[PhilG]

Health Nazis strike again.

[Harold.wiser]

Originally Posted by Toymeister

What happens in Brookline Mass, has no relevence to any of us.

Keep burying your head.

[Bwanajim]

What happens anywhere in this country that takes away our freedom is relevant to us. We could be next

[MaryMS]

QUOTE=mtdjed;2310579]While I am not a smoker, couldn't help but notice an article in today's Village Daily Sun, regarding a Brookline City bylaw being approved to ban cigarette and tobacco sales to anyone born in the 21st century. Upheld by the States highest court.

What next, Alcohol, Birth Control, Ice Cream?

So, in 2050, a person 51 years old will be buying cigarettes for their 49-year-old neighbors at $50/pack.

While at it, why not ban people born before 1980, since they have already been exposed to enough smoke.

Not picking on smokers but rather the rule makers.[/QUOTE]

If smokers want to pay big bucks to hasten their own deaths, it is their business. However all the butts they throw out their cars and leave on the golf courses and roads is what needs to be outlawed. Some are real slobs.

[airstreamingypsy]

The thing is, smoking affects all of us because of the health risks associated with smoking. Smokers are costing us billions of dollars.
Tobacco kills more than 480,000 people annually – more than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined. Tobacco costs the U.S. over $300 billion in health care expenditures and more than $365 billion in lost productivity each year.

[Shipping up to Boston]

Originally Posted by MaryMS

QUOTE=mtdjed;2310579]While I am not a smoker, couldn't help but notice an article in today's Village Daily Sun, regarding a Brookline City bylaw being approved to ban cigarette and tobacco sales to anyone born in the 21st century. Upheld by the States highest court.

What next, Alcohol, Birth Control, Ice Cream?

So, in 2050, a person 51 years old will be buying cigarettes for their 49-year-old neighbors at $50/pack.

While at it, why not ban people born before 1980, since they have already been exposed to enough smoke.

Not picking on smokers but rather the rule makers.

If smokers want to pay big bucks to hasten their own deaths, it is their business. However all the butts they throw out their cars and leave on the golf courses and roads is what needs to be outlawed. Some are real slobs.[/QUOTE]

Not to open a new thread but in addition to what you stated (butts), there are also water bottles, nips and fast food refuse all over the place as well. We have a littering fetish in this country that has survived generations. All the laws and ordinances in this country have done very little to mitigate it. Singapore has an interesting coping mechanism: caning! Now back to your regular programming

[DiandJay]

Well, this makes so little sense.
They have legalised the purchase and use of recreational cannabis/marijuana by people over age 21. (visit-massachusetts.com) You cannot consume this in public places however. They also legalised the growing and possessing of M in late 2016.
Seems like prohibition taught us some lessons on banning things in our country’s past.
I know many M advocates are sure and certain that smoking M is not like smoking cigarettes. However, I have never believed this. We have a few relatives who were heavy pot smokers for decades. Painful esophagus cancer was one of the causes of death.
Anyway, this is just my BFO

[ThirdOfFive]

Originally Posted by NoMoSno

I have a friend who never smoked a cigarette but was an avid pot smoker and got lung cancer.
Edibles only for him now.
Make sense?

Not really. I'm sure there are folks out there who have had lung cancer, who have never smoked either grass OR tobacco.

[Shipping up to Boston]

Originally Posted by DiandJay

Well, this makes so little sense.
They have legalised the purchase and use of recreational cannabis/marijuana by people over age 21. (visit-massachusetts.com) You cannot consume this in public places however. They also legalised the growing and possessing of M in late 2016.
Seems like prohibition taught us some lessons on banning things in our country’s past.
I know many M advocates are sure and certain that smoking M is not like smoking cigarettes. However, I have never believed this. We have a few relatives who were heavy pot smokers for decades. Painful esophagus cancer was one of the causes of death.
Anyway, this is just my BFO

Not the OP but the point is well taken. Tobacco lawsuits have done little (except for attorneys) to prevent usage or lung disease. Same with alcohol and liver disease....scratch tickets and gambling addiction and on and on. I'm all for education but stop short on prohibition. With the obvious restriction on minors.

[OrangeBlossomBaby]

Originally Posted by airstreamingypsy

The thing is, smoking affects all of us because of the health risks associated with smoking. Smokers are costing us billions of dollars.
Tobacco kills more than 480,000 people annually – more than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined. Tobacco costs the U.S. over $300 billion in health care expenditures and more than $365 billion in lost productivity each year.

...but because the Federal government benefits by adding special taxes to tobacco products, they tax it and allow legal sale of it for "recreational purposes" instead of outlawing it. Unlike cannabis, which is STILL classified in the same category as heroin on a federal level.

Tobacco produces nicotine, which is a federally regulated drug. The fact that it's available for sale at all on the public market, indicates that the government is making bank on it. If they weren't, it'd be illegal nationwide, because tobacco causes cancer. There's no "but" about it, there's no "yeah well this other study says" about it. It causes cancer, and there is no redeeming social value for its existence. It does nothing FOR anyone, it's addictive, habit-forming, causes people to choke and cough and leaves a film of tar on the windows and walls, makes a person smell bad, and results in thousands of people dying every year from lung cancer directly caused by inhaling tobacco smoke.

I smoked for many years. Was finally able to quit, with the help of Chantix. The "smoking cessation" lobbies also want tobacco to be legal, and push to keep it legal, because without nicotine addicts, they'd be out of business.

It's just a money grab, at the expense of human lives.

[ThirdOfFive]

Originally Posted by airstreamingypsy

The thing is, smoking affects all of us because of the health risks associated with smoking. Smokers are costing us billions of dollars.
Tobacco kills more than 480,000 people annually – more than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined. Tobacco costs the U.S. over $300 billion in health care expenditures and more than $365 billion in lost productivity each year.

If the quoted post was written to advocate making tobacco illegal across-the-board, there is a very good argument, apart from the infringement on an individual's right to make their own choices, to be made for that. Unfortunately there is no greater venue for hypocrisy in this great nation of ours than tobacco. And it can be summarized in two words.

Cash Cow.

I quit smoking cigarettes over 35 years ago now. I quit because (at $0.60 a pack more or less in Minnesota at that time) they were too expensive, and I was downing nearly 3 packs per day at the time. Today? Well, I was there a few months back and saw a person buy a carton of cigs at a convenience store, handed the clerk $100 and got back a couple of bucks, and those weren't even the front-line brands. I remember thinking that at that price, if I was still hooked on cigarettes, I could drink myself to death on some pretty pricy booze before I could smoke myself to death. $200 plus per week to feed an addiction is a LOT of money.

For those of you not knowing, Minnesota is and has been a hotbed of sanctimony for a loooooong time. We had the requisite lawsuit against Big Tobacco (as did most states), collected a bunch of money that was supposed to go toward correcting the ills caused by tobacco but didn't, and suffered (well, I didn't, because I had quit by that time) the price of tobacco products reaching astronomical levels. There are still the busybodies extant up there, the public crusaders who decry the ills of tobacco to all and sundry, but who will NEVER call for the total sales ban on tobacco because the proceeds from those sales (and lawsuits) go towards financing pork that most of us can only imagine.

I don't advocate banning tobacco in any form. But if you're going to advocate such a thing, at least do so honestly.

[Regorp]

Originally Posted by mtdjed

While I am not a smoker, couldn't help but notice an article in today's Village Daily Sun, regarding a Brookline City bylaw being approved to ban cigarette and tobacco sales to anyone born in the 21st century. Upheld by the States highest court.

What next, Alcohol, Birth Control, Ice Cream?

So, in 2050, a person 51 years old will be buying cigarettes for their 49-year-old neighbors at $50/pack.

While at it, why not ban people born before 1980, since they have already been exposed to enough smoke.

Not picking on smokers but rather the rule makers.

Might as well roll up a $20 bill and light it up. Cigarettes are such a waste and stinks up people/places. Yuck!!

[OhioBuckeye]

I miss not getting the paper in TV, here in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area a paper here is $2.50 per day & to get it for a yr. It’s around $500. a yr. tax are skyrocketing right now, our property taxes are $6,2??.?? a yr. & we only have a 1700 sq. ft. home. Lots to do here but expensive to live here.We miss TV!

[Joe C.]

Tobacco related deaths in this country don't cost our society a damn penny. The cost of a pack of cigarettes is 90% tax money that Uncle Sam gets from the smokers. The government gets hundreds of millions of $$$$ from the smokes.

[JerryLBell]

Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive

I quit smoking cigarettes over 35 years ago now. I quit because (at $0.60 a pack more or less in Minnesota at that time) they were too expensive, and I was downing nearly 3 packs per day at the time. Today? Well, I was there a few months back and saw a person buy a carton of cigs at a convenience store, handed the clerk $100 and got back a couple of bucks, and those weren't even the front-line brands. I remember thinking that at that price, if I was still hooked on cigarettes, I could drink myself to death on some pretty pricy booze before I could smoke myself to death. $200 plus per week to feed an addiction is a LOT of money.

After my father (2 packs a day) died of lung cancer, my mother (1 pack a day) quit smoking. A year later, she realized that even on her relatively low, fixed income, she had saved enough to go on a cruise. She went on several cruises after that. And this was nearly 30 years ago when cigarettes hadn't been taxed into the stratosphere.

Having lost several relatives and friends to cancer, I have long been virulently anti-tobacco and wished the government would ban the sale of tobacco, a benefit-free poison delivery system. However, the government also once banned the sale of alcohol and all the Prohibition did was create a generation of rich mobsters just like the ban on the sale of recreational drugs has created generations of rich narco traffickers. There is no saving people from their own self destruction, I guess.