friendly reminder that giving smokers shit is the same as fat shaming (◡‿◡✿)
friendly reminder that second-hand smoking damages the people around you by making them inhale carbon monoxide and carcinogenic chemical compounds linked to diseases such as lung cancer and childhood leukaemia and can cause pregnant women to lose their baby whereas second-hand eating isn’t even a thing (◡‿◡✿)
okay but addiction is formed through poverty and trauma and is a mental illness
and this website sparkly needs to lay off it’s fucking crusade against smoking because it’s never actually against smoking it’s always against smokers and y'all love to be rude as hell
smoking rates, especially rates of new smokers, are lower than ever you really ain’t doing anyone any favors
you just love to hate addictsyo fuck this. second hand smoke does actually kill and i get really fucking sick when exposed to it and smokers always fucking think that they “don’t smell like smoke” and i have to inform them that they in fact *do* smell like it and it’s making me sick, REPEATEDLY.
when your addiction begins to harm other people, you get help, that’s how that shit fucking works. stop acting like just bc addiction is a mental illness that means that i’m supposed to be extra sugar to ppl literally fucking up my nose and breathing.
if someone has any fucking MI and they abuse my physical space i’m gonna be rude as shit you BETTER FUCKING BELIEVE IT
y'all so fucking quick to talk about some autonomy shit but the moment it crosses with MI it’s suddenly an excuse? fuck smokers who don’t get that i CANNOT TAKE THAT SHIT and that they ALWAYS SMELL LIKE IT NO MATTER WHAT THEY THINK and that it PHYSICALLY LOWERS MY QUALITY OF LIFE.It’s not shaming someone’s addiction to say that it is physically dangerous to other people.
Someone smokes in my face and I could die. They smoke outside and come into the same room as me, I have health problems for a week. People lying about having smoked & forcing me by politeness rules to pretend I believe them even though I could smell it? Have made me dangerously ill.And it’s an accessibility issue. Guess whose mobility/access to resources a smoke sensitivity interferes with? Not the smokers.
(And if that weren’t enough, lung cancer runs in my family.)
Sit down and I shall tell OP a tale.
Once upon a time, the USA made some bad whooping cough vaccine. Instead of disposing of it like good human beings, they sold it to Australia for a profit.
I was one of the unfortunate generation that got that bad vaccine. I caught whooping cough and developed chronic bronchial asthma as a direct result. Ever since I was eight years old, I have been vulnerable to every possible lung pathogen in existence. This includes cigarette smoke.
Also, this was before public places were legally assigned as non-smoking zones. Therefore, my formative years were full of fun, fun games like “Dodge the smokers” and “Will we be able to have a meal without some asshole giving me an asthma attack?” and “How long can I hold what little there is of my breath before I can find some fucking clean air?”
My quality of life - and anyone else’s who also suffers lung trouble, for that matter - would have been vastly improved if every single smoker on the planet had been rounded up into their own little smokers’ gulag and left to pollute themselves to their hearts’ content. I refuse to be apologetic for that statement.
BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE YOUR IGNORANT ASS COULD HAVE KILLED ME, OP.
Several. Thousand. Times over.
Hell, one time I had to set up my nebuliser in a public spot and a smoker blithely walked past me in order to light up. Upwind of my asthmatic and wheezing self, who was attached to a life-saving machine at the time. My outraged “Excuse me!” frightened them off enough to smoke elsewhere. But it did not leave any lasting scars.
And smoking is something you can change at will. Unlike, say, gender identity, sexuality, body shape, chronic illness, poverty, or any of a vast number of things that are out of any individual’s control. Your addiction is a choice.
You choose to pollute your own lungs? Fine. Just keep your carcinogenic body the fuck away from anyone else who doesn’t smoke.
Yes, you are actually toxic. For hours after your last cigarette. So it’s not just about you. It’s about you, everything your smoke touches, and everything you touch or interact with for hours after you’ve had your last fix.
Seriously. The toxins in your everyday commercial cigarette are worse than most illegal street drugs. Hell, it might be safer to take crystal meth. Strictly IMO, of course. [Side note - if you are pro-smoking but anti-vax because of ‘chemicals’ you need to rethink your life. Yikes.]
And if you want to cry “helpless addict” or whatnot, you could find people willing to help you quit. Either for a price or for free. It won’t kill you.
OTOH, many of the “remedies” to “fix” the other, aforementioned “problems”… they have killed people.
I’ve spent thirty-six years of my life trying to avoid getting poisoned or hospitalised by smokers. Meanwhile, I have harmed no smoker with my filthy glares or judgemental words.
Quite the power imbalance, no?