<rant>
Okay, not actually the cigarette smokers themselves, and certainly not all cigarette smokers…
I get that you want to smoke, and I agree that you have the right. It’s a completely stupid habit in my opinion, but it is your right; I do plenty of stupid shit that I know I shouldn’t do, so I’m not judging that.
But while there are plenty of things to hate about the cigarette smoking habit, I guess what I actually really do hate is one very common cigarette smoker behavior: The Flippant Flip.
By far, the most absolutely flamingly annoying cigarette smoker behavior is the casual, arrogant flip of any part of a cigarette to any location that is not some form of a waste receptacle. (Perhaps even more annoying is the attempt to look valiant by walking “all the way” to the curb to flip the butt into the street, as if that somehow makes it better because eventually some hard-working civil servant will come along in a street sweeper and clean (most) of them up!)
So I ask:
What gives you the fucking right to toss your fucking trash like that? You bought the fucking thing, you lit the fucking thing, you inhaled from the fucking thing, now act like a fucking adult, extinguish the fucking thing, and either place it in the fucking trash now, or place it in your fucking pocket until you get to the next fucking trash bin and dispose of your fucking trash the way your mother should have fucking taught you to!
It seems like such a simple thing to do, and it would have such an enormous, positive impact! Try walking down any city block (with your eyes open) and not seeing at least one improperly discarded cigarette butt…
How did this lazy, arrogant, disgusting behavior become so common? And so accepted??? Imagine people’s reactions if every time someone finished with a can of soda they simply tossed the empty can onto the sidewalk or valiantly tossed it into the street!
Again, I do plenty of things that I know are stupid, but I strive really hard to avoid affecting other people (or the world) in a negative manner.
So, smokers, please know that I do not hate (all of) you, but, if you are one of the people described above, you bring about the angst of your fellow man by behaving in such an arrogantly offensive manner. Please, take responsibility for yourself, your actions, and your own fucking trash!
And we non-smokers, we are not without blame: Every time we witness this act and do and say nothing, we are implicit in letting this become, and remain, acceptable behavior. I am not saying we should go up and start a fight with someone for tossing a cigarette butt, but if we address the offending oaf in a respectable manner, questioning their actions objectively, we are at least making sure they realize how offensive the behavior is, and maybe, just maybe, the next time they will think twice about flipping their fucking trash in everyone’s street.
Okay, thanks, I feel better now…
</rant>
Your right to smoke ends when my right to breathe begins …
Damn straight. No one should be forced to breathe second-hand, cancer causing carcinogens, just so you can get your nicotine fix.
If I went around spraying asbestos particles in people’s faces, or even within such a proximity to them that they then inhaled them, I could be fined at a minimum, if not arrested and thrown in jail for attempted murder.
But then you smoking fuckers can sit there and blow cancer causing carcinogens into the air where I have to breath, with impunity?
What other cancer causing carcinogen can someone legally blow into the air, in such a way that forces others to breath it?
I can’t even open my damned windows and enjoy fresh air, without a neighbors cigarette smoke permeating my house, my hair, my clothes, and furniture.
Then my sinuses instantly swell shut, I start weasing, coughing, sneezing, and get ear infections. I have to go Scrub my hair and body in the shower, change my clothes, etc.
You should be able to sue people who smoke, any time you are forced to smell or breath it. Better yet, since it’s a known, life threatening practice, you should be able to defend yourself against it with lethal force. Damned smoking bastards!
Yeah-Yuh! Well said bro.
I fucking hear that. In Germany this behaviour is fined with 10 or 15 bucks but I haven’t seen it being enforced once…
I don’t feel better..in fact I’m beginning to not even be able to stand my own parents. I hate smokers..and I don’t always feel this way..but right now fuck all smokers. I’m pissed. I have a two month old and im tired of her smelling like fucking cigarettes every time I go to my parents house. They can at least be considerate and wait until I’m gone to smoke..but no…they have to have at least 3 every time I go. I can’t just not go..they would never see her…they are too busy to visit. I’m just so pissed…I punched walls and tore up the paper towels package when I got home and smelled my daughters hair haha. I’m just fed up with smokers. Bitches that smell like ash trays come up and touch my baby and I’m boiling inside but too polite to say anything. I don’t care if its an addiction…oh well! My mom and brother even smoked in the car with me while I was pregnant…rude. They would apologize beforehand..and then do it anyways knowing that it was wrong. They couldn’t wait until we got where we were going and then just smoke outside the place like all the other gross smokers do? I hate smokers…fuck em all…even my neighbors smoke goddammit..I don’t even smoke and people try to bum cigarettes of me. Its ridiculous.
smokers are morons
I didn’t have a problem with smokers before, but now I despise them.
My neighbour smokes cigarettes every day, and it comes to all of my windows, I don’t mind the smell that much, what I mind is the toxic stuff I, and my family have to breath. I’m having a healthy life style, eating healthy food, being active / doing sports, and this coughing piece of neighbour trash is ruining it, and making my whole family sick. Bad lungs are a big NO NO to active person, not to mention there’s a bigger chance of getting a lung cancer from second-hand smoking.
Even if smokers smoke elsewhere, they are still ruining our oxygen, air. Smokers are selfish, they always talk about their, THEIR rights. But we have a right to breath clean air. Scientists said that cigarettes are behind of 80-90% of lung cancers. They also said cars don’t produce that dangerous lung cancer toxic stuff. And that bad air is behind only 1-2% of lung cancers. I don’t support these cars though. I’m for electric cars.
Smokers are junkies, nothing more, I treat them the same as the other drug addicts. If not worse. They are damaging our health, our family health, everyone’s health. How is someone taking cocain harming anyone? I’m not defending cocain addicts though.
Also that smoking neighbour is of course arrogant as most of the smokers.
I can’t even walk 5 minutes in my city without smelling a cig smoke. And cig butts everywhere on the ground.
Selfish, arrogant and pathetic junkies. Ruin your own health if you want to, but not ours.
People died from passive smoking. Yeah, thank you smokers, you are ruining our health and killing us.
Agreed, for all the reasons you mentioned. Second-hand smoke kills 53,800 people per year in the US alone. That’s the amount of people we lost in the Vietnam War. Where’s the outrage? It’s not enough to talk. We must get laws passed and enforced that protect us from having to breathe second-hand smoke, everywhere. We should be protected whether we live in an apartment, whether we’re entering or leaving a building, or even driving or walking on public streets.
By the way, I have a friend, she’s in her late 20’s, she never had a single cig. She has a job where her boss smokes all the time, Doctor of my friend told her, that her lungs looks like she smokes multiple cigs every day.
Thank you again, smokers.
That’s moronic since car exhaust fumes, pollution, or just genetic predisposition to cancer might be responsible,. Where do you clean air nazis get off? Do you smoke marijuana? That is bad or even worse than cigarettes. Hitler hated smoking and cigarettes, too, so you have no moral-high ground.
Why do trolls always go straight to Hitler and the Nazis?? :-)
Unfortunately, your moronic comments do not deserve a rebuke, so please just crawl back under your bridge and leave the nice people walking across it alone…
Please just remove his post entirely. I did not like reading it. The fact that there is car exhaust does not make it OK to add MORE pollution for MUCH LESS of a reason. Smoker-logic is SO WRONG.
Nice people, yeah, that’s good, fucking nazi.
Right though? These people are so so so mad.
Dumbass because if it were car emmisions he’s have said your lungs look like everyone elses’
I would love to start a worldwide campaign to ban all smokers from all areas where people who might not be smokers are trying to breathe clean air. I hate smokers and my anger toward them is unhealthy as is breathing their obnoxious, selfish, moronic, poorly disguised low self worth, lack of conscience sociopathic waste of money, filthy habit.
I almost can’t take it anymore. I just rode my bike home; I live in an amazing large, diverse, city; so much to do; library’s everywhere; coffee shops, interesting museums, classes, workshops, political groups, activism, trails, parks, bike lanes; you name it. NO ONE in this city can claim an excuse for that obnoxious behavior. I rode home breathing smoke the entire way; every time a car passed; every time I passed a group of people. think about I t. When we exercise we are breathing very deeply and all that crap is just so destructive. Plus, it smells like ignorance. The minute I smell a cigarette my first thought is; dirty, doesn’t care about other people; could care less about the environment; drives and doesn’t use public transit or a bike, didn’t finish school; lives to make themselves appear “cool” at the expense of other people. I grew up in a cloud of smoke and got sick and threw up for years.
I don’t want any excuse about smoker having to go throug withdrawal because they made that choice when they lit and inhaled their first stupid white toxic tube and we are supposed to pay for it? So, these a-holes; they obvioiusly have more rights than we do because they don’t have to go through withrdrawal but we have to continually breath poison we chose NOT to purposely inhale. Fuck them. The only exception is there are people with severe persistent schizophrenia; the real stuff schizophrenia and I don’t have anger toward these folks. They are in another world of difficulty we don’t understand.
Here is what really bothers me. We reward smokers on low incomes in this country by providing free insurance and food stamps despite the cost of smoking on my taxes. I would like to refuse to pay for smokers. And people who take the time and effort to work out, cycle to work, and remove their litter, throw their crap away, and improve their health PAY THE MOST IN TAXES. We have to stop making health care and public aide an entitlement without any associated responsibilities or accountability.
So, I say, smokers have to pay for their Medicaid insurance. We have a dumb and dumber country as we continue to reward that disgusting habit.
I’d like to start puking on by the shoes of smokers feet. It’s my “right”. The entire problem is that people in this country; well, in the world, with maybe the exception of Japan, are uncivil, self-centered, ego driven, and inconsiderate of others. So, of course they don’t give a shit about anyone but those who also smoke. Gross. It’s not fair. they have a right to smoke ‘IF IT DOESN’T TAKE AAWYA MY RIGHT TO BREATHE AIR THAT HAS NO CIGARETTE SMOKE IN IT.
The first step letting smokers know what they do is wrong is to not sell it to them in the first place. no trucks of cigarette brands to the shops . thats all.
waste of energy all this crap. it’s not developing anything in any society.
Where I’d Donald Trump to stamp out smokers
I feel better after reading these rants about cigarette smoke(ers). Today after 18 months of my neighbors smoke coming into my apartment I became rage full and yelled at her for being so brain dead sitting on her patio 10 hours per day smoking appx 3 cigarettes per hour.
I lost it and of course I live in a condo so she’ll probably lodge a complaint as her patio is her own property. I googled my reaction to her second hand smoke and basically everyone says I have no right in this matter as she smokes on her own property.
Smokers don’t seem to understand how badly they stink and blow the foul air into neighbors private spaces. There is no way to win as they know enough not to smoke in their own place with windows closed as it would stink.
Industrial fan at the edge of YOUR patio. maybe some kind of aroma to boot.
Still won’t do it. It will spread around the fan.
YOU DID THE RIGHT THING. EVERY TIME my ex-neighbors smoked I SPOKE UP and used my voice. And guess what? THEY MOVED AWAY. Because I have FREEDOM OF SPEECH. So no matter if she never quits KEEP SPEEKING UP. At least you will ruin her buzz too.
I am IN YOUR CORNER. Please feel free to email me at [email protected] or reply to this message to talk further.
DONT LET HER GET AWAY WITH IT, NOT ONCE!!! And dont listen to those fools who enable her. She does NOT have any right to pollute your air and the current laws are WRONG in that cigs should be TOTALLY ILLEGAL.
How would you like to live in a non smoking complex with sneaky liars as neighbors? They smoke and have guests in who smoke and my husband and I fight about it. Management is useless. Lawyers won’t take the case because the landlord is rich and has many properties.
Also these tenants are gay so they are probably afraid they will sue if evicted.
Someone please explain to me why smokers get to flout the lease and our family has to suffer?
This sounds terrible, Sunny… Doesn’t the building have any good management? How can they simply ignore the issue?
I am sure if you got a lawyer, they could try to do something, but of course, that would cost money…
Sadly, the best approach may be to simply move… (Hopefully you are renting?)
Best of luck!!
I used to be a smoker. Smoked for eighteen years and quit cold turkey after hearing rumor of massive price increase of cigarettes. I also began realizing what a disgusting habit it was. As I grew out of my teenage and twenties into an adult I knew I wanted to leave that habit behind. The smell of my cigarette fingers alone was enough. Oh and smoking cigarettes in parking garages on my work breaks, it dawned on me ‘what the fuck am I doing?’
Thirteen years later and totally cigarette free I find myself incredibly bothered by the smell of cigarette smoke especially outdoors. Going out to get a breath of fresh air is nearly nonexistent in the city among the car exhaust and cigarette smoke. I imagined ten years ago that cigarette smoking would be on the decline due to the rising costs and bad image association. Its not cool anymore to smoke. In Texas packs average about $7. Unbelieveably it seems there are more smokers than ever.
Sitting in my larents condo and looking out the window, I saw more than three people drive past with cigs dangling out of their mouths. I walked to the coffee shop (5 min tops) and encounter two outside smokers. I just leased an office space to start my own business and regrettably the office is full of smokers (old school males), one of whom would leave the back door cracked while. smoking allroximately four cigs an hour. So my new office space smells like smoke. I did ask him to please not leave the door cracked and he has since obliged.
Public transportation, specifically traveling by bus you are gonna get smoked out. The smokers love to light up in the line waiting to board the bus without a care or concern. They also love to light up for two or three drags right in front of the bus doors during bus breaks. It is so prevelant (in the so-called poor class) you can’t say anything. Meaning there is no recourse. That is just the way it is. Panhandlers are ofter smokers, using money they pan handle to buy their legal drug of choice. I have seen panhandlers smoker while ‘begging’ for money on city street corners. I no longer give pan handlers money. Not just beacause of cigs, beacause I don’t eant to enable or contribute to the problem of homelessness. Thats another topic.
Having been a former smoker I can appreciate a person’s right to light up in certain scenarios. But when its everywhere and all the time I fimd that unacceptable. Smoking in my opinion should not be allowed in public. I fucking hate walking down a public street behind a smoker. Its annoying to try and avoid their smoke because as soon as I avoid one I am seemingly walking into another’s cloud of toxic fumes. No smoking at airports, public streets/sidewalks, or bus stops, or communal licing spaces are first on the the list.
Restaurants/bars that choose to cater to smokers – no problem. I can avoid those establishments. Private places like cars and homes are fine for smokers. Shared spaces are another story. I am not one for government intrusion, but outlawing smoking in public is where I may make an exception.
Thanks for the opportunity to rant~
My next door neighbour smokes on her balcony every half-hour and the smoke comes through my open windows and infests my place. It’s too bad because she is a 29 year-old woman who now looks to be 50 years-old with a wrinkled face.
I believe that we all have a right to do what we want with our lives but I take exception when your right to smoke interferes with my right to breathe.
The only recourse I have now is to move away. I’m just so fed up with breathing in this foul air.
Thank you for allowing me to have my say on this matter.
Simple solution close your window…. problem solved… instead of trying to change everyone else why dont you change if you dont like it and move or keep your windows shut… im sure your neighbor doesnt complain about your self car exaust fumes wafting up and destroying their air or you know contributing to global warming and acid rain
Simple solution, you stop smoking so I don’t have to close my windows and doors, fuckwad. Problem solved.
This is not the case. I suffered for years in apartment complexes, because smoke particles infiltrate through the walls, even if you close your windows.
I moved to a non smoking apartment and then to a non smoking duplex. Neighbors sneak and smoke anyway.
Many people live in an environment where they are constantly forced to breathe second-hand smoke, even when they’re sitting in their own “non-smoking” apartment with the windows closed. The size of smoke particles is so small, that it can permeate almost anything.
We shouldn’t have to close our windows and use air conditioning, never being allowed to enjoy fresh air, just so you can get your drug fix with cancer causing carcinogens. Even if we do close the windows, your damned smoke makes the quality of life miserable for non smokers with respiratory conditions.
Wow i am so glad this forum exists. In defence of smokers i will first give the psychology of this behavior; stress, pain, frustration, repression of uncomfortable feelings\emotions is at root of this habit. Similarly all addiction; drug, alchohol food sex, excess tv, shopping \hoarding, etc is self medicating, pain soothing\ numbing. Having said that, i struggle to feel compassion when i experience the scenarios described in the above posts; walking behind smoker, spitting, littering, blackening walls while putting out butts, breathing in a closed public bus, smoking near building entrance when i have to come through. God help us all
I live in Oklahoma City, where one in every three citizens smokes, and believe me, this city is light years behind the rest of the world.
I detest cigarette smoke and living here, it is simply inescapable. I too, wish it were illegal in all multi family dwellings, including duplexes, I wish the fines and repurcussions were harsh and most of all, I wish that cigarettes simply didn’t exist.
Most smokers, especially in this neck of the woods, are self entitled assholes who seriously don’t care about my right and others rights to clean air. In OKC, a smoker believes he or she is abiding by the rules, if she lights up on her way out the door and then stands next to the door open, with her body inside and hand sticking out.
Get a grip people. Smokers have no right to force us to choke down their sickening, smelly habit. When I returned from Europe in the 90’s and stayed with my parents for awhile, I could never convince my doctor that I was a non smoker.
I just want to scream!!! I think most smokers are self centered idiots. I think of all of the thousands my parents wasted on cigarrettes, but never had the money for ballet lessons or a college fund for me.
And what I REALLY love is when smokers check into non-smoking hotels and believe they are not hurting anything by sneaking their cigs. Such losers. And even more than those losers, then there are the smokers who won’t smoke in their own home or car (because they don’t like the smell and residue), but they absolutely will smoke outside anywhere…. Polluting your clean air so that you cannot relax on your own patio or have your own windows open.
Smokers are self centered idiots and they suck!!
Only thing I really hate about cigarettes is the godawful smell… HOW THE FUCK are you gonna go around and blow your shit-smelling smoke stick around everywhere and not consider anyone else? Fucking vape idiot. Vapor doesn’t smell bad and the smell doesn’t linger like a goddamn miasma in the air.
Cigarettes go in the mouth and foul language comes out. What’s the difference? I think you should hate your profanity, but apparently that’s not the case.
Well, I smoked for seventeen years. I started when I was forty and I smoked until I was fifty-seven. I quit because it became too expensive.
Now then, here are a few things I want to tell you that no newspaper would print these days, even though all of them are true:
1. I enjoyed smoking.
2. It did not appreciably ruin my wind. When I was fifty I could run five miles in fifty minutes and smoke along the way. People who have never smoked seem to believe that smoking makes you short of breath, but that ain’t so, at least for the first twenty years you do it. In the fifties, most professional baseball players smoked. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there were Olympic runners who smoked.
3. When I quit, there were no bad effects. After a few days, you lose the physical capacity to feel withdrawal. You just have a pleasure deficit.
4. Hell yes, I think smoking looks cool. Ever seen Dr. No, the first James Bond movie? Bond is introduced in the act of lighting a cigarette. Very cool. Or check out Robert Mitchum in the movies some time. Cool.,
5. I love the smell of cigarette smoke. I loved it before I started smoking (at age forty, remember) and I still love it now, even though I haven’t smoked in ten years.
6. Since smoking didn’t harm my health when inhaled cigarette smoke directly, I find it difficult to believe that any non-smoker with normal lung health could possibly be harmed by breathing in the diluted smoke that smokers exhale.
7. The modern disgust with smoking has been imposed on weak-minded fools by a powerful elite. I was born in 1952, and my parents, who did not smoke, had ashtrays in their living room for any guests who came over and smoked. None of us ever thought that our house had been rendered less pleasant to live in because someone had smoked within its walls. This nonsense that smoking is disgusting is just neurosis.
8. May I get cancer next Tuesday if any of these points is untrue.
Ian,
Thank you for your comments, and I am glad you are in good health! Your experience is a good one, but I can name at least five relatives or close friends that have experienced quite the opposite. Whether theirs was due to cigarette smoking or something else, no way to absolutely know.
And while all of your statements may be true, they are also all your opinion; for example, I cannot stand cigarette smoke, and I do not think it is because of a neurosis, I just do not like it.
But in the end, the real point of this article was to point a finger at the inconsiderate cigarette smokers, not all cigarette smokers, nor the act of smoking itself.
Nevertheless, thanks again for the comments, and may you continue to experience good health for many years to come!
Atg
There’s NOTHING STUPIDER than a PARENT WHO SMOKES. PERIOD. I grew up in a house so filled with smoke that it was hard to see the wall 15 feet away. For as long as I can remember, when I got to school, all i could think about was how HORRIBLE my head and stomache felt, and it was IMPOSSIBLE to focus… and I was diagnosed with a learning disability because i was in constant WITHDRAWAL AT SCHOOL WHERE SMOKING IS NOT ALLOWED. my headache and nausea were incessant to the point that my parents brought me to a neurologist to see about the ten year headache, he suggested exploratory brain surgery. NOBODY, and I mean NOBODY has suggested, in the 30 plus years I have been researching thousands of studies and articles on the effects of smoke on non smokers… NOT A ONE so called “expert” has indicated that NICOTINE WITHDRAWAL LEADS TO BEHAVIORAL PROBLEMS IN CHILDREN WITHIN HOURS OF LEAVING THEIR USUAL SMOKE FILLED HOME DWELLINGS… behavioral problems FOR WHICH, DANGEROUS DRUGS ARE PRESCRIBED as opposed to the doctor telling the ASSHOLE PARENTS to QUIT DOSING THEIR KIDS AND MAKING ADDICTS OF THEM… JUST TO END UP WITH A FUCKING MORON “MD” DOSING THEM WITH EVEN MORE POISON.
YOU FUCKING SHITHEADS WHO SMOKE CANNOT STAND 30 MINUTES OF FRESH AIR WITHOUT “TWITCHING” AND GETTING IRRITABLE AND NASTY AND UNREASONABLE WHEN YOU CANT GET YOUR GODDAMNED “FIX”… so WHY is it SO ELUSIVE AND IMPOSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND that when a CHILD BECOMES ADDICTED TO HIS PARENTS SMOKE, THEN GOES OFF TO SCHOOL AND “WITHDRAWS” INTO BEHAVIORAL MISCONDUCT… THAT ITS THE SAME GODDAMNED THING THAT CAUSES ADULTS TO FREAK THE FUCK OUT IF THEY DONT SMOKE ONE EVERY 20 MINUTES OR SO. WHY is NOBODY across the entirety of the medical profession addressing this fact??? if ADULTS cant stand to be away from SMOKE and get all fucked, what makes it any different for your KIDS??? these kids who are FORCED into nic. addiction by their STUPID PARENTS experience the exact same withdrawal symptoms that cause their PARENTS to act like ASSHOLES when they don’t get their stupid fucking smoke “on time’ QUIT SMOKING… then your kids won’t need PSYCHOACTIVE DRUGS to deal with the ADDICTION YOU GAVE THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE. I won’t so much as walk through a cloud of smoke to enter a business or restaurant. If they are so inconsiderate of their non smoking clients. I don’t care about butts in the gutter, i don’t live or eat in the gutter… i DO, however end up downwind of you asshole smokers and i will put that fucker out ON YOUR EYELID. Sounds extreme huh? FUCK ALL you smokers. Period.
Thank you so much John. I totally agree. I want to hear more of your message. This is the TRUTH with all caps and it happened to me as a kid, too.
I want to ask the moderator if I can exhange emails with John. This is not to spam but to be friends (if John is up for that). I want to discuss this subject further.
I won’t leave my email until the moderator says its okay because I don’t want to be seen as spamming. I am just looking for like-minded friends in this journey of non-smokers rights to clean air. (Which shouldn’t even be a journey as theres no good reason for cigs to exist)
Smoke kills and hurts people worse than the smoker. Theres tons of shit about the smoke that comes out the burning part of the cigarette is stronger than what gets sucked in.
Check out how these Quora people shit on somebody because they said someone elses smoke was making them feel pain.
https://www.quora.com/I-got-exposed-to-second-hand-smoke-last-evening-and-now-I-have-a-sore-throat-What-to-do-now
Seriously, fuck smokers.
Smokers really suck. They are inconsiderate idiots who are not only killing themselves, but everyone around them too. No one should have to inhale that garbage. Smoking is for losers who can’t manage stress. You can’t smoke stress away you idiots. How about you stick those cigarettes up your ass. I can care less about someone who doesn’t mind killing everyone else. It’s one thing to smoke away from everyone, but to purposely be close to someone who doesn’t want to inhale your stress means you are an inconsiderate idiot. Next time think twice before you light up because it’s not just you living on this planet. Be considerate of others.
Damned straight.