My home state of Iowa is the the midst of one of the smoking ban debates. The legislature is getting ready to vote on one of the toughest bans yet and the smokers are donning their martyr suits and bemoaning the end of democracy and the pursuit of happiness again. I had to listen to yet another indignant rant from one of my smoking sisters over Easter dinner with my father “amening” in the background. Both of my sisters smoke, but my dad quit almost three years ago when he had his first stroke. Despite the fact that he now suffers from smoking induced COPD and is dying, he is still a smoker at heart. My sisters like to make themselves out to be the victims now that they are banned from smoking in my parents’ house for good. They are supposed to go outside but if it is a bit chilly or rainy or snowing, they will simply go out to the garage and smoke the air blue. Of course it seeps in to the house but not enough to bring down the wrath of either of my folks though I have complained about it often. I have asthma. Smoke does terrible things to me. I can’t even walk quickly past a group of smokers without coughing and getting congested. I try not to cough though because this invites jeers and not so under the breath comments despite the fact that I am just trying to breath and not being insulting. Smokers don’t care. They are the victims. I am wrong to want to breath?
I am led to believe by the comments to my comment at the Des Moines Register discussion that I am wrong and should just keep my non-smoking, needing to breath, asthmatic self locked up in my home so that the smokers of the world can exercise their Constitutional right to impose their habit on others. My objection is that I don’t go to places where there is very likely to be smoke and on those rare occasions I do, I suck it up – literally. But when I am trying to go to the gym or shop for groceries or just walk down Whyte Ave after a movie at the Princess, I am enveloped in smoke. Alberta has really strict indoor smoking policies which basically prohibit it entirely. As a result, smokers (and I have never lived anywhere that I have encountered so many smokers) just crowd the doorways. Mainly to be asses about it. Here they joke loudly and try to embarass when you can’t hold in a cough or try to circle wide around them. They know. They just don’t give a fuck because they willfully refuse to believe that anyone would avoid cigarrette smoke for health reasons. We are just being elitist and don’t like the smell. God, that last argument is so lame I don’t know how anyone with even a half a brain can use it with a straight face. When I was growing up, I didn’t know that smoke really stunk up your clothing. It wasn’t until I went off to college and was visiting home that I realized how awfully offensive I had smelled to people as a child and teen. As a teacher, I had many students, especially when I was on Des Moines’s east side, who just reeked of smoke. I felt terribly for them. Other kids would say rude things or beg not to sit near by. I would think about myself and my siblings and wonder if I had been that bad. I know I was. What an awful burden my dad placed on me. It was selfish of him.
I put up with my sisters and father only until my daughter was born and then I demanded that they smoke outside or we wouldn’t visit. I was a bit surprised when my dad went along and thus forced my sisters as well. He grumbled a bit, to test me I think, but I stood my ground.
Will smoked. Never indoors though or in the truck when we were traveling. He hated that he did though. Cursed himself roundly for falling into the trap. He quit with the help of a hypnotist and would have probably been done for good but the damage his illness did to his brain undid his quitting as well. I finally just arbitarily pulled the plug on his smoking when he went into the nursing home because he was nearly blind and his balance was so bad I was afraid for his safety. Even with dementia though, he continued to be a very considerate smoker. So it’s not just the addiction but the type of person one isthat causes one to be a jerk to non-smokers.
anniegirl1138 
I was another one of those kids who grew up in a smoking home. My dad was also the big offender and, for a while, he corrupted my mom and had her smoking too. She smoked menthols and now says that she never really liked it but did it to go along. She’s now a militant non-smoker, BTW. Back to the kid years, I was led to believe that I had a tendency toward motion sickness. Turns out it was from being stuck in a non-ventilated automobile with a dad who smoked non-stop. Dad died at age 56, probably from a host of issues, but I’ll warrant that being a lifelong 2-3 pack a day smoker sure didn’t help. All three of my sibs smoke (slow learners) including my brother who has lupus and is now on full dialysis with zero kidney function.
Ironically, or luckily, I don’t seem to suffer the ill effects of my childhood exposures. Lung function tests show I have about 160% of the capacity expected from someone my age/size.
But I really despise the smell of smoke and find it very offensive when I am forced to inhale even a whiff of it. It’s even worse when you’re in wilderness spaces and still being subjected to that vile odour.
My late wife had been a smoker, but had been given a monetary incentive to quit while still a teen. (Good thing too, otherwise there would never have been “us”.) It was her stepfather who got her to quit and he gave up a 35 year habit too. Her mom never did quit (until about 6 months before she died); as time wore on she slowly moved away from the kitchen table to the counter to the porch to outside (in good weather) when we were visiting. Oddly, enough, though the stepfather always thought it was just awful to ask a smoker in your home to go outside to smoke. He would put up with it indoors.
I mostly vote with my feet. I won’t willingly go somewhere there will be smoke. There’ve probably been exceptions, but I won’t stay long and I won’t repeat a visit.
Pammy, lol. Are you sure you would need to run? My sisters smoke and can barely climb stairs at a even pace.
Well said. I will admit that I am totally biased as I was well suffered as a little kid with parents who smoked. My lungs are very weak to this day and I attribute that to the years of excessive exposure to their second hand smoke.
In my mind the debate between smokers and nonsmokers comes down to encroachment – who’s rights encroach more fully on the others?
I guess an argument can be made on both sides, but the crux of the matter is, who’s encroachment is more apt to endanger the other persons health?
Pardon me if I am wrong, but I don’t believe that a life has ever been lost by encouraging a person to stop smoking, or asking them to step out on the porch to do their vile habit. OTOH I do believe that there are true health hazards to a person who is having their rights as non-smokers encroached on by a smoker.
In any case, if I were the one who was being made fun of by a bunch of smokers I would turn around and ask them if they realize how bad they stink – then stick out my tongue and run like hell – lol
Absolutely correct!!! You don’t have the right to make me cough. You don’t have the right to ruin my dinner with your cigarette smoke. You don’t have the right to make my clothes stink with your cigarette smoke. If you are an adult, you have every right to smoke, but not where it affects me.
The thing about “rights” is that mine end where yours begin, and when we are sharing air, that means that smokers’ self-proclaimed rights end exactly at the point where I inhale. It’s ridiculous. We have a handful of smokers at my work, who take a 15 minute cig break per hour. I thought about getting a fake syringe and heading out back, and waiting for someone to ask why I thought it was okay to shoot up at work. You know what my answer would be. Ultimately, smoking should be as private as sex. It belongs in your private space, not in the public space. If you wouldn’t have sex in groups in the doorway of a place of business, then you shouldn’t smoke there either.