Are Cigarette Smokers Unfairly Stigmatized?

[jimbob]

And soon those who know better than you how to live your life will attack obesity.

I find fatties degrade the scenery.

Except that it is the smoke which is the problem not the smoker. People are not stigmatising smokers, they are just against putting up with harmful* and unpleasant cigarette smoke in their personal space.


*the evidence is getting stronger that secondhand smoke is harmful, despite earlier claims from the industry.

 

[GlennB]

The highlighted bit might be wrong.

The most famous example that I know of was Roy Castle

Whoopee .. than can I quote the case of my Granny who smoked like a chimney to the age of 80 and died of unrelated causes (true)? Meanwhile, a modern day Roy Castle wouldn't be obliged to play there. It would be his choice. That's the point, someone wishing to be careful would know that these days there are smoking and non-smoking venues.

Meanwhile, of 76,000 women studied and reported by The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, (smokers, ex-smokers and never-smokers) - "The study found no statistically significant relationship between lung cancer and exposure to passive smoke, however. Only among women who had lived with a smoker for 30 years or more was there a relationship that the researchers described as “borderline statistical significance.” Link

I believe the source was a WHO study. Can check on that.

 

[GlennB]

*the evidence is getting stronger that secondhand smoke is harmful, despite earlier claims from the industry.

Maybe not. See my post on Roy Castle, and that study wasn't sponsored by 'the industry' afaik.

An interesting point is to consider the damaging chemicals emitted (benzene, say) from cig smoke, calculate what the reasonable exposure per hour might be in a decently ventilated bar or club, then compare that with the industry 'safe' levels as defined by statute for worker exposure in the benzene factory.

We hear that "There's no safe level of exposure to cig smoke". Well, that makes it unique then, as there are defined 'safe' levels of exposure to every environmental hazard from benzene to radioactivity to silica to dioxins.

Don't get me wrong, if non-smokers want not to be exposed to that stink then I'm all for that. But health is a totally different matter.

 

[blutoski]

They can't go to the 'smoking pub or club' afaik.

No more than they can go to a 'radium pellets in your pocket club'.

Basically, the situation is reversed from what it was 40 years ago. 40 years ago if you wanted to go out and have a few beers and dance, but you didn't want to come home reeking of smoke, you were told: "So go start your own nonsmoking pub, nobody's stopping ya."

Today, it's the opposite. You are free to go to a private club that allows smoking. You're free to start one, if there isn't one in your neighbourhood. After all: "The market will provide," right?

 

[jimbob]

Whoopee .. than can I quote the case of my Granny who smoked like a chimney to the age of 80 and died of unrelated causes (true)? Meanwhile, a modern day Roy Castle wouldn't be obliged to play there. It would be his choice. That's the point, someone wishing to be careful would know that these days there are smoking and non-smoking venues.

Meanwhile, of 76,000 women studied and reported by The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, (smokers, ex-smokers and never-smokers) - "The study found no statistically significant relationship between lung cancer and exposure to passive smoke, however. Only among women who had lived with a smoker for 30 years or more was there a relationship that the researchers described as “borderline statistical significance.” Link

I believe the source was a WHO study. Can check on that.

You may quote the case of your granny but that wasn't my point. Roy Castle was a highly successful entertainer yet still felt that he had no choice but to play in smoke-filled venues, which at the very least he found unpleasant.

It isn't just cancer, in fact the evidence is stronger for other illnesses:

Heart attacks fell after the smoking ban in Scotland

The number of people being taken to hospital with heart attacks in Scotland has fallen significantly since the smoking ban was introduced, the most detailed study into the impact of the measure has revealed.

Researchers found a 17% drop in the number of people admitted for heart attacks in the year since the ban came into force, compared with an average 3% reduction a year over the previous decade. The reduction was most marked among non-smokers, with a 20% fall, compared with a 14% drop among smokers.

and this for asthma

The introduction of smoke-free legislation in England was immediately followed by a fall in the number of children admitted to hospital with asthma symptoms, a new study has found.

NHS statistics analysed by researchers at Imperial College London show a 12.3 per cent fall in admissions for childhood asthma in the first year after the law on smoking in enclosed public places and workplaces came into effect in July 2007. The researchers found that asthma admissions continued to fall in subsequent years, suggesting that the benefits of the legislation were sustained over time.

Asthma affects one in every 11 children in the UK. Before the law was implemented, hospital admissions for children suffering a severe asthma attack were increasing by 2.2 per cent per year, peaking at 26,969 admissions in 2006/2007. The trend reversed immediately after the law came into effect, with lower admission rates among boys and girls of all ages. There were similar reductions among children in wealthy and poor neighbourhoods, both in cities and in rural areas.

Given what we now know I'd say that if by some bad mischance, the smokefree legislation was repealed, the health and safety at work acts would probably mean that the employers would not be able to employ anyone in a smoky environment.

It is a generally a good principle that employees should not be able to trade their health and safety for a job, because that forces people into an invidious situation.

 

[GlennB]

It is a generally a good principle that employees should not be able to trade their health and safety for a job, because that forces people into an invidious situation.

They do it all the time. Miners, foundry workers, fishermen, divers, construction-site workers.

Nobody has to choose to become a commercial diver.
Nobody has to choose to work in smoky bars.

 

[blutoski]

Don't get me wrong, if non-smokers want not to be exposed to that stink then I'm all for that. But health is a totally different matter.

Agreed, but public smoking has more than just one thing against it, I try not to play 'whack a mole' with a devil's advocate who want to fight them one at a time.

And the body of literature for health risk is accumulating and converging on the conclusion that it's probably harmful, this fourth reason for eliminating public smoking is the last line of defense, and becoming weaker.

Basically, you've got the following circa 1955:

• Annoyance: "Meh. Smoking is for Real Men. Suck it up, sissy."
• Health to Individual: "My doctor recommends Lucky Strike."
• Influence on Individual Smoking Volume: "Who cares? It's healthy."
• Influence on Bystander Health: "What are you talking about?"

And, you've got the following circa 2005:

• Annoyance: "Why should the rest of us suffer because of this one guy's habit?"
• Health to Individual: "Holy crap! These are death sticks."
• Influence on Individual Smoking Volume: "Interesting... people smoke less when there are less opportunities."
• Influence on Bystander Health: "Looking bad. Lung disorders beyond question, cancer a little iffy"

 

[blutoski]

They do it all the time. Miners, foundry workers, fishermen, divers, construction-site workers.

Two things that make it a crap comparison:

• the exposure and risk is a critical and almost entirely unavoidable element of these occupations... avoidable or excessively expensive risks are eliminated whenever possible, and failure to do so is criminal
• smoking is not critical to the service of providing food and beverages, and is a very clearly avoidable risk - notice that as we speak, people are receiving food and drink without being exposed to smoke and there's no impact to how the food is prepared, served, and no increase in costs (this was the finding in Vancouver - nonsmoking increased the market and economies of scale improved the industry and cost base)

Nobody has to choose to become a commercial diver.
Nobody has to choose to work in smoky bars.

The expectation that avoidable health risks are removed in a workplace sounds reasonable to me. A personal example: I used to work in a factory with loud machines. If they employer didn't provide hearing protection, they would be fined. I don't think I should have to choose between hearing and having a job. That's unreasonable.

 

[Kahalachan]

No one says "Ewww you drink?" or "Ewww you eat fast food?" but you'll hear "Ewww smokers"

Unhealthy lifestyle choices should generally be treated equally.

 

[KatieG]

Cigarettes have one of the lowest cost-to-externality ratios of just about any legal product. I would be very, very happy to see the whole thing completely outlawed.

Yeah, because that worked so well with prohibition.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

No one says "Ewww you drink?" or "Ewww you eat fast food?" but you'll hear "Ewww smokers"

Unhealthy lifestyle choices should generally be treated equally.

If you drank or ate fast food in such a way that other people's cloths and hair became impregnated with with residue in the way that smoke does in an enclosed space then you'd get an 'Ewww' at the very least.

 

[Pup]

If you drank or ate fast food in such a way that other people's cloths and hair became impregnated with with residue in the way that smoke does in an enclosed space then you'd get an 'Ewww' at the very least.

Not to mention if you drank or ate fast food in such a way that others around you choked when they tried to take a deep breath.

 

[Modified]

I've never owned a restaurant, but I worked in them for years and some of my friends own restaurants... I have watched the politics of smoking shift in this city (Vancouver) for probably the last 30-40 years of real awareness.

Restaurants have an interesting interaction with the legislation.

1) there was a period when "that's just the way it is" prevailed - with no nonsmoking pubs out there, how would they know it would be a better experience?
2) the restaurants are serving 'parties' - if one of the party is a smoker, the rest are usually willing to suck it up instead of tell him to stay at home, so most parties end up asking for a smoking section
3) the definition of smoker is not very straightforward... many of the 'nonsmokers' I know have a cigarette once in awhile, meaning when they go to a pub once a week
4) profitability - smokers may be a minority but they punch above their weight in profitability - they drink more and tip more
5) attitude - food industry staff are mostly smokers, even today, and they associate nonsmoking with fringe prudes. i remember sometime around 1989 when I was at a silver service restaurant and a woman complained about there being no nonsmoking section. the manager came out and told her she could lick his ball sack. it has taken a long time for the industry to grasp that people who are sensitive to smoke aren't crackpot troublemakers inventing one more thing to complain about

restaurants don't have great institutional memory. a restaurant that strikes out as a 'nonsmoking' restaurant is just as likely to fail as any other, because restaurants fail for a million reasons. prejudice has clouded post mortem analyses, such that any nonsmoking restaurant that failed in Vancouver in the 1980s for any reason whatsoever was held up as a case study in 'nonsmoking restaurants fail'.

They missed out on their chance. I know that bar owners in many US cities complained that new smoking bans would kill their business, and found instead that business increased after the ban. Imagine if they had been the only non-smoking bar in the city before the ban.

 

[LTC8K6]

Just switch to smoking marijuana cigs, it's cool and hip now. I'm sure the tobacco companies in the US have plans in place and will move as soon as a couple more states legalize it.

 

[dudalb]

No one says "Ewww you drink?" or "Ewww you eat fast food?" but you'll hear "Ewww smokers"

Unhealthy lifestyle choices should generally be treated equally.

That ignores the second hand smoke issue.
False Analogy.

 

[Cain]

I would suggest that there is another positive, though... weight management. Nicotine addiction seems to be associated with lower body fat percentage.

Which proves smokers are morons. There's a way, way better appetite suppressant called "cocaine."

 

[angrysoba]

If you've become addicted to something before the age of majority, are you really exercising a "right"?

Also, smoking in one's own home may reduce the dangers of second-hand smoke, but it doesn't reduce the dangers of first-hand smoke. The smoker will become sicker and need greater health-care than the non-smoker. So the smoker is taken out of the workforce earlier and contributes less to the common good than the nonsmoker, and the smoker uses up medical resources and public monies in greater quantities.

n.b. There will always be the smoker who doesn't get sick and who lives in perfect health to the age 90. And there will always be the nonsmoker who gets sick at an early age. However, these individual cases do nothing to change the overall picture.

The highlighted is disputed. In fact, it is sometimes argued that smokers cost less, on balance, than non-smokers because they die young and don't need years of healthcare paid to them in their old age. And because of exorbitant taxes they pay into the public coffers more money.

 

[angrysoba]

The cigarette making companies sell nicotine knowing that their customers are very likely to become addicts. These customers persistently buy more as a consequence of that addiction. It works well, because nicotine is a highly addictive substance.

So the answer to your question is an emphatic" no", particularly when the inhalation of smoke containing nicotine also contains tar and other bad toxic contaminants that play havoc with the delicate lining and cleansing mechanisms of the lungs.

I don't know how your conclusion follows from your premise. If the customers are victims of the machinations of the evil tobacco companies then should they really be stigmatized? And if so, isn't that exactly something that is unfair. After all, what is any different from say stigmatizing the obese?

 

[Kahalachan]

Not to mention if you drank or ate fast food in such a way that others around you choked when they tried to take a deep breath.

It doesn't have to even be in person. Someone can post about alcohol and beer on Facebook. No one will mention cutting down. Someone can post this bacon filled sandwich as what they are currently eating. Again nothing.

A smoker will get told online that they should quit.

So even if that person in no way has put any kind of second hand smoke in your vicinity, people still say that person should quit.

 

[SezMe]

Cigarettes have a laundry list of negatives and only one positive: they make the smoker look cool.

I don't think so. One of the changes over recent decades is that smoking is no longer cool or something the tough guys do. WARNING: Personal Anecdote. Where I live the percentage of smokers is quite small (10% ??). When I see someone smoking, I think, "What a dolt."