These aren’t rules I set for myself. They are rules we as a society have agreed to and follow. For example: a cigarette smoker cannot light up in a restaurant, but vapers seem to think it doesn’t apply to them.
Yes I have a problem with that.
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When did we have that meeting? I must have missed it.
That depends on the location. A good portion of the nation does not have smoking bans. You see, in some places people who think that they know how other people should behave have passed laws dictating behavior. It’s exceedingly rare for these no-smoking laws to have been voted on by the public but rather are enacted by city councils and state legislatures. This is just another example of people trying to dictate the behavior of others because they don’t like something. You are employing the same thought process that gave us sodomy laws, barred black people from using white water fountains, put people in jail for supporting the wrong political system (communism), banned alcohol sales, etc. Does our system allow for these abuses of power? Yes it does. Should we continue dictating how people choose to seek happiness? I for one don’t think so.
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I took my 5-year-old son to a figure-8 demolition derby race at a local fair this fall, and a guy behind us was vaping. Huge clouds of… vapor, I guess – but it still smelled like ass and covered us just like a damn cloud of smoke. Only far larger than any cloud of smoke from any of the cigarette smokers in the crowd. The only other clouds of comparable size where from other asshole vapers.
And I use the term asshole in good conscience.
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And risk getting shot?
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I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I don’t give a rat’s ass about people giving or taking offense – I give a very large hairy Rat-King about assholes puffing smoke and vapor-clouds-filled-with-OMG-CHEMICALS* into mine and my children’s pulmonary zones. If you can manage to smoke whatever-the-eff-it-is-you-smoke without invading my personal space, do so! Yaaaay! You’ve been potty trained! If you are incapable of this feat of adulthood, get the hell back into your den and shit your own bed and smoke by yourself. If you can’t behave like a fully-grown human in public don’t invade our space. It’s not about your strawmannish offensiveness – it’s about your uncivil, inhospitable, boorish, assholish, potentially-health-assaulting actions. Take responsibility for your actions and stop whining about people who respond to your actions with less than welcoming arms.
NB: all uses of “you”, above, refer to public, crowd-embedded vaping assholes.
* scare words used hyperbolically…
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Agreed. Now to just get the memo to people who like to bathe in perfume/cologne. NOT SUBTLE.
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Those tend to be places not filled with a dense concentration of assholes.
When said assholes can retreat to their ranches and fuck around without bothering anybody else – awesome!
In non-rural areas, doesn’t really happen.
Speaking as somebody who grew up in a rural area where people generally left each other alone, because it was so easy to not be bothered by somebody who wasn’t actually bothering you because they were humans, and not boorish assholes who used “oh am I offending you?” as their first line of defense.
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That state would be freedom. We don’t have that in the USA, we have 
Freedom!®:sparkle: which is a different thing, and I am frequently assured by my social superiors that it’s better than the old-fashioned personal responsibility type freedom you’re talking about.
Yeah, I do understand things are better elsewhere - I have relatives in more medically advanced countries, where physicians are not necessarily a privileged elite subject to separate legal and social orders. I should have mentioned where I am.
Doctors here can self-prescribe - and I’ve known several who do - but a person who might actually be more intelligent and informed than any doctor would be prosecuted if caught providing beneficial but proscribed medications to a suffering person.
@M_Dub, please don’t post things that can’t be read and comprehended by blind people. You may be privileged by the circumstances of your birth to have eyesight, but others do not. Text is everyone’s friend. Similarly, you may be privileged to have access to physicians that prioritize healing over the trade protectionism that literally defines the profession, but others do not. If you study the history of the Hippocratic Oath, you will note that its primary function is to restrict the knowledge of healing (received from “those who came before”) to an oath-bound brotherhood (“those who come after”). Other parts - such as banning abortion, torture, execution, and surgery - come and go, but the part about restricting access to the knowledge of healing remains the core of the oath in every version I’ve ever seen.
If an old woman eases a dying person’s suffering with an infusion of poppies grown from her own seed and prepared in her own kitchen at no cost to the family of the victim, she commits a federal crime. If a doctor refuses to allow someone to have vitally needed, life-saving medication, the worst that will probably happen is a malpractice insurance claim. This is simply the reality; laws restricting the use and practice of medicine aren’t about helping people, they are about trade protectionism. They are about restricting freedom to choose, and restricting ability to help others.
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That’s a great point. You chose to take your kid to a public event where people are allowed to engage in the legal activity of vaping didn’t you? At that demolition derby the cars are spewing carcinogens in the air but that’s ok? Maybe you should as you say “stop whining about people”
So you moved away from him right? You took responsibility for your own life and that of your child and moved right? That would solve the problem after all but maybe it’s more your style to be upset about what other people do. Instead of taking positive action on your own accord do you think we need to ban something that other people enjoy?
Whose space is it again? Is it public or is it yours? In my view, fully grown humans are aware that people make different life choices than they do and expect to encounter those people in the commons. They don’t get upset when a public space has people doing things they personally don’t like and they don’t try to dictate how other people live.
Let’s consider civility and hospitality. Is it civil to tell people that they can’t engage in legal activities in public? Is it hospitable to ostracize and demonize people who vape simply because you don’t like it? Before we take the high road, it’s best to make sure we aren’t dragging our baggage up the hill with us.
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So if you’re sitting high on a hill, I can sit down behind you, drink my soda, spew in into the air over you, then throw the can at your head and say “whatever, man, it’s a free country!” and you’ll be cool with that, because you chose to be out in public, right? Because you have the right to move away you shouldn’t whine about my freedoms, right?
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I love how the self defense of vaping is embodied by the image/video from this article of the uber douchenozzle vaping. If you look at that image and don’t want to slap the ever loving hell out of that guy, it’s probably because you want to be that guy.
have fun with that.
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The defense of vaping is nothing more than lauding the most effective smoking cessation tool we’ve ever had access to. The lengths people will go to tear-down and ignore the good because they feel a smug sense of superiority is mindblowing.
Vaping is saving lives. A lot of lives. And you’re concerned about being smugly self-righteous.
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Projecting much?
Where’s the middle option, the ancient Way of the Shrug?
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The anti-vaping crusaders will do anything to avoid having to admit that vaping is saving lives and making people healthier. That isn’t even on their radar, because they don’t care about the health of others.
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That often happens when you get emotional about a cause.
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And you call my argument strawmanish. Right.
Vaping and intentionally spraying soda followed by can tossing are not the same thing. Intentionally blowing smoke in someones face is simple assault as is any intentional causing of harmful or offensive contact with another
“Intentionally spitting on another person is an offensive touching that rises to the level of simple assault,” - U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
Blowing smoke or vapor not directed at someone is not… so, your comparison is without merit.
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thanks for labeling me. Vaping isn’t the thing I have a problem with. Its the person doing the vaping who is oblivious to how the effect others and cares not for it merely “doing anything to avoid” giving a damn about others.
moving on from assholes now.
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#“Oh, am I offending you with my life-saving crusade? FREEDOM!”
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It’s interesting how you manage to get “not intentionally blowing smoke or vapor in someone’s face” in a crowd situation where they blow smoke and vapor in people’s faces. They joined they crowded crowd of their own free will, cognizant* that they were sharing air with others who sat down there before them. They chose, of their own free will, to share their vapor with others without asking if the others wished to do so.
I could have done something similar with a limburger sandwhich. Or by dousing myself in eau de skunk.
This is not illegal. Being an asshole is seldom illegal.
One is free to be an asshole.
But, in freely choosing to be an asshole, one does not get to be all offended when others call you an asshole.
* I’m probably being generous on this point.
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