Yeah, I'm not saying it's worse than passive smoking, but it can get pretty bad. I'm all in favour of the smoking ban, for the reasons you've been giving.

I like a few drinks myself, and I get merry and silly when I'm drunk, but some people seem to not be able to cope with it all, and go mental.

[Chip Monk]

"Yeah, I'm not saying it's worse than passive smoking, but it can get pretty bad"

So, in short and not beating about the bush or gilding the lilly, we are pretty much, what could be described as, in a word, agreed.

I had mistakenly thought you agreed that the drinking thing was worse, given you described it as a "good point".

[Barbarossa]

"Yeah, I'm not saying it's worse than passive smoking, but it can get pretty bad"

So, in short and not beating about the bush or gilding the lilly, we are pretty much, what could be described as, in a word, agreed.

I had mistakenly thought you agreed that the drinking thing was worse, given you described it as a "good point".

Self-pwned first thing on a tuesday.

I must have been thinking of a point that was not actually the point being made.

[Chip Monk]

Maybe you were talking about the presentation, rather than the content.

[MediaSlayer]

There are loads of secondary effects from binge-drinking.

Do they call stella "wife beater" for nothing?

i would have thought that would have been the first one listed, is why i ask.

[Chip Monk]

There are loads of secondary effects from binge-drinking.

Do they call stella "wife beater" for nothing?

i would have thought that would have been the first one listed, is why i ask.

Every person who smokes in their home subjects the other members of their family to the effects of passive smoking.

I know at least one person who drinks Stella, but rarely beats his wife.

[Proper Bo]

I know at least one person who drinks Stella, but rarely beats his wife.

I drink stella and don't have a wife

[MediaSlayer]

Every person who smokes in their home subjects the other members of their family to the effects of passive smoking.

I know at least one person who drinks Stella, but rarely beats his wife.

I think you are cross-arguing, because I don't remember arguing with you, that second hand smoke does not affect other people in the vicinity of the smoke.

my original post> i do agree that second hand smoke is bad, but here in the states, one of the first smoking bans to become famous was the california smoking ban, which banned it from pubs. my logic is this, if you are that terribly concerned about your health, why are you in a pub? you like the peanuts? most people drink in pubs, and yes i agree that's less invasive because unlike the smoke, that doesn't affect the non-drinking people in the pub. but i do think that a smoky pub is an incentive for the patrons not to stay there all day and drink their life away, which is a good incentive imo. other public places bans are different, i agree with those, except outdoor ones that's a little h4rsh considering the smoke mostly just goes up into the atmosphere. /

what i was arguing was this:

quote> There is nothing which is analogous with smoking.

So why do people keep trying to debate this issue by analogy. /

I then drew an analogy between smoking and drinking, because you had claimed there was "nothing analogous with smoking", by saying this:

smoking is something that many people do, to lighten up and relax

drinking is something that many people do, to lighten up and relax

so the similarity is in the motivation, although the means are different /

~sweet dreams

[Smoker09]

dont smoke your waste your money! hhhhaa