Another smoking thread...

[JoeyInCali]

Again, I say all smokers should sue the cig manufacturers.
They've made you addicts and dumb.

 

[nympfisher]

I am an x smoker , i quit going to my local pool hall when the owner ( not the goverment) put a end to smoking in his place, i started going to a place in another county. my take was if i couldnt enjoy myself while i was playing why play.
i also never heard a complaint from anyone about the smoking and most drank too( except for maybe and old lady or two that complains about most everything anyways) the previous owner had installed a air exchange unit that worked great so maybe that is why nobody complained.
anyways i quit smoking about a year and a 1/2 ago so i returned so it dosent matter now.

now , how about the drinking ? 95% drive themselfs home . probably 50% of those are intoxicated . this really pisses me off. what if one of them hit my wife one evening and hurt's or kills her or my grandson ?
this affects other people's life and heath like smoking does , should there not be a ban on public drinking ? keep it at home like the cigs i say.

carl

 

[sixpack]

Not all pool players go to a pool hall only to play pool as a sport. For many it's a way to get out of the house, get away from work, somewhere outside of the day to day stuff where you can relax and just be yourself.

It's a bigger change for some than others. Some will stay, some won't. Some places will do better business because of it, and some won't. Are more places doing better because of it? No one really knows.

I never fully understood folks who complain about their clothes smelling like smoke after voluntarily hanging out somewhere with smokers as if they were forced to be there. (edit - Sixpack, I wasn't directing this at you, sorry.) Employees have an argument, but customers? It's like me going to a NASCAR race and complaining about the noise.

No worries. I NEVER complained about the smoke, and I still hung out in bars/pool halls every night. But I do appreciate going and playing and not smelling like smoke. Now that I'm married, (has anybody else noted that women have more sensitive noses than men?) I would probably have to strip in the basement and put my clothes directly in the wash if there was still smoking here.

The smoking ban though is a good example of how to manipulate a democracy to your own will:

As soon as the bad science and bad publicity/stigma of smoking convinced more than 50% of VOTERS that it was EVIL, then it was child's play to get things on the ballot and take rights away from the minority.

Smoking in a public place is arguable, but in some places it's illegal to smoke in your car or in your house if you have minor children. Never mind that you can still feed them junk food & soda, let them play video games (ala GTA IV) all day and get fat and not make them study. All of which are significantly higher risk factors than second hand smoke.

Problem is a majority of people haven't been convinced YET that those things are EVIL.

As the gravy train rolls along down the tracks, we're close to a majority of voters believing in publicly funded healthcare or mandatory healthcare, soon there will be enough critical mass that the 'whims' of the majority outvote the 'rights' of the minority.

This manipulation of democracy encourages sound bites over substance and gives people incentive to spin rather than educate on any issue. Basically many people choose who to believe and vote accordingly without any independent thought or analysis.

I've never been a smoker but I could see clearly that the rights of smokers and businesses were being trampled, that's what I object to about the smoking bans.

Personally, I enjoy being in smoke-free pool halls, but that whimsical of a reason should not be the basis to vote to take rights away from other people. That's why I've voted against smoking bans when I've had the chance.

IMO You don't have a right to tell business owners how to operate their business. If you don't like smoke, don't go to smokey bars. If there are enough like-minded people, then there will be smoke-free bars. If there are not, then you can open one. If you go broke, then the market spoke and made it's preference very clear. No need for legislation in my mind.

What is ironic is that the extreme minority of bar-goers don't smoke. And most of the people who voted for the smoking ban-don't go to bars regularly.

So in this instance we have a tiny group of folks who objected to an activity in a specific location and were able to call in their friends and vote away a business right that most of the people patronizing the businesses wanted them to have.

I know, but what about the workers! Well, almost every bartender, barmaid and waitress that I knew when I was playing a lot smoked like a train. Again, if you don't like smoke, don't get a job in a smokey bar.

All jobs are not for all workers.

I worked as an exterior window washer on tall buildings. Gravity can kill you and in fact, the short time I had that job, three people in my city were killed doing that job. If you don't like heights, and don't want to die from falling. Don't get that job! Does it need to be banned? Nope.

As for corporate offices, almost all of them were smoke-free before the bans were in place because more people in offices didn't like to smell smoke and so businesses VOLUNTARILY kept their offices smoke-free.

~rc

 

[sixpack]

Here's a more eloquent way of stating what I was trying to say above from Michael Chrichton: Link: I encourage people to read the whole article, it's very interesting.

In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was "responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking adults," and that it " impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of thousands of people." In a 1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven studies it based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive, and that they collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of 1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action by the EPA. or for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical association at the 95% confidence limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They then classified second hand smoke as a Group A Carcinogen.

This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans on smoking in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the Christian Science Monitor was saying that "Second-hand smoke is the nation's third-leading preventable cause of death." The American Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent.

In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had "committed to a conclusion before research had begun", and had "disregarded information and made findings on selective information." The reaction of Carol Browner, head of the EPA was: "We stand by our science….there's wide agreement. The American people certainly recognize that exposure to second hand smoke brings…a whole host of health problems." Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps science. In this case, it isn't even a consensus of scientists that Browner evokes! It's the consensus of the American people.

Meanwhile, ever-larger studies failed to confirm any association. A large, seven-country WHO study in 1998 found no association. Nor have well-controlled subsequent studies, to my knowledge. Yet we now read, for example, that second hand smoke is a cause of breast cancer. At this point you can say pretty much anything you want about second-hand smoke.

As with nuclear winter, bad science is used to promote what most people would consider good policy. I certainly think it is. I don't want people smoking around me. So who will speak out against banning second-hand smoke? Nobody, and if you do, you'll be branded a shill of RJ Reynolds. A big tobacco flunky. But the truth is that we now have a social policy supported by the grossest of superstitions. And we've given the EPA a bad lesson in how to behave in the future. We've told them that cheating is the way to succeed.

 

[worriedbeef]

so basically playing GTA 4 or drinking a can of coke is worse for you than breathing in smoke constantly? right....

and this nonsense about "the government doesn't have the right to tell busniness owners what to do" - sorry to have to break it to you but that's the whole idea of the society we live in - we elect a government to make the rules for us.

 

[Da Poet]

Because people like you would have us completely stop competing at a game if there was no non-smoking pool hall within a 100 miles.

Over what? Someone else's drug addiction.

Yeah, that seems fair, doesn't it?

If we followed that rule, then a drug addiction of yours, would have a negative impact on my life that I have no choice over. If I go to the pool hall, I have to deal with the negative consequences of breathing your filth, and getting covered in it.

If I don't then I suffer the negative consqeunces of not being able to compete at a game I love.

Does that seem fair, when all someone is doing is asking you to take it outside.

I ALREADY subsidize your bad decisions by paying more for health insurance than I should, you expect me to QUIT my hobby to accomodate you as well???????????

Selfish, selfish, SELFISH smoker.

Russ

Hey Russ, it's nice to hear from you and thank you for your cheerful reponse!

I just have never had that big problem with other people smoking, whether I wanted to smoke or not. I didn't smoke until I was 30, and since then I've been an on again off again smoker, but even then when I didn't smoke, if my clothes smelled like cigarette smoke when I got home it was because I was out having a good time. I honestly never associated anything tremendously evil about it and didn't really notice it. Nowadays, people freak out like it's mustard gas or something.

In the hirearchy of problems I want the government to deal with, this is not at the top of my list. Overnight, the Chicagowide ban killed the action and about 1/3rd the business at Chris's here for the first several months. Business and action is back a little, but not near where it was. Basically the circus left town and there are some of us that would rather it never left.

Personally, I can go along with smoking ban. But if I'm on one of my smoking months, there are some nights when it's -0 degrees F and I'd rather stay in, cook a nice meal, have an after dinner smoke with the gal and watch a little cable rather than go hang out at a dying pool hall. Not a problem for selfish ole me.

Looking forward to see you again at DCC Russ!

 

[SJDinPHX]

I get that they are smokers off the court, off the ice, off the green... but do they actually do their sport with a cigarette hanging from their mouths?? And does not being able to smoke during their sport actually affect their participation level?

Smokers on here have said they won't even play anymore if they can't smoke... pool halls have closed down because of the ban! Isn't that unusual?

Not at all!!! "Yet he who is without sin cast the first stone", W.C. Fields.......I think! (or not?)

 

[Russ Chewning]

Not at all!!! "Yet he who is without sin cast the first stone", W.C. Fields.......I think! (or not?)

BAM!

(That's me casting the first stone.)

I don't believe in "sin" as it wholly a manufactured religious idea. It is nothing more than something arbitrarily deemed "bad" by a religious leader.

Russ

 

[sixpack]

so basically playing GTA 4 or drinking a can of coke is worse for you than breathing in smoke constantly? right....

and this nonsense about "the government doesn't have the right to tell busniness owners what to do" - sorry to have to break it to you but that's the whole idea of the society we live in - we elect a government to make the rules for us.

Drinking soda constantly and getting obese IS a bigger risk factor than second-hand smoke.

Yep. That was my point.

In the US we have a concept which I like: The balance between the will of the majority and the rights of the individual. It's what our Bill of Rights is based on and part of what we fought the revolutionary war about.

In the UK you may elect government to make rule for you, but here in the USA we elect government officials to represent us and fairly enforce and create social structure that benefits the greater good while protecting individual rights.

I can understand that it's a foreign concept to you as you are not an American. Unfortunately, many Americans do not understand or appreciate that balance either anymore and I think it's to our detriment as a country.

If you read the article I referenced he enumerates several examples of how junk science has been twisted to influence public opinion and policy. The basic pattern is: announce some science to influence public opinion. When the science is discredited, point to public opinion as proof of the science.

i.e. "Polls show that 70 percent of Americans think that second-hand smoke is bad for you" - Even though that opinion is based on the release of bad science in the first place.

And once the majority of people demand action, then government acts. That is the inherent problem in a democracy. It doesn't matter how wrongheaded the action or the demand is, there will be action.

~rc

 

[lodini]

OK, guys... I apologize... I did not intend for this thread to become another debate on whether second hand smoke is dangerous or whether the government has a right to impose smoking bans in pool halls... my question was more to address the implication that the ban on smoking will actually kill the sport of pool. It just doesn't make sense to me that a sport can't exist without smoking. It also doesn't make sense to me that smoking is actually necessary to play the game. (and this is coming from someone who was a regular smoker, and still has a few every now and then) I just don't see the correlation and if this sport ever wants to be recognized as a "sport", then I think the smoking should go outside. That is, of course, just my opinion...

 

[worriedbeef]

Drinking soda constantly and getting obese IS a bigger risk factor than second-hand smoke.

Yep. That was my point.

In the US we have a concept which I like: The balance between the will of the majority and the rights of the individual. It's what our Bill of Rights is based on and part of what we fought the revolutionary war about.

In the UK you may elect government to make rule for you, but here in the USA we elect government officials to represent us and fairly enforce and create social structure that benefits the greater good while protecting individual rights.

I can understand that it's a foreign concept to you as you are not an American. Unfortunately, many Americans do not understand or appreciate that balance either anymore and I think it's to our detriment as a country.

If you read the article I referenced he enumerates several examples of how junk science has been twisted to influence public opinion and policy. The basic pattern is: announce some science to influence public opinion. When the science is discredited, point to public opinion as proof of the science.

i.e. "Polls show that 70 percent of Americans think that second-hand smoke is bad for you" - Even though that opinion is based on the release of bad science in the first place.

And once the majority of people demand action, then government acts. That is the inherent problem in a democracy. It doesn't matter how wrongheaded the action or the demand is, there will be action.

~rc

drinking soda to excess is bad for you. the odd can of coke here and there isn't. same with fast food. same with alcohol. alcohol even has health benefits.

cigarettes are terrible for you no matter how many you have. they're tubes full of burning crap. breathing in the crap second hand is also bad for you. the smoke is full of poisons - how can it not be. the extent of how bad it is is a huge debate. but even if it's minimal, why should a non-smoker have to exposed to it if he wants to play pool?

fairly enforce and create social structure that benefits the greater good

if banning mass drug taking in public isn't for the greater good mate then I don't know what is.

the trouble with smoking is time breeds moral apathy. it's a scurge on society and it is truly sad that so many people on this planet are addicted to this drug. but because it's been around for so long we take it for granted and view it as a 'right'. just like it's everybody's right to have a sandwich or a bar of chocolate. nobody expects to be able to inject some heroin into themselves publicly, or indeed legally. but thats normal and we accept that. But take away somebody's 'right' to have a cigarette in public and there's outcry, because everybody was so used to it. maybe tobacco wont ever get banned completely, but surely it's a good thing that we can go to the pub or pool hall and not have the god awful stench, not to mention the health risks. plus it dries my contacts out and blocks my nose too.

and to your point about the governments motives and methods in banning smoking in public places - I say who cares why or how they do it - it's a good thing anyway.

and on topic, i agree with lodini's point. the association between pool and smoking is not a healthy one, pardon the pun, and if we want our players and our sport to be respected more then ideally we should try and take the smoking out of pool.

 

[ShootingArts]

Wpba

The WPBA is certainly the most successful tour in the US, or appears to be. I notice that their image gets a little classier each year. Watching the latest TV matches I have to assume that nobody in the WPBA drinks alcoholic beverages, uses foul language, or smokes. That is a very good image to project.

There is a movement underway to not allow smoking in movies rated less than PG-13. It is a good idea but I think it should be any movie rated less than R. I have long thought that hollywood was in bed with the tobacco companies. They have promoted the image that tobacco usage was the in thing to do seemingly since there has been movies.

Smoke cuts my overall pool time in less than half. I pass tables I would spend an hour or two playing at most days when I leave my shop. No way am I going to smell like an ashtray just to play an hour or so. Unless it is the main focus of my day, I simply don't play pool because it isn't worth all of the hassle. My clothes have to be washed, I have to shower and shampoo my hair and beard two or three times, and then I have to try to clean the inside of my nose the best I can. I still smell smoke for a day or two.

One thing that perturbs me about secondhand smoke is that all odors are solids. When you smell cow crap, there is a portion of that crap entering your nostrils and your lungs. When you take in secondhand smoke, some of that smoke is coming out of someone else's mouth, nose, and lungs. To be blunt, there isn't one smoker in a hundred I really want to be that intimate with.

One thing I have long been curious about is the real effect of smoking on the smoker. Is it a crutch letting the player handle pressure better? Should I give a smoker less of a spot than a nonsmoker?

Hu

OK, guys... I apologize... I did not intend for this thread to become another debate on whether second hand smoke is dangerous or whether the government has a right to impose smoking bans in pool halls... my question was more to address the implication that the ban on smoking will actually kill the sport of pool. It just doesn't make sense to me that a sport can't exist without smoking. It also doesn't make sense to me that smoking is actually necessary to play the game. (and this is coming from someone who was a regular smoker, and still has a few every now and then) I just don't see the correlation and if this sport ever wants to be recognized as a "sport", then I think the smoking should go outside. That is, of course, just my opinion...

 

[Pii]

It is almost shocking how many threads come up in this forum about smoking. Is this connection between cigarettes and pool possibly one of the reasons pool is looked at so negatively in the outside world? As well, how could one consider an activity to be a "sport" when so many people absolutely MUST have a cigarette in their mouths in order to enjoy themselves doing it? Just some thoughts...

Its makes it more challenging. Have you ever tried shooting pool with cigarette smoke streaming directly into your eye?

 

[sixpack]

drinking soda to excess is bad for you. the odd can of coke here and there isn't. same with fast food. same with alcohol. alcohol even has health benefits.

cigarettes are terrible for you no matter how many you have. they're tubes full of burning crap. breathing in the crap second hand is also bad for you. the smoke is full of poisons - how can it not be. the extent of how bad it is is a huge debate. but even if it's minimal, why should a non-smoker have to exposed to it if he wants to play pool?



if banning mass drug taking in public isn't for the greater good mate then I don't know what is.

the trouble with smoking is time breeds moral apathy. it's a scurge on society and it is truly sad that so many people on this planet are addicted to this drug. but because it's been around for so long we take it for granted and view it as a 'right'. just like it's everybody's right to have a sandwich or a bar of chocolate. nobody expects to be able to inject some heroin into themselves publicly, or indeed legally. but thats normal and we accept that. But take away somebody's 'right' to have a cigarette in public and there's outcry, because everybody was so used to it. maybe tobacco wont ever get banned completely, but surely it's a good thing that we can go to the pub or pool hall and not have the god awful stench, not to mention the health risks. plus it dries my contacts out and blocks my nose too.

and to your point about the governments motives and methods in banning smoking in public places - I say who cares why or how they do it - it's a good thing anyway.

and on topic, i agree with lodini's point. the association between pool and smoking is not a healthy one, pardon the pun, and if we want our players and our sport to be respected more then ideally we should try and take the smoking out of pool.

I agree with you. I don't smoke. Smoking is terrible for you. I think smoking should be done away with entirely. That doesn't give me the right to make that decision for everybody though.

I think that's where we differ.

~rc

 

[Pii]

Not all pool players go to a pool hall only to play pool as a sport. For many it's a way to get out of the house, get away from work, somewhere outside of the day to day stuff where you can relax and just be yourself.

It's a bigger change for some than others. Some will stay, some won't. Some places will do better business because of it, and some won't. Are more places doing better because of it? No one really knows.

I never fully understood folks who complain about their clothes smelling like smoke after voluntarily hanging out somewhere with smokers as if they were forced to be there. (edit - Sixpack, I wasn't directing this at you, sorry.) Employees have an argument, but customers? It's like me going to a NASCAR race and complaining about the noise.

I knew it wouldn't be long before some smoker tried the old "you weren't forced to go there".

It makes no more sense than me me saying smokers weren't force to go smoke at the places I go.

 

[Pii]

No worries. I NEVER complained about the smoke, and I still hung out in bars/pool halls every night. But I do appreciate going and playing and not smelling like smoke. Now that I'm married, (has anybody else noted that women have more sensitive noses than men?) I would probably have to strip in the basement and put my clothes directly in the wash if there was still smoking here.

The smoking ban though is a good example of how to manipulate a democracy to your own will:

As soon as the bad science and bad publicity/stigma of smoking convinced more than 50% of VOTERS that it was EVIL, then it was child's play to get things on the ballot and take rights away from the minority.

Smoking in a public place is arguable, but in some places it's illegal to smoke in your car or in your house if you have minor children. Never mind that you can still feed them junk food & soda, let them play video games (ala GTA IV) all day and get fat and not make them study. All of which are significantly higher risk factors than second hand smoke.

Problem is a majority of people haven't been convinced YET that those things are EVIL.

As the gravy train rolls along down the tracks, we're close to a majority of voters believing in publicly funded healthcare or mandatory healthcare, soon there will be enough critical mass that the 'whims' of the majority outvote the 'rights' of the minority.

This manipulation of democracy encourages sound bites over substance and gives people incentive to spin rather than educate on any issue. Basically many people choose who to believe and vote accordingly without any independent thought or analysis.

I've never been a smoker but I could see clearly that the rights of smokers and businesses were being trampled, that's what I object to about the smoking bans.

Personally, I enjoy being in smoke-free pool halls, but that whimsical of a reason should not be the basis to vote to take rights away from other people. That's why I've voted against smoking bans when I've had the chance.

IMO You don't have a right to tell business owners how to operate their business. If you don't like smoke, don't go to smokey bars. If there are enough like-minded people, then there will be smoke-free bars. If there are not, then you can open one. If you go broke, then the market spoke and made it's preference very clear. No need for legislation in my mind.

What is ironic is that the extreme minority of bar-goers don't smoke. And most of the people who voted for the smoking ban-don't go to bars regularly.

So in this instance we have a tiny group of folks who objected to an activity in a specific location and were able to call in their friends and vote away a business right that most of the people patronizing the businesses wanted them to have.

I know, but what about the workers! Well, almost every bartender, barmaid and waitress that I knew when I was playing a lot smoked like a train. Again, if you don't like smoke, don't get a job in a smokey bar.

All jobs are not for all workers.

I worked as an exterior window washer on tall buildings. Gravity can kill you and in fact, the short time I had that job, three people in my city were killed doing that job. If you don't like heights, and don't want to die from falling. Don't get that job! Does it need to be banned? Nope.

As for corporate offices, almost all of them were smoke-free before the bans were in place because more people in offices didn't like to smell smoke and so businesses VOLUNTARILY kept their offices smoke-free.

~rc

So you don't think government should tell a business what to do?

Interesting?

I guess you wouldn't mind then if your local health department quit inspecting your favorite place to eat?

Or maybe you would like the FDA to stop inspecting meat packing houses and let them sell you downed cows or let them mix animal s**t in you hamburger?

Or maybe you would like the EPA to let big industries dump mercury into your neighborhood lake where your kid swim or the air over you house ?

There are a MILLION examples of government, local, federal and state telling businesses what they can and can't do.

Many of their rules (actually most) are for the safety of you and me.

as for the rest of your post there are so many false facts that you just made up that I don't have time to address them one at a time. Needless to say most are just BS

 

[Pii]

Drinking soda constantly and getting obese IS a bigger risk factor than second-hand smoke.

Yep. That was my point.

In the US we have a concept which I like: The balance between the will of the majority and the rights of the individual. It's what our Bill of Rights is based on and part of what we fought the revolutionary war about.

In the UK you may elect government to make rule for you, but here in the USA we elect government officials to represent us and fairly enforce and create social structure that benefits the greater good while protecting individual rights.

I can understand that it's a foreign concept to you as you are not an American. Unfortunately, many Americans do not understand or appreciate that balance either anymore and I think it's to our detriment as a country.

If you read the article I referenced he enumerates several examples of how junk science has been twisted to influence public opinion and policy. The basic pattern is: announce some science to influence public opinion. When the science is discredited, point to public opinion as proof of the science.

i.e. "Polls show that 70 percent of Americans think that second-hand smoke is bad for you" - Even though that opinion is based on the release of bad science in the first place.

And once the majority of people demand action, then government acts. That is the inherent problem in a democracy. It doesn't matter how wrongheaded the action or the demand is, there will be action.

~rc

Cool you found a poll that you agree with is that the only one? Keep searching and don't turn a blind eye the ones you don't agree with. Also research the source...carfully.

 

[Russ Chewning]

I agree with you. I don't smoke. Smoking is terrible for you. I think smoking should be done away with entirely. That doesn't give me the right to make that decision for everybody though.

I think that's where we differ.

~rc

GREAT! We are at least seeing eye to eye!!!!!!!!! PROGRESS!!!!

Fortunately, no one, not even ONCE as far as I can tell, ever even HINTED at suggesting that smoking be banned completely.

We're just asking them to respect other customers by going outdoors to do so.

Russ

 

[sixpack]

Cool you found a poll that you agree with is that the only one? Keep searching and don't turn a blind eye the ones you don't agree with. Also research the source...carfully.

Huh? I totally made up that poll and it agrees with YOU!

maybe you should research the source 'carfully'.

~rc

 

[Milo]

I believe most smokers do understand and are courteous of others

I smoke. (light smoker) I do understand and except the no smoking ban.
I believe the majority of smokers do realize why most of us are not allowed to smoke in public places any longer.(WA State has a smoking ban)
I prefer it actually. It helps me cut down on my habit to maybe eventually one day just quit all together.(I am working on it)
As for the miniority of smokers who have the attitude, "if ya dont like the smoke, nobody is making you come into the pool room". Well all I have to say is you better start understanding and excepting it, because the smoking bans are here to stay. Lets face it guys, smoking is just plain bad for us. I want to live a long healthy life. I know if I dont quit in the near future, there is a huge chance I wont.