Smoking

Adolf Hitler was a heavy smoker in his early life-he used to smoke 25 to 40 cigarettes daily-but gave up the habit, concluding that it was a waste of money.In later years, Hitler viewed smoking as “decadent” and “the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man, vengeance for having been given hard liquor”, lamenting that “so many excellent men have been lost to tobacco poisoning”. He was unhappy because both Eva Braun and Martin Bormann were smokers and was concerned over Hermann Göring’s continued smoking in public places. He was angered when a statue portraying a cigar-smoking Göring was commissioned. Hitler is often considered to be the first national leader to advocate nonsmoking.

Wikipedia: Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany

28 Comments

Bad Cat!

about 16 years ago

Using Godwin's law to refute smoking bans?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

ElPete

about 16 years ago

Years ago when they were first talking of banning smoking in public places across the country, the CBS evening news interviewed some Europeans on the subject.  A man from England said it best, in my opinion, he said: "A government that bans smoking is indicative of a government that thinks that it's people are not smart enough to make their own decisions."
I'll never forget that.

Barrett

about 16 years ago

Bad Cat, you beat me to it.

See also Reductio ad Hitlerum.

Calk

about 16 years ago

Whenever my father would see any of my siblings smoking a cigarette, he'd mutter to himself, but loud enough for that sibling to hear, "I didn't think I'd raised any stupid children." It was more effective than any anti-smoking campaign anyone could have dreamed up. As far as I know, none of my siblings smoke to this day.

chris m

about 16 years ago

who gives a shit what Hitler thinks.

chris m

about 16 years ago

Hitler thought.

Evil Jeff

about 16 years ago

When it comes to Godwin's law has anyone attempted to write a formula that would try to predict how many posts you must receive before there would be a Hitler or Nazi reference?  You can have the flame rating as a modifier to the general curve that approaches 1, where as if you had particularly volatile content chances are you would find a H/N reference sooner.  But what is the general number of posts before one is generally found, IE, how many H/N references popped up in the Homegrown Video Contest discussion?

edgeways

about 16 years ago

and Hitler was a vegetarian and loved his dogs. Thing is, no matter how evil any given MF is it does not make them completely evil, or stupid. OMG Hitler killed millions of people and he washed his hair! Therefor anyone who washes their hair must be evil!!! Hitler was the leader of the Germans, so all Germans must be evil. 

Extrapolating to a general population from a specific instance is damn lazy thinking. 

By some accounts Bush may have been directly or indirectly responsible for ~1,000,000 deaths... so can we now say Bush is evil enough to equate everything he says and does or is a member of as evil?

Bad Cat!

about 16 years ago

Though a non-smoker, I was initially against the idea of smoking bans. I believed that each restaurant and bar should be able to choose their own rules, and if I didn't like smoking, I just wouldn't go there.
However, I also realized that because I work in an office, the law provides a smoke-free environment for me to work in. Any serving staff working in a smoking bar or restaurant would not have the same legal right. Did I really feel that I was entitled to a non-smoking environment just because I work in a cube, while some waitress making minimum wage does not? From the perspective of the employees working there, and not from the customer, a smoking-ban should be a workplace right.
So you may say "Well, then maybe that waitress should just get a job somewhere else". But if you believe that, then you also have to believe that no workers should be protected against sexual harassment, or hazardous working conditions, or racial discrimination because "they could just get a job somewhere else."

Evil Jeff

about 16 years ago

How about if we allow "reasonable accommodation" within the smoking ban.  The State is allowed to ban smoking but only if they install those little overhead heating lamps and a wind shelter for the smokers to stand in outside.  Why should I get pneumonia because some one who doesn't go to the bar doesn't want me to smoke at the bar.

Yeah, smoking is bad and blah blah blah, but my fucking ass gets cold standing outside to smoke when its yet another inhospitable winter day in Duluth, where was the consideration of my health and well being?

Bad Cat!

about 16 years ago

Why is smoking that special though? Why not allow "reasonable accommodation" for people who like to throw pipe bombs, or like to experiment with flamethrowers?
Yes, the example is a bit excessive, but if you force businesses to legally accommodate smoking, that opens the door for a business to be responsible for accommodating a whole range of things. What about mullet-only seating? Natural-fabrics only lounge? Hand-rails for girls wearing too-high platform shoes?
I personally don't care if you decide to smoke outside, but I don't think anyone should be legally required to comfort your bad decisions with heat lamps & shelters.

Calk

about 16 years ago

I have to say, I hate it when I pass a bunch of smokers on the sidewalk, just having to do that makes me cough and my eyes burn. My kid has allergies, and absolutely can't tolerate smoke, which makes me look even less kindly on smokers congregated on sidewalks blocking our way. I'm all for no-smoking in buildings for her sake, wish we could expand on it to include no smoking outside near buildings, as they do in some little town in California.

Evil Jeff

about 16 years ago

As an unfortunate side effect of my Autism I cannot tolerate loud high pitched noises, they absolutely drive me insane.  If I am in a place and something starts making a loud high pitched noise, even a bad capacitor in a TV set, I will often either have to move, or have to go someplace else.  This includes children, so would it be so rude if I asked kindly that due to my condition when I go to a restaurant all of the children are removed to a sound proof booth or removed all together.  Kind of like how you can't eat your peanut butter sandwich on an airplane if someone on board has a peanut allergy.

Bad Cat!

about 16 years ago

Hmmm, I totally support the "remove your damn whiny, ill-behaved children from this restaurant lest I stab a fork into their head" proposal.
If you bring me a petition, I'll totally be there to sign it! :D

Dave S.

about 16 years ago

Bad Cat, you hit the nail on the head. Clean air should be a work-place right. If a situation only involves consenting adults, by all means, smoke your lungs out. But our rights end where other people's noses begin. And Evil Jeff, sorry, but your butt getting chilly out in "Marlboro Country" does not equal a bartender getting lung cancer from second hand smoke. And what WAS the point of the original post about Hitler?

Evil Jeff

about 16 years ago

My original post about Hitler had to do with Godwin's law, which had been mentioned earlier in the thread.  Godwin's law being that as the number of posts in a thread approaches infinity the odds of their being at least one reference to Hitler or Nazism approaches 1, ie 100%.  I was curious, applying the same standards if the subject matter in the original post, volatility of such would have a measurable effect on increasing the rate at which the odds of there being a H/N (Hitler/Nazi) comment, and if that could be quantified mathematically.  Then I was also pondering if there had been any H/N comments in the Homegrown video thread since it had reached 100 posts, I checked and with a quick find in my browser I discovered no such references, which I found interesting.

kokigami

about 16 years ago

The thing about Godwin's law is that it is true of any topic. As the number of posts in a thread approaches infinity the odds of their being at least one reference to Pandas or Lord Vader approaches 1, ie 100%.

It is simply not a very useful observation, and it is one Hitler and Lord Vader made many times.

As to smoking, either the quantities of Hazardous chemicals in second hand smoke are too low to justify the safety concerns, or the long term exposure limits for those chemicals in industry are set too high for safe working conditions.

But, smokers have brought this wrath upon themselves, basically by being impolite. If smokers smoked less and were more polite about when and where, they would probably have never gotten so many aligned against them.

Dave S.

about 16 years ago

I was asking about the mention of Hitler at the very top of this thread. Sorry for not being clear about that. Also: second-hand smoke IS toxic, and a lot of it does not pass through a filter. Some of it IS filtered- by the smokers lungs.Maybe we can agree- "Lest you harm no one, do what thou wilt", or whatever.

Dave S.

about 16 years ago

ps re: second hand smoke

http://www1.umn.edu/perio/tobacco/secondhandsmoke.html

Evil Jeff

about 16 years ago

Yeah,yeah, yeah, second hand smoke is bad.  How about smoke from candles, smoldering pizza ovens, Sterno cans, everything else in the world that gets hot and creates a vapor as a result.  I don't want to live in a bubble, and I certainly don't want to live forever.  And with the time I am here I would rather enjoy myself than live in constant fear of, oh, this may kill me.  I figured out a long time ago that the leading cause of death is birth, its a simple fact, your born, you die, its just a matter of when.  Smoking takes ten years off your life, big deal, they were the crappy years at the end anyway, good riddance as far as I am concerned, I wasn't planning on living that long anyway.

c-freak

about 16 years ago

eve braun was hot.

-Berv

about 16 years ago

Bad Cat, I believe dbrewing was obeying Godwin's Law, not using it.  And Evil Jeff, these are comments about the original post.  Although it is somewhat confusing because comments "get posted". I'm picky.

poof

about 16 years ago

Hitler is probably the most influential man in the last 300 years.  I heard he got syph too.

Bad Cat!

about 16 years ago

Yea, this really isn't a "true" case of Godwin's Law. Barrett called it right with "Reductio ad Hitlerum".
As far as "all workplaces contain hazardous materials", I'd agree. However, all of your examples are a requirement to that workplace (a pizza restaurant would require a pizza oven), and is regulated by OSHA. Smoking is not a requirement to any workplace, and therefore is not regulated by OSHA. When there are hazardous materials in the workplace, OSHA law protects the worker by letting them know what is hazardous, what the risks are, and how to lessen exposure. There is nothing to protect workers in smoking environments other than many conflicting/opinionated studies on the affects of second-hand smoke.
I don't want to live in a bubble either, but if I'm being paid minimum-wage to work with things that may kill me, I'd like to at least know about it...

kokigami

about 16 years ago

What the U of Minn link above does not mention is that quantity of each of the 4000 chemicals that are found in cigarette smoke places them far below the established hazard limits, even in dense smoking environments. In order for those chemicals to surpass the currently allowable limits of exposure, in long term exposure limits, the room would have to be so smokey that the real health risk would be displacement of oxygen, not carcinogens. 

"Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)...It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded."
-Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Ass't Sec'y, OSHA, To Leroy J Pletten, PHD, July 8, 1997 

and a chart showing several of these chemicals, and the number of cigarettes required to surpass the permissible exposure limits for an unventilated 100m3 room. 

http://www.nycclash.com/smoke_chart.html

kokigami

about 16 years ago

Bad cat makes the best case for these bans. Smoking is simply not necessary in a work place.

Gus

about 16 years ago

So after reading this string of comments, I realize this has gone through the ringer and like most of these, ends up not even talking about the original intended topic, BUT..

I believe mr. dbrewing was referring to the post previous to this one, in regards to a smoke free Chester Park and having the comments option turned off, so no one could post their opinion on the subject. 
I do believe that mr. dbrewing is not alone in his concern of smoking be outlawed all together. First it's in government buildings, then public buildings, then outdoor public places (including public sidewalks and parks), with the possibility to continue the bans on to your own porch or living room. 

Whether you are a smoker or not, or whether you prefer these laws or not, you have to agree that with each new continuation of smoking bans/laws encroaches a future of government control over personal choices. 

Granted, if I was at the park (or any place) with my kid and someone was smoking too close for comfort, I'd ask for some consideration. If they didn't stop, I'd have to make the grown up decision to either walk away or kick some a**. Yet again, another use of the great freedom of being able to make my own decisions and procure my own destiny.

Leave a Comment

Only registered members can post a comment , Login / Register Here