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The Disappearance of the Ashtray

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Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#391

Post by nkrisc »

brazed_blotch wrote: post #14
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #5

The plummeting rates of smoking in the US is one of the rare areas where this country really shines when it comes to social welfare. Even many European states that have what I'd consider much more progressive social welfare systems have smoking rates that are appalling, often 3x or more the US rates.

On the other hand, being constantly ostracised from public spaces isn’t great either… something I find infuriating when I travel abroad. If there were at least a few smoking bars where you don’t have to go out into the cold to smoke I think that would be nice.

If you’re allowed to smoke in the bar then I’m allowed to bring my bucket of rotten fish.

All health issues aside, it’s just disgusting. It smells awful, it makes everything else smell awful. I always hate ending up in an elevator with a smoker, it’s nauseating. It truly is a disgusting habit.

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#392

Post by dspillett »

dspillett wrote: post #32
j_m_b wrote: post #7

It's tough to portray just how ubiquitous smoking was to a modern audience. You would go to a restaurant and the first thing your hostess would ask is "smoking or non"? I remember standing in a checkout line in the 80s as a child and being fascinated with the billowing clouds of smoke an old lady blew. I remember coming home from bars reeking of smoke, even though I didn't. Even teachers had their own lounges that re…

I remember the smoking/non choice not being there in many places but for the other reason: there was no non-smiling section. That was often just in fancy places! (UK, born in 78 so remembering no further back than the mid 80s for the most part)

Of cause I meant "non smoking" not "non smiling" above. Slide keyboard and auto-carrot strike again!

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#393

Post by larrysalibra »

grujicd wrote: post #351
j_m_b wrote: post #7

It's tough to portray just how ubiquitous smoking was to a modern audience. You would go to a restaurant and the first thing your hostess would ask is "smoking or non"? I remember standing in a checkout line in the 80s as a child and being fascinated with the billowing clouds of smoke an old lady blew. I remember coming home from bars reeking of smoke, even though I didn't. Even teachers had their own lounges that re…

Unfortunately, restaurants and bars still have "smoking or non" in Serbia, and in practice it's just smoking everywhere. So if you're hit with nostalgia and wish to smell like ashtray after going out - come to Serbia! There is one small negative of banishing smoking in the rest of the world is dissapearance of ashtrays from modern cars. You don't have to smoke but it's convenient to have some kind of small trashcan f…

I did a road trip that passed through Serbia a few years ago and we couldn’t find any restaurant that wasn’t full of smoke besides McDonald’s so we just skipped eating meals until we got to a neighboring country that didn’t have this problem.

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#394

Post by unwind »

gambiting wrote: post #317
swores wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can definitely buy pouches of tobacco to be used like snus in the UK (and I'm almost certain that was the case before Brexit, too). Unless "snus" has some specific definition that's illegal and the UK sells an alternative? Not sure, last time I tried snus was in Finland over a decade ago.

Actual snus(powdered tabbaco sold and advertised as a product you put up your nose) isn't legal for sale in the UK: https://www.buynicotinepouches.co.uk/blogs/news/buying-snus-...

Uh, this is bit weird topic for me to "well actually", but you're not correct about where snus goes [1]. It goes between the upper lip and gum, you don't inhale it. That would be "snuff" in English.

Source: am Swedish, but not a tobacco user.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snus

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#395

Post by roelschroeven »

noduerme wrote: post #328
nindalf wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is hyperbole. You make it sound like you’re being personally harassed by a minimum of 10 children, possibly taking shift coverage to make sure to infect you 24x7. And you’re comparing that with actual smokers who would actually light up at every opportunity. Oh it’s “just one cigarette” that you would smoke right? Just one. Why are these unreasonable people persecuting you unreasonably for just one . O…

Children light up at every opportunity. If you've ever been in a row with a few of them, they have no control over the contents of their lungs. Smokers do, actually, ask in most cases. In terms ten second-hand cigarettes damaging you on a flight, or ten coughing children, I don't understand how you think the smoke would be more dangerous. Cancer risk from smoke is cumulative, whereas risk from contagious diseases is…

> Smokers do, actually, ask in most cases.

That's not my experience, at all. In places where they are allowed to smoke, which used to be everywhere, they either take it for granted that they can smoke and just do it; or they 'ask' with something like "surely you don't mind" while already lighting their cigarette. And some of them do the same even in places where they're not allowed to, but fortunately that's a shrinking minority.

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#396

Post by noduerme »

seszett wrote: post #383
noduerme wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry that you may have encountered smokers who didn't ask your permission. But I have never encountered a parent who asked my permission before their child coughed in my face. I'm comparing the thoughtless spreading of diseases with the, relatively, under the circumstances, thoughtful manner in which most smokers exhale their poison. And, relative to the immediate toxicity of the poisons in question, there's no…

How far removed from real life must you be to complain that parents aren't asking you for permission before... allowing their children to be sick? Allowing their sick children to cough? Disease is an unavoidable fact of human life and children are a necessary piece of society, but tobacco is entirely unneeded.

I'm just saying that it's hardly more of a burden on society for someone to burn some dry leaves than for someone to create a new human or several of them, with all the burden that places on our ecosystem and our society. Having children is a wildly antisocial and narcissistic act in the modern world. It's hilarious and ironic that the people who defend it are the same ones who care whether I smoke a cigarette from time to time, or who whinge about global warming. The worst thing you can possibly do to the planet is to have a child. It outweighs every personal measure you might take against carbon emissions, tenfold, for reasons that are too obvious to explain. Yet this, and the imposition of said children on me, is somehow justifiable whereas my having a cigarette on an airplane would be unimaginable. I think the modern word for the perspective of parents who believe they have a natural right to take up more resources than their own bodies require, solely because they did something any animal can do - ie. reproduced - is "privilege".

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#397

Post by Freak_NL »

netsharc wrote: post #233
ornornor wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved to Switzerland recently and I was very unpleasantly surprised at the general attitude towards smoking here. It’s routine to see someone hold an infant or child in one hand and a smoke in the other. It’s technically forbidden to smoke in train stations but there is no enforcement and people will smoke everywhere anyway. Same thing for underground parkings. The “rule” seems to be that if you can somehow see the…

The train station smoking ban is only a few years old, it used to be a lot worse, you get off the train and many people would be smoking (either their last cigarette before the ride, or their first after getting off). Nowadays it's just a few people who ignore the rules, without consequences.

Yeah, that was one of the things that struck me as so weird coming from the Netherlands when I was on holiday in Switzerland. While the Netherlands was already on track to ban smoking on the actual train platforms as well at that time, arriving at the central station of Zurich was really something else. Smokers everywhere, in a country that was so orderly in most other respects.

> Nowadays it's just a few people who ignore the rules, without consequences.

For now. In a while the last holdouts will be confronted by people around them and staff alike as the public opinion shifts. People who are strongly affected by cigarette smoke (asthmatics, COPD sufferers) will slowly come to expect that those areas are really smoke free too, and are places they can actually go without having to take medication directly after. The affront of someone smoking where they shouldn't is gradually felt more acutely.

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#398

Post by Sander_Marechal »

bambax wrote: post #341
chongli wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to ban smokers to ban smoking on a sub. Smokers don't have to smoke, they merely choose to do so.

That's untrue. You (maybe) choose to start smoking, but once you have started, choice is entirely taken away from you. Incidentally, that's precisely what helped me quit (a long time ago): I realized I was a slave to the cigarette and the only way to be free again was to stop it altogether. It was one of the hardest thing I ever had to do. I stayed in bed for four days trying to think about something else and sleepin…

I always describe quitting smoking as both the easiest and the hardest thing I have ever done. I wanted to quit for so long and suffered many, many failed attempts. I tried all kings of methods, acupuncture, gum, etc. All to no avail. In hindsight I didn't really want to quit. I wanted to quit for my health, for my morning cough, for my wife, for all kinds of reasons. But not really for me. I liked it, and quitting something you want to do doesn't work.

At some point I read the Alan Carr book. I was skeptical but hey, might as well try it, right? Around that time my wife and I were also thinking about kids and I really wanted to quit before she was pregnant. I finished the book, smoked my last cigarette, went to bed, and lasted about 6 hours after waking up before I was back at it again. That night I re-read the last bit of the book, smoked my last cigarette (again) and went to bed.

I haven't touched a cigarette since and it's been very easy. not a single pang or hankering or anything. I can get drunk without wanting a cig. People can smoke around me and I don't care. I'm not an ex-smoker. I'm a non-smoker. Looking back (4 years now) I find it hard to understand myself why I had so much trouble quitting. It's been soooo easy.

But only after I really wanted it for me.

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#399

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

jdkoeck wrote: post #277
chongli wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father smoked for many years before quitting. I have two roommates that are smokers. The difference between him and them is that he wanted to quit, so he did. They continue to smoke because they do not want to quit. It’s as simple as that.

Right, so the reason there are thousands of books and methods about quitting smoking isn’t because it’s hard, it’s because people don’t really want to. Or maybe they’re stupid? Got it.

I know several people (including family members) who spent several decades "trying" to quit smoking, but "couldn't"... until they started having health problems and a doctor told them very clearly and in a serious tone that if they didn't quit, they would die.

At that point, they quit literally overnight and never went back. And I'm using "literally" literally here.

So yes, I know it's hard, but I'm pretty sure people who don't manage to quit just don't want to quit hard enough. They "want" to in the same sense that I want to learn martial arts: I've always thought that it would be great to master a martial art, and sometimes fantasize with it, but I know fully well that I'm never going to do it because I'm not willing to do what it takes (the time, the discipline, receiving blows, etc.)

In other words, I don't think wanting to snap a finger and magically never feel like smoking anymore qualifies as wanting to quit smoking.

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#400

Post by mkl »

bambax wrote: post #333
camillomiller wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smoking on planes is absolutely something I can't wrap my head around in any possible way. How the hell someone EVER thought it would be a good idea to let people smoke while packed inside a flying metal cylinder?

I don't think an accident ever occurred because of smoking in the cabin? (Possibly one because of smoking in the lavatory, and I'm not even sure). For smokers, going 4, 6 or 9 hours without smoking is just unthinkable; I know it was for me. So glad I quit (a very long time ago), but I don't know how smokers deal with it today.

Do nicotine patches, gum, etc. not work? (Serious question)
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