Get old quick! Start smoking.

[Maximus Faticus]

Smoking: This vies with UV radiation as a prime cause of accelerated skin aging. The thousands of chemicals in cigarette smoke wither the minute blood vessels that supply the skin with oxygen and nutrients. These toxins alter the function of fibroblasts, cells that regenerate the collagen in your skin. The free radicals in cigarette smoke (oxygen molecules in search of a lost electron) thicken and break the skin’s stretchy elastin fibers. This leads to a loss of tone, and wrinkles. Smoking literally embalms your dermis: The formaldehyde and ammonia in smoke fix and “preserve” it. Inhaling those toxins also deactivates the ovaries’ estrogen, further contributing to the loss of your skin’s collagen and fluid content.

When you purse your lips around a cigarette to inhale and exhale, you train your skin in wrinkle formation. Then, to shield your eyes, you squint and frown. Multiple fine creases appear around the lips, then fine lines around the eyes, followed by frown lines. These gradually deepen. Loss of water and elasticity causes sagging under the eyes, drooping lids, and fallen jowls. Add a tint of yellow, and you’ve created a ten- to fifteen-year advancement of your face’s clock. If you make surgical repairs while you’re still smoking, they take longer to heal because the skin is oxygen starved and the fibroblasts are unable to lay down collagen effectively. Finally, cigarette smoking is associated with psoriasis, squamous cell carcinoma, and an increase in death rates from malignant melanomas. HEALTH LIBRARY

These are more than superficial reasons to stop! And note that secondhand smoke inexorably, albeit more slowly, gives a similar hue and droop.

Another reason for you fuckers to stop smoking, and around other people.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4593580/

[Hormadrune]

/agree

Every day I walk from the subway to my agonizingly horrible job through the cesspool that is Boston's Chinatown. The percentage of people in this are who smoke must be exponentially higher than the rest of the city and it's like walking through an ashtray (but an ash tray where you walk over bags of chicken trimmings that the fucking restaurant owners leave out on the curb to be smeared onto the sidewalk).

[Trith]

pfft

/lights up.

[Flub Man]

I may have to start smoking just to piss people off!!

[Hormadrune]

pfft

/lights up.

I'll miss you when you're dead and wrinkly though

[Caelie123]

Oh yeah Flub, especially when you flick the butts out the window. That really pisses some people off. I flicked a butt out the window the other day and this guy in the other lane behind me started honking the horn and shaking his fist at me. I just smiled and waved at him when he came up beside me.

I see people tossing whole bags of fast food garbage out the window and some asshole wants to go balistic cause I flick a cigaretter butt out the window.

I used to be a very very considerate smoker, but the more people make a big deal out of it the more I could care less what they think. I especially like to blow it in the direction of the woman 20 feet away fanning her face. Like she is really getting my second hand smoke from 20 feet away. Non smokers have just jumped on the second hand smoke bandwagon and most have no clue what it does or doesn't do to a person other than they bitch cause they can.

[Veo]

Non smokers have just jumped on the second hand smoke bandwagon and most have no clue what it does or doesn't do to a person other than they bitch cause they can.

Yeah, because we all know smoking and second-hand smoke are actually good for you. All that coughing and hacking from cigarette smoke is just people faking it for sympathy.

/sarcasm

http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/paren...ies/index.html

[AresProphet]

More fun from Phillip Morris regarding smoking:

Secondhand Smoke

Secondhand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke or ETS, is a combination of the smoke coming from the lit end of a cigarette plus the smoke exhaled by a person smoking.

Public health officials have concluded that secondhand smoke from cigarettes causes disease, including lung cancer and heart disease, in non-smoking adults, as well as causes conditions in children such as asthma, respiratory infections, cough, wheeze, otitis media (middle ear infection) and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. In addition, public health officials have concluded that secondhand smoke can exacerbate adult asthma and cause eye, throat and nasal irritation.

Philip Morris USA believes that the public should be guided by the conclusions of public health officials regarding the health effects of secondhand smoke in deciding whether to be in places where secondhand smoke is present, or if they are smokers, when and where to smoke around others. Particular care should be exercised where children are concerned, and adults should avoid smoking around them.

We also believe that the conclusions of public health officials concerning environmental tobacco smoke are sufficient to warrant measures that regulate smoking in public places. We also believe that where smoking is permitted, the government should require the posting of warning notices that communicate public health officials' conclusions that secondhand smoke causes disease in non-smokers.

Cigarette Smoking and Disease in Smokers

Philip Morris USA agrees with the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and other serious diseases in smokers. Smokers are far more likely to develop serious diseases, like lung cancer, than non-smokers. There is no safe cigarette.

These are and have been the messages of the U.S. Surgeon General and public health authorities worldwide. Smokers and potential smokers should rely on these messages in making all smoking-related decisions (read source for more, including links to the U.S. Surgeon General reports on smoking)

Gee, they sure must have something against cigarettes!

[kanibaal]

My father got cancer from smoking. Im glad he lived and is healthy now. Smoking is your choice but if you feel it is ok for you to smoke around others then you have problems.

[Hormadrune]

Originally Posted by Scalz

Here is an idea Horm.......How bout you fucking move. Where i'm from bus stops are on corners and outside. There is more then enough space for you to walk your ass a few steps away.

So an inconsiderate douchebag such as yourself comes up to the bus stop I'm waiting at and lights up right besides me and *I'm* supposed to move? I don't think so, shit-for-brains. My current practice is to ask the person to "not smoke that next to me please." 9 out of 10 people do as I say. The 10th person I tell to fuck off before I meander off before my short temper leads me to escalate the situation. Being a bigger guy let's me get away with this without incident though (so far anyway).

Originally Posted by Scalz

Something came to mind dont get to self righteous with a smoker, there liable to take that cigarrette and put it out on your pussy....err i mean face.

Ah yes, you smokers are such tough guys and us people who don't want to die from health issues related to inconsiderate strangers' lack of willpower and courtesy are whiny pussies. Right Remember this: I'm not the one with the phallic oral fixation here. Keep puffing though sister.

[Scalz]

So an inconsiderate douchebag such as yourself comes up to the bus stop I'm waiting at and lights up right besides me and *I'm* supposed to move?

Nah its sorry, arrogant cunts like yourself that come up to a smoker, and start pitching a bitch about Non smokers right. Well guess what fuck stick, i have rights to. Dont like it? Move somewhere else. Im sure you wont be missed.

Please define "Big Guy" Horm, because I think of it as "Fat Ass".

[Inmountains]

OK, now I am scared, hell has just frozen over. I totally agree, 100 percent, with Hormadrune, and disagree vehemently with Caelie and Trith.

A quick, personal story to start with. One of my best friends just buried his wife a couple of years ago, she was 47. She had been smoking since age 14. Now my friend has 2 children, under age 18, to raise by himself, as well as 3 children over 18, who no longer have a mother, and whose children do not have a grandmother.

If I had my way, I would shove any cigarette I see in someone’s mouth down their throat. What gives you the fucking right to come foul up the air? You live in America? Fucking Bull Shit? I have the RIGHT to air free from your dirty, cancerous, spit laden smoke. If I see someone smoking, I don’t walk up to them. But if I am standing somewhere and someone lights up next to me, I want to throw a glass of water in their face. As for smelling smoke, I can smell a person smoking in the car in front of me going 70 mph. Don’t believe me, I have proven it TOO many times, even to my kids. I just say, the person in front of us is smoking, and a couple of minutes later, you see the splash and trail of sparks on the highway. Which is called FUCKING LITTERING.

Am I passionate about this? YOUR FUCKING DAMN RIGHT I am. As far as I am concerned, Smoking is “Assault and Battery”, “Attempted Murder”, “Premeditated Suicide”, “Arson”, “Littering” and “STUPID.”

Why do people smoke? Oh, I read here that it ‘calms’ you down. Guess what, MILLIONS of people are able to calm down without smoking, you wimps. It is your right? OK, then smoke in your house, your car or any private place. Don’t make non smokers breath in what you spit out. We have the RIGHT to air free of tobacco smoke.

A little boy asks his dad, “Daddy, what is smoking?” Dad answers, “Son, take a dried out weed, wrap it in paper, shove it in your mouth and light it on fire! There, now doesn’t that sound COOL?” The little boy shook his head and said it sounded dumb.

There is NOT one single, GOOD thing that comes from smoking! All I hear smokers say, “It is my right”. Damn, you are correct, everyone has the right to be an ignorant moron. But as my Law Professor told me in college, your RIGHT to punch me in the face ENDS where my nose beings!!! Your RIGHT to smoke ENDS when it violates me!!!

DAMN, now I have pissed off the ‘right’ too!!!! Now this whole board hates me!!! Woo Hoo!!!

Right or Left, Liberal or Conservative, smoking is STILL STUPID!!!! I love it when people say, “I want to quit, I’ve tried to quit”. Damn, people are WEAK!!!! Oh yea, my ex wife used to tell me that I just don’t understand addiction. I told her she was right. I said if anyone wants to stop anything, then just stop it. EQ is probably the closest I have ever come to an “addiction”, and I could stop tomorrow if need be.

OK, putting away my soap box now.

[Scalz]

Yeah I have lots of problems, least of which is wondering when i should and should not light up.

[cnjmorris]

Knowing what people know about smoking today you have to be a complete ass to smoke.

[Caelie123]

Originally Posted by Scalz

Yeah I have lots of problems, least of which is wondering when i should and should not light up.

I think now is a good time to go out back and have a smoke.

Originally Posted by Kanibaal

My father got cancer from smoking. Im glad he lived and is healthy now.

I'm glad to hear that he's ok now Kanibaal. Most smokers don't smoke around others Kanibaal. We're mainly bitching about the people that are standing 20 to 50 feet away who complain. Smoke goes up before it gets to them.

Originally Posted by Aluradana

You also risk your cigarette going in someone else's open window, and having that cherry hit some kid in the eye.

Good point you made there. From now on I will wait till I stop at a red light so the wind don't catch it.

Originally Posted by cnjmorris

Knowing what people know about smoking today you have to be a complete ass to smoke

Knowing what people know about obesity today, you have to be a complete ass to allow yourself to become overweight and stay that way.

[Deadscale]

Normally you see me turning colors when someone is smoking, mainly because I'm holding my breath as I walk by them

Some smokers are very considerate (know someone is going to nit pick that! blah blah they'll send you to your grave looking younger)
by at least "blowing" their smoke in another direction or even offering to put it out.

Even though it is harmful to others (by 2nd hand) smokers aren't violent when smoking. I worry more about people that can't control themselves when drinking. Like any other good turned bad party, some washed out high school linebacker decided to take it upon himself and smack around a random girl Of course he got his ass kicked by me and another guy, but still...

If someone is smoking you can give in and move or just stand there and inhale everything. If it starts raining while you are sitting in the park, you can get up and leave rather than just sit there mumbling to yourself waiting till the rain stops.

[Martigan]

Oh yeah Flub, especially when you flick the butts out the window.

Flicking butts out the window is not cool. Use your ash tray...it belongs to you...it was made for that purpose. If you don't want your car to smell like butts, don't smoke in it. The area you are flicking cigarattes belongs to more than just you...and you can start a fire.

When I used to smoke, I would carry a soda can with a little bit of liquid in the bottom. Toss your cigs in something like that.

[gojirra monk]

I think the problem is that you live near rude people, not smoking per se.

If I happen to be smoking outside near other people, and they are not also smoking, I tend to go downwind, just as a courtesy.

As to second hand smoke, I don't think it is something you should seek out, but I think that the estimates of danger are quite overblown. The reason that smoking is so bad for you is that there are lots of unstable chemcicals in the smoke and you draw it directly into your lungs while still heated.

Who here can tell me what happens to heated unstable chemicals while they move through a carbon-rich and oxygen-rich atmosphere?

[Heirophantxg80]

Ok to all you smokers out there who get offended by people who don't wish to be around your highly toxic smoke, and then get offended when they say something or enact laws to protect people from it, lets get some facts STRAIGHT!

-Cigarette smoke carries in it many known carcinogens and other harmful
chemicals.

-Cigarette smoke is rated on par with Benzine and other highly toxic
carcinogens for its drastic effects on the health of people.

-Secondhand smoke is just as toxic, or even moreso, as firsthand smoke.
Thus exposure to it is JUST as harmful as you smoking the cigarette
directly

So, with that said, and along with the other points brought up here by people concerned about their health, I say this, WHERE DO YOU GET OFF THINKING YOU CAN SMOKE WHERE YOU PLEASE!You think it is your right to spread a highly toxic cloud around because you feel it is a violation of your civil liberties. By your logic, I should be able to crack a drum of benzine open, or a cannister of Agent Orange, or even a Toxic Waste Barrel, around you cause it makes me feel good and you are violating my civil liberties by telling me to stop! But I can't do these things. Ya wanna know why? Because they are illegal and would pose a highly dangerous health risk to those around me. Hell, when you think of the toxicity rating of cigarette smoke, it should require a HazMat team to cleanup up after someone who lights up(Thats a little extreme but the point is cigarette smoke is rated just as dangerous as substances that do require HazMat cleanup, like Benzine)

Please people, get real, smoking is being banned BECAUSE of its highly toxic nature. If you can't understand why people are afraid of the effects of the smoke that you smokers produce on their health, why don't you come over here to Buffalo NY and visit Roswel Park and some of the patients who are now DIEING from smoking related diseases such as lung cancer!

I could continue, but enough has been said already. I am highly against smoking in public and exsposing it to others. IMO, there is no difference between a smoker subjecting someone to their smoke and someone playing Russian Roulette(sp) with an unwilling partner. Sure it may not kill them, but its THEIR life your playing with and thats just wrong.

[shadowedspawn]

Originally Posted by Heirophantxg80

IMO, there is no difference between a smoker subjecting someone to their smoke and someone playing Russian Roulette(sp) with an unwilling partner. Sure it may not kill them, but its THEIR life your playing with and thats just wrong.

Sooo Holding a gun to someones head and pulling the trigger is the same as standing 20 or more feet away in an open air area where either one can walk away? You Sir are a Moron.

I have been smoking since I was 18 (32 now), and I always try to be considerate of nonsmokers wheither they are assholes or not.

I swear to god I am going to get a loan to start a bunch on campains to get fast food places outlawed. California used to be a place I wanted to visit, but now the only time you will catch me there is when I am passing through on my way into or out of country.

NOTE: This is not directed at all non smokers just the ones that feel everyone should live like they do.

[Caelie123]

LOL...sad thing is I smoke and I agree with most of the non smokers here. Smoking is dumb, stupid, premeditated murder and just about every thing else you guys stated here (other than the one about russian roulette, that's stretching it a bit).

I also find it amusing that some of you point out the healthcare cost you get charged with from smoking related diseases while you defend the causes of obesity and HIV related diseases. Guess what..I don't like having to pay for accelerated health care cost because people choose to partake in homosexual activity, drugs or because they can't push away from the table. Just like you I have to pay for those things I don't like.

While you sit here typing away, pounding on the keyboard with your veins popping out of your forehead just remember that us smokers won't ever quit just because you don't like it. We won't quit because the Government restricts it. We'll find ways around it. We'll quit when we're ready to quit.

The Government restrictions are a good thing actually. It forces us to smoke less. It's no biggie, the cigarettes we miss out on because we can't smoke in public, we'll make up for when we get home or while we're riding down the road in the privacy of our own vehicle. I'm glad you can't smoke in eating establishments or theatres etc. I don't like being in a closed up room full of smoke anymore than you do. Most smokers don't. They'll agree that it stinks just like you do.

Bitch all you want. Just like with any other legal freedoms, the government may find ways to regulate it, but they won't stop it

[Cerden]

Summing it up.

Smoking is bad! Rude smokers need to be hurt. Someone should hold rude smokers down and jame 4 packs of cigarrets in their mouth, light them all up and make them suck em all down. Then kick em in the nuts.

Nice smokers I can deal with. :P

[FanonFaythunder]

Had some hot-shot asshole flick a cigarette butt into my car when the window was down. Passed him and tossed my chewing gum out of the sunroof.

Yeah, he was pissed.

[Itlum]

If someone asks me, politely, to not smoke near them, I will move.

If someone tells me, rudely, to move, I will treat them as I treat any rude person and ignore them.

The fact that I choose to smoke does not make me less of a person, just as the fact that you take your morning coffee with two sugars instead of three does not make you less of one. Certainly, I will die faster, but I am well aware of this. My risks are my own to take.

If you do not have the miniscule amount of courage it takes to ask me, politely, to step away from you, I will not. This is not being an ass about it. This is doing as I wish, as any American is entitled to do. If you are displeased with it, ask me to stop doing it, or at least to stop doing it near you. I will no longer do so near you.

As to not being able to smoke in a non-smoking establishment, I fully respect the rights of the owners of said establishments, and I do not smoke within them. I will, however, smoke my cigarette in the designated smoking area. If there is not one clearly defined, I will assume the designated smoking area is directly outside of your establishment, or wherever else I may wish to smoke. If this displeases you, as a customer, you may ask me to move. You may also move yourself away from me, which I would prefer, but you seem to have a problem with inconveniencing yourself. I, on the other hand, do not have a problem with inconveniencing myself if someone requests it for their comfort. Is the non-smoker, with no care for my convenience, better than me, who cares about this complete stranger's wishes?

I am not a pushover, though. I do so because I wish to. As I said...be polite, and I will do the polite thing, even if you are being politely rude. If you are pushy in your demand that I move from where I was standing before you decided to occupy that same general area....fuck you.

I will not stop smoking. I don't want to stop smoking. But I will abide by the wishes of others so long as they do not directly infringe upon my rights as an American. The moment you cross that boundary is the moment I stop being nice.

[Wildane]

You know, I was thinking to myself the other day that I love to smoke. I wish I had never started, so I wouldn't miss it so much when I quit (October 10, 2003). It's actually not that bad, really; I hardly ever think about it at all. But, every once in awhile, the whiff of cigarette smoke tugs at me.

I was always very considerate when I smoked, as were most of the smokers I know. If I were smoking at a bus stop and someone else came up to wait, I'd normally put it out before they got the chance to say something. I didn't HAVE to, I wanted to. Still, some of you CAN get pretty self-righteous towards us (I know I'm not technically part of "us" anymore, but it's easier that way ), no matter how much we have to concede. How many of you, that turn your nose up at smokers, talk on your cell phone while driving? Did you know that doing so increases the chance you'll have a wreck by 400%? That's infinitely more dangerous than second-hand smoke if you ask me. Oh, and unless people are constantly blowing cigarette down your throat, you are not even in the same ballpark when it comes to risk as the smoker himself. To quote Jules, "it's not even the same fuckin' sport". If you're so worried about carbon-monoxide poisoning, ride a bike.

To those who keep saying "just quit", I wish it were so easy. Cigarettes are more addictive than heroin. One of the hardest things I've ever done was quit smoking. Do you think I didn't hate the way my breath and clothes smelled? Do you think I got a kick out of wheezing? Do you think I enjoy my winning smile? I hated all that shit, yet yes, it was still damn hard to quit. It's very much like alcoholism in that, you're always a smoker, you just don't light up. I still crave a smoke from time to time, and from what I'm told, I always will. I wish I could go back in time so I could kick my dumb ass when I started, but what's done is done. All I can do now is deal with it.

Now, for all you rebellious smokers, you DO have a responsibility to those around you. It's called fuckin' COURTESY! Sure, you have every right to smoke wherever it's not outlawed, but use a little consideration. Oh, and to those that throw their butts out the window, use your damn ashtray. How many of those millions and millions of butts are yours? Not a lot, but millions and millions of people can say that. Litter is litter is litter, whether it's a cigarette butt or a dumptruck's worth of garbage. Rationalizing that someone else is throwing out even more garbage than you is a losing argument from the get-go. A thief is a thief no matter how much, or little, he steals.

To the self-righteous pricks: he who is without sin yadda, yadda, yadda.

To the defiant smokers: lighten up. If they aren't judging you in this way, they're judging you in some other way.