Come on, Michael, use the 'D' word - D E N O R M A L I Z A T I O N.
And, can you guess where it might have come from?
A little thinking time (tick, tick, tick,.............tick). Honkkk!
Time's up.
We need an answer, Michael.
_
"If the true concern were saving health care costs, then Humana would be requiring smokers to actually quit smoking, or else be fired. Instead, the requirement is simply that employees agree to enter a smoking cessation program. " How does this compare to Public Health finding a CURE ,instead of wasting billions on total bollocks AKA tobacco control ? Your choice of phraseology / command of the English language rather needs a little explanation,unless of course you are content to be seen as stating that by forcing employees to stop smoking,health care savings WILL BE MADE.I'm stopping there to allow you to clarify precisely what it is you are saying,and what you meant to say.
The future of "tobacco control"?
http://www.ohio.com/news/top_sto...s/
49365072.html
You-all are losing control Doc - if you ever had it to begin with.
Michelle
http://www.calgaryherald.com/hea...5895/
story.html
Little doubt the HR department will be looking at race and social history as a determinant health risk.
As predicted this healthist bigotry will always degenerate to racial lines of caste designations. It has never been avoided in the past and the loose cannons at the helm, are neither educated, care or are cautious enough, to even consider the obvious in where this insanity will always lead.
Denormalization has to have a face in order for it to stay relevant in the minds eye. That face does not draw a picture of a cigarette plant, rather the unsightly and often homeless smoker, played over and over as file footage when ever smoking restrictions are discussed.
There is little credibility left in the denials of who the target of denormalization is, despite the lies. We can see it and record it for demonstration and proof, every time a commercial is presented as health information.
So Michael, what color are fat people?
The culture numbers of those who refuse to be vaccinated and put others at risk, has yet to be revealed.
"And, can you guess where it might have come from?"
Rick
A letter to the New York Times apparently
"To confront such malefactors, some believed, anything that might work had to be considered, even heavy-handed moral opprobrium. In the New York Times, a psychiatrist wrote,
What we need is a national campaign that results in the stigmatization rather than the glorification of the smoker. This, in my opinion, would be the most effective way of reducing the number of smokers and confining their smoke to the privacy of their homes."
http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/...nt/full/96/1/
47
Unfortunately they are lining up to give the overweight "the treatment" as well.
Treat obese like smokers, says expert
“The Government action has been all about soft policies such as education programs and promoting healthy lifestyles, but that is not going to cut the mustard anymore,” Professor Swinburn said."
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,2...9-
29277,00.html
Over the last half-century, reduction in the use of tobacco products and exposure to their hazards has been the result of a combination of education, regulation, and denormalization.
The same combination of approaches can be used to address obesity, in a strategy where individual approaches are supported by policies and public education campaigns aimed at improving population health through diet and exercise
http://www.alphaweb.org/docs/
lib...b_008731435.pdf
"Martin Gumpert, considered the lifestyle campaigns to be a cover up for the fact that health in Nazi Germany deteriorated dramatically.4 Gumpert proclaimed that the “abstinent Hitler, who from conviction never takes a drop of alcohol... now drives the people at whose head he stands into fatal alcoholism.”
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov...gi?
artid=535959
Rose,
Thank you. A very useful link. It should be of considerable interest to Michael, too.
_
A helpful guide for normal, well adjusted people who haven't yet been denormalized.
Though the archetypes often overlap, a mad scientist need not be an evil genius.
A mad scientist is simply a scientist who has become obsessively involved with their studies and has begun to develop eccentricities by normal standards; an evil genius is a genius who uses their gift for explicitly, consciously evil purposes.
For example, while a mad scientist would test the bounds of science to create an army of zombies, he may do it to see if – or prove that – he could, or out of boredom, to impress women, to help clean up his house, or many other such reasons.
By contrast, an evil genius would construct his army with a purpose, such as taking over the world – in addition to being evil, such characters tend to have large-scale ambition (see Megalomania in fiction).
A mad scientist may be a naive pawn of an evil genius, the evil genius often promising the scientist the funds and resources to conduct his research unaware of the evil purposes for which his work will be used.
Mad scientists also, whilst definitely being intelligent, usually fail to think things through to their conclusion, while an evil genius is usually a clever planner and would have a diabolical use for the army of zombies as well as a plan to avoid being killed by them"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad...i/
Mad_scientist
There, I hope that explained things.
"Unfortunately, this new Humana policy isn't about saving health care costs and improving productivity at all: it's about controlling its employees' lifestyles and picking on smoking as one particular behavioral decision that cannot be tolerated."
Right, just like your proposal of November 11th of last year to increase cigarette taxes by a "substantial" amount in order to discourage smoking (or even, in the case of poor people, of compelling them to quit). (And what does the 'Control' in Tobacco Control mean exactly, anyway?)
Any true distinction between what Humana is doing and your own proposal eludes me entirely, doctor. Except that in the case of your proposal, which is Nurse Ratched through and through, you would steal money from smokers in order to get them to quit, and in the case of Humana, the control seems a bit more nannyish.
You cross a line in November, and still claim virtue?
Explain, please.
.
"By contrast, an evil genius would construct his army with a purpose, such as taking over the world – in addition to being evil, such characters tend to have large-scale ambition (see Megalomania in fiction)." Sounds like the World Health Organisation fits this criteria Rose ?
Si
I am not well up on evil geniuses, but I did read a story about one.
http://www.ruscombe.org/Health%2...cles/
codex.html
In one year they will make it illegal and fire anyone who continues to smoke because they are trying to get out of having to pay the high medical costs for smokers. This is just an intermediary step so that they don't upset people.
They don't upset people ? WTF.
"The Codex is a pharmaceutical initiative that stems from the German death camps." From Rose's link,speaks volumes doesn't it ? And a denormalisation programme against smokers ?
Michelle
"The National Garden Bureau has declared 2009 the year of Nicotiana"
So he is very much in fashion.
Instructions here but its a little late in the season.
http://
extensionhorticulture.unl...Nicotiana.shtml
As you are aware, I own and operate a restaurant here in Ohio.
I have no insurance connections (that I am aware of) with Humana.
BUT, ..if they can "regulate" the lifestyle of their employees by requiring Non-smoking only (which is exactly what they're doing), why can't I employ smokers only?
Because it's only discrimination if it specifically omits non-smokers as possible job candidates?
Same double standard as always eh?
Si
Si
Diversionary tactic, while everyones arguing about tobacco, they don't see whats sneaking up from behind.
"The final attack seems on the surface to be an innocuous tidying-up of the EU Medicines Directive. But, in fact, it will mean that anything with a physiological action can be reclassified as a medicine - and under EU definitions, that means that any product sold in a health store, even herbal tea, could be deemed to be medicines, while items such as coffee and grapefruit juice (which also have proven physiological effects, but which are sold in food shops), will not be affected. So much for Hippocrates, who said, "Let food be your medicine." The new EU laws will say that a product must be either one or the other."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
societ...h.lifeandhealth
Humana of Ohio certainly has the right to implement this policy, but they should at least call it what it is: it's not a health and wellness program, it's an attempt to control the lifestyle of its employees.
This is exactly where everything is going. Since the majority don't smoke, smokers are the guinea pigs in this experiment and once the public becomes totally accepting of this it will move into other areas using the same arguments. Signs of that are already happening all over the place.
The majority have been so dumbed down and brainwashed into believing that all their problems are someone else's fault that moving into other "lifestyle" areas will become easier as more and more fall for that "safety and protection" racket......er I mean rhetoric that all these policies are claiming.
THIS is YOUR legacy Doc, hope you're proud for you help foster it.
Dr. Siegel: “In other words, intolerance of smokers has become socially acceptable in a way that intolerance of other health-related behavior decisions has not.”
Astute observation, Doc. What, exactly, did you think the extremists meant by de-normalization? Did you think smoking could be made an abnormal activity without humiliating and debasing those who engage in that activity? The de-normalization of smokers is proceeding exactly as planned. The public has been indoctrinated to view smokers as nicotine addicted, social misfits; an unclean sub-strata of society that must be eradicated.
Intolerance of other health-related behaviour has not become socially acceptable . . . yet. But, give the fanatics some time. The campaigns to de-normalize the obese and drinkers have barely begun. It will be a slow incremental process, just like the anti-smoker campaign. And, it will employ the same tactics of deception used so effectively by the anti-smoker cult.
But, we’ll all live happier, healthier lives under the beneficial dictatorship of public health. Won’t we?
Talking of which
Depressed nonsmokers might find this useful
Threatened by a herb
"Researchers are trying to discredit St John's wort. They are funded by a pharmaceutical company
What a gullible lot depressed people are. In America they spend $400m a year on the anti-depressant herb St John's wort that has as much effect as a sugar pill. So says a study published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) last month. A trial, involving 200 people who'd suffered from a "major depression" for at least four weeks, found the herb was no better than a placebo. Time magazine's follow up last week devoted two pages to the news, including an interview with a self-appointed "quack-buster" who declared that he wasn't surprised.
Several other things about the trial are not surprising. The researchers received "unrestricted funding" from the drug company Pfizer, who also manufacture the pre scription anti-depressant Zoloft, along with a "me-too" herbal product containing St John's wort. It is also the latest in a series of drug company sponsored drug trials that have raised doubts about efficacy or safety of St John's wort. The researcher advises people currently taking the herbal extract to consider one of the "two dozen prescription medications whose effectiveness has been proved". http://www.guardian.co.uk/societ.../03/
socialcare1
I've tried just about every method there is out there with zero success.
Gum patches and all the other just did not cut it for me, not to mention cold turkey which was the hardest and the most fattening, I even tried the electric cig and it is just no match to the real thing.
Eventually a friend told about a NLP method, check out this article http://www.squidoo.com/
Not_Smoki...moking_Any_More
It’s the one that got me off the cigs and smoke free for GOOD even without gaining weight! 
Good luck kicking the habit!
J.
Jereny said:
"Neuro-Linguistic-Programming"
Look deep into my eyes, ........while I pick your pocket.
____________________________
If Humana and so many other caring corporations can decide to implement a Non-smoking employee only policy, ..why can't I go the other way?
Nothing has changed.
As a potential patron, you are still under no obligation to ever set foot inside my establishment, and if it makes you feel any better, I'll miss your business, ...but I promise, I'll get over it.
As a potential employee, you are free to ask that I change the Smokers only policy to suit your preference, and I am free to say, .ummm,..no,..I don't think I will, but thanks for stopping by.
Perhaps I'll be missing out on one of the brightest employees I would ever have known, but I doubt it, since you couldn't read the Help Wanted sign that states "Smokers only need apply"
You're not "entitled" to work here, and I'm under no obligation to hire you if, in my opinion alone, you are not suited to the job description.
Why would you bother to apply?
This is so NOT complicated.
"I've tried just about every method there is out there with zero success." Guess what,i haven't and i don't give a ****. This isn't a stop smoking forum,or it wasn't the last time i looked.
OT
Control of food supply.
Have you heard of ‘Terminator seeds’? You can only get one harvest out of them. Another type of modified seed will require a particular chemical to be applied for the seed to germinate. You have to keep going back to BigAgra or BigChemical for re-supply. They can charge what they want or not make them available.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_seeds
http://www.diggers.com.au/
articl...gnedToDie.shtml
http://www.banterminator.org/The...es/
Introduction
_
LightningBoy wrote:
"BUT, ..if they can "regulate" the lifestyle of their employees by requiring Non-smoking only (which is exactly what they're doing), why can't I employ smokers only?"
You can choose to hire only cigarette smokers, as doing so isn't prohibited by Ohio law, which allows employers to choose.
But if you provide healthcare insurance for your employees (which the vast majority of restaurants/bars don't), the insurance company may charge higher premiums.
The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops
"Village after village, families told how they had fallen into debt after being persuaded to buy GM seeds instead of traditional cotton seeds.
The price difference is staggering: £10 for 100 grams of GM seed, compared with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds.
But GM salesmen and government officials had promised farmers that these were 'magic seeds' - with better crops that would be free from parasites and insects.
Indeed, in a bid to promote the uptake of GM seeds, traditional varieties were banned from many government seed banks.
The authorities had a vested interest in promoting this new biotechnology. Desperate to escape the grinding poverty of the post-independence years, the Indian government had agreed to allow new bio-tech giants, such as the U.S. market-leader Monsanto, to sell their new seed creations.
In return for allowing western companies access to the second most populated country in the world, with more than one billion people, India was granted International Monetary Fund loans in the Eighties and Nineties, helping to launch an economic revolution.
But while cities such as Mumbai and Delhi have boomed, the farmers' lives have slid back into the dark ages.
Though areas of India planted with GM seeds have doubled in two years - up to 17 million acres - many famers have found there is a terrible price to be paid.
Far from being 'magic seeds', GM pest-proof 'breeds' of cotton have been devastated by bollworms, a voracious parasite.
Nor were the farmers told that these seeds require double the amount of water. This has proved a matter of life and death.
With rains failing for the past two years, many GM crops have simply withered and died, leaving the farmers with crippling debts and no means of paying them off.
Having taken loans from traditional money lenders at extortionate rates, hundreds of thousands of small farmers have faced losing their land as the expensive seeds fail, while those who could struggle on faced a fresh crisis.
When crops failed in the past, farmers could still save seeds and replant them the following year.
But with GM seeds they cannot do this. That's because GM seeds contain so- called 'terminator technology', meaning that they have been genetically modified so that the resulting crops do not produce viable seeds of their own.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/...fied-
crops.html
"I've tried just about every method there is out there with zero success." Guess what,i haven't and i don't give a ****. This isn't a stop smoking forum,or it wasn't the last time i looked.
SuperCallousSi
..............
SCSi,
Give the poor fool some slack.
He does not realize that he has just increased his chances of lung cancer by quite a lot.
According to the 'Lung Cancer Alliance',ex-smokers have a MUCH greater chance of lung cancer!!
The Lung Cancer Alliance( LCA) says that ex-smokers account for at least 50% of new lung cancers and that current smokers only account for 35% of new cancers.
http://
www.lungcanceralliance......tsheet_2008.pdf
Gary K,
the lung cancer stats for Smoking and causes of death among U.S. veterans: 16 years of observation showed that quitting smoking can be a risky.
The LC risk seen more clearly in this pdf.
Humana must be trying to kill their new employees.
Smoking,according to CDC data,prevents Coronary Heart Disease(CVD) deaths!
Using data from here,
http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/brfss/a...qkey=4394&
grp=0
and here,
http://www.census.gov/population...ables/
tab01.pdf
we can calculate that smokers make up 20% of the 35 and over population where the CDC finds smoking related(caused) deaths.
Here,
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/...ml/
mm5745a3.htm
in the provided Table,we find that there are 852,370 CVD deaths in this age grouping and that there are 128,497 smoking attributed deaths.
That is,15% of those deaths.
Now EVERYONE knows that if a smoker dies from CVD,that death was caused by smoking and nothing else.
However;since the CDC says that smokers have only 15% of the CVD deaths and they are 20% of the effected population,smoking MUST HAVE PREVENTED 5% of the expected smokers' CVD deaths.
Smoking 'prevented' 42,619 CVD deaths.
Rabid anti-smokers would have us believe that if an ex-smoker dies a CVD death,that death too was only caused by smoking.
Here,
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/...ml/
mm5644a2.htm
the CDC says that there are as many ex-smokers as smokers.
That is another 20% of the effected CDC age group or 40% total smoker and ex-smoker accounting for 15% of the CVD deaths.
Smoking prevented 25% of the expected CVD deaths,that is 213,093 'PREVENTED' CVD deaths according to the antis and the CDC.
Bill G; "You can choose to hire only cigarette smokers, as doing so isn't prohibited by Ohio law, which allows employers to choose."
Yes, that is correct, but it's a case of closing the barn door after the horse, cow, flying pig has escaped.
The existing staff (all of them) already smoke, and it wasn't a requirement, but because of the "protection" I am forced to provide them, (the Ohio law is specifically designed to "protect" non-smoking employees) they are prohibited by law from doing it on my time, with my permission, on my property.,....wait, ..that's not completely accurate, ..the reality is that they can smoke all they like, and patrons can too, ..the violation of the law occurs if I fail to prevent them from doing so.
It's not illegal to smoke in places of employment in Ohio, it's specifically illegal to not prevent it. This places the onus of compliance squarely on the business and property owner.
Sorry, that's not my job.
My job is providing hospitality, and accomodating the preferences of my patrons, the majority of whom would prefer to be allowed smoke while in my establishment.
Any illusion of a choice is just that.
What we have in Ohio is Citizen spy informants and annonymous tip lines to the health Gestapo office in Columbus to alert the secret Smoke Police force that a cigarette is burning somewhere in the State.
Is this really 2009 America, or 1939 Germany?
Health insurance for the wait staff?,..are you kidding?
Mr. O will be forcing that on me soon enough. And that should just about put me out of the restaurant business.
Don't worry about what Bill just told you Lightingboy. According to him, he and his nonsmoking friends pays the healthcare of all the smokers, so you won't have to worry about paying more for your employees policies! Bill doesn't mind paying more as he knows it evens out when they increase the taxes on a pack of cigarettes.
Fredrik,
Thank you;but,this group,
"Almost all the policyholders were white males, drawn
mainly from the middle and upper socioeconomic
classes", can not be considered to represent the US population in general.
I might add,this is the same problem with the CPS-2 group that the CDC uses for their SAMMEC guesstimates.
But, we’ll all live happier, healthier lives under the beneficial dictatorship of public health. Won’t we?
Actually, Matt, this is very debatable since neither the Doc, nor TC nor ANY one else can guarantee that any of us will actually live happier, let alone healthier or longer lives under their tyranny.
Since they cannot guarantee our happiness or health, I maintain that they all LIE.
"This places the onus of compliance squarely on the business and property owner."
..........................
As a law enforcement person, I would hope that you have been properly trained and deputised to carry out your duties? ROFLOL
"SCSi,
Give the poor fool some slack.
He does not realize that he has just increased his chances of lung cancer by quite a lot." Oh alright then Gary,you've talked me into it lol.
TO: Fredrik Eich
That veteran study has highly rigged stats since in addition to all other common biases in diagnosing and attributing causes for 'smoking related diseases' and mortality, they also excluded all ex-smokers who quit on advice from their physicians i.e. they picked more among the healthier ex-smokers, excluding the sicker ones (cf. fine print footnotes).
Where the model of tobacco de facto prohibition and healthist materialists lead us!
Read and weep. Perhaps those that have full access to Lancet can copy us some excerpts. In essence what I read in a French article about it, these public health figures are calling for de facto prohibition of alcohol one drip at a time and take their model on the one puff at a time anti-tobacco campaign.
Reducing harm from alcohol: call to action
http://www.lancet.com/journals/l...0745-5/
fulltext
International health policy, in the form of a Framework Convention on Alcohol Control, is needed to counterbalance the global conditions promoting alcohol-related harm and to support and encourage national action.
1. it's about controlling its employees' lifestyles and picking on smoking as one particular behavioral decision that cannot be tolerated.
2. The important point is that the company has been able to express its disapproval of the smoking decision and to coerce the employee into entering such a program, whether the smoker actually quits or not.
3. It will not result in any change in the individual's health status (are you sure, Mike?); it will simply scold the employee for that health decision.
4. In contrast to the way the company is handling the decision to smoke
5. In other words, intolerance of smokers has become socially acceptable in a way that intolerance of other health-related behavior decisions has not.
Decision? I read somewhere that cigarettes are addictive. That nearly all smokers start as minors. That tobacco companies jacked up nicotine over the last decade to make them even more addictive.
Why would Michael Siegel characterize a chronic drug addiction as a decision? And where have I heard this before?
Jensen man allegedly drenches wife with hose for smoking
JENSEN BEACH — A man was charged Saturday evening with domestic battery after he drenched his wife with a garden hose and attacked her, according to an affidavit released Monday.
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2009/...---mc_hose_brf/
Well aren't you glad that non smokers, are "denormalizing" smokers so thoroughly that they don't even think this is wrong!
Heres the latest comment: This man's life has been ruined by a "domestic battery" charge which is crap! I hope his idiot wife understands what she has done to this poor man. If I was him, I'd leave her alone so she can smoke herself to death, and the sooner the better!
Posted by Alfie on June 29, 2009 at 5:54 p.m. And I thought California was the land of fruits and nuts, LOL.
But you know, maybe the guy truly loves her and was trying to save her life by "helping" her to stop smoking.........well, that was the best excuse I could come up with.....
Anonymous,
You might want to spend some time considering some of the information in the posts: A little exercise for your cognitive faculties – an expanding of your horizon. At the moment you’re just spouting (parroting) the standard, orthodox, brainwashed position. Do you really believe that everything forthcoming from officialdom, which you have obviously fully absorbed, is entirely accurate?
_
Now here's an opportunity for you.
Since the Doctor and his chums are successfully managing to destroy the British Pub with their SHS theories( something even the Luftwaffe never managed )its a bit like a closing down sale.
American keen to make most of Brit pub closures
"An American businessman is looking to take advantage of pub closures in the UK by salvaging goods to create his own traditional pub.
While up to 50 pubs are closing every week in the UK Greg Pedersen is keen to open a British style pub in Williamsburg, Virginia – a town founded in 1607 with what he describes as "bags of English heritage".
And to make it as authentic as possible he wants licensees on this side of the pond to help him furnish the pub.
He said: “The bar and most of all the fixtures will be from an original English pub. I envision an old English phone booth out front or maybe even functioning as the entrance to the pub.
“I want the menu to include predominantly British fare, yards and half yards of ale, darts and a piano player for nightly sing-a-longs.”
http://www.thepublican.com/
story...storycode=64298
Its a sad thing, in the last recession
at least we could all go to the pub for a bit of cheering up.
Before anyone says, but you can still go to the pub, getting dressed up to go out then having to stand out in the rain and gale force winds ( 50% open to the elements by law )doesn't appeal to most people and plays havoc with your makeup.
Apart from which as TC have spent a great deal of money and a great deal of time persuading people that their friends and relatives are -
Smokers as malodourous
Smokers as litterers
Smokers as selfish and thoughtless
Smokers as unattractive and undesirable housemates
Smokers as undereducated and a social underclass
Smokers as addicts
Smokers as excessive users of public health services
And a £2500 liability to the landlord should you forget your new criminal status and light up.
Why would anyone in their right mind expect a welcome there?
We were warned
In the councils of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
http://
www.bibliotecapleyades.ne...02.htm#Contents
"While up to 50 pubs are closing every week in the UK Greg Pedersen is keen to open a British style pub in Williamsburg, Virginia – a town founded in 1607 with what he describes as "bags of English heritage"." Presumably smoking would be allowed inside ? You know Rose,sitting in front of the TV last night,on comes the advert about tracking down benefit thieves and giving them a criminal record,pity the MP's expenses fiasco never provided the same level of "concern"
LightningBoy wrote:
"Health insurance for the wait staff?,..are you kidding?"
So LightningBoy wants his employees to smoke cigarettes, while relying upon taxpayers to pay for their healthcare costs.
Decision?
Why would Michael Siegel characterize a chronic drug addiction as a decision? And where have I heard this before?
Anonymous
Because, at the core it IS a choice the user makes. They "choose" to start the habit. Then there are the millions who have been addicted to any number of things and have managed to "choose" to quit and do so successfully.
Everything in life in a choice. You may not choose to get cancer or hit by a car, BUT how you respond/deal with what's happened IS your choice. You can live your life or you can be a victim of life..........the CHOICE is yours in the end.
So LightningBoy wants his employees to smoke cigarettes, while relying upon taxpayers to pay for their healthcare costs.
Bill Godshall
...................
In Illinois and Minnesota they would be able to get insurance from S-CHIP and would have themselves and other smokers doing the paying.
Non-smokers are not involved.
Rose;
"Apart from which as TC have spent a great deal of money and a great deal of time persuading people that their friends and relatives are -
Smokers as malodourous
Smokers as litterers
Smokers as selfish and thoughtless
Smokers as unattractive and undesirable housemates
Smokers as undereducated and a social underclass
Smokers as addicts
Smokers as excessive users of public health services
And a £2500 liability to the landlord should you forget your new criminal status and light up."
I take note of the fact that if I were to post an obviously ignorant and racist joke on this forum or anywhere in public for that matter; I would be admonished by others who are subservient to PC rules and limits.
Yet the same people would support without hesitation; taxation of anyone who smokes, to pay for child healthcare. The same high and mighty perfect people who pride themselves on the moral example they hope others will appreciate, will support smoking bans in place of a sign on the door.
They are not fooling anyone they are still quite comfortable with their bigotries. They are just careful to see who others are allowed to attack within their comfortable PC delusions.
They elected a Black President in America and felt pride in their liberal PC attitudes. Now the same man has supported the same personal hatreds, that symbolizes the largest value in his election.
How disgusting is that?
Change? Yes we can, just not right now...
"Why would Michael Siegel characterize a chronic drug addiction as a decision?"
Why would anyone characterize smoking as an addiction and not a personal decision?
People who smoke seek the non psychosomatic and non inebriating comfort that it offers. If that comfort is an addiction, why do the preferred choices of medical treatment, fail more than 98% of the time, while cold turkey succeeds 50-60% of the time?
It is all a matter of what people really want and for generations smoking has been providing comfort to millions. A level of comfort that no medicine or addictive drug product produced to date can either replace or replicate.
If comfort is addiction, put away your ice cream scoops and bath oils, because they are producing what could be described as more sinful than the majority of criminal acts that people are jailed for. With a larger international UN demand for punishment, than most of the real acts of criminality on this planet.
"So LightningBoy wants his employees to smoke cigarettes, while relying upon taxpayers to pay for their healthcare costs.
Bill Godshall | 07.01.09 - 10:31 am |" Smokers have paid in ADVANCE with every cent of tax they've paid.You begrudge a person in need if they happen to be a smoker ?Do you feel relieved now that you've had a cheap jibe Bill ? Better than nicotine is it ?
Godshall, - "So LightningBoy wants his employees to smoke cigarettes, while relying upon taxpayers to pay for their healthcare costs."
You really are a piece of work.
No, what I WANT is for people like yourself to mind their own business.
Nothing more.
I don't need YOU or your comrades to mind MY business as it was doing pretty well until TC decided they know more about my business than I do.
You, like your comrades, assume far too much. You are assuming that the wait staff isn't insured, and/or can't afford to be insured on their own. My employees health insurance status is none of my concern.
Allow me to state it plainly for you, I DON'T CARE.
What I want,...are my rights as the property owner restored in order to allow them to smoke if they choose to. YOU and every other non-smoker remain under no obligation to ever set foot inside the establishment. Existing and future potential employees remain under to obligation to continue their employment and/or to never apply for work in a venue that allows smoking.
Attempting to cloud the issue and change the subject is typical of Tobacco Control proponents.
This has NOTHING to do with Health insurance, and everything to do with my rights as a property and business owner. Choice makes the difference in whether or not a Smoking Ban is either a Health or a Rights issue, and
personal preference (for a "Smoke Free" environment) does not trump Private Property Rights. These things are mutually exclusive unless you happen to be the owner of the property. Private property business owners (specifically in the hospitality and leisure trades) decide on the environment they wish to make available in order to entice a specific market segment of consumers into choosing their unique environment. The public’s only input into this decision is whether or not they choose to accept an offer of employment, or enter that environment as potential patrons or employees. There is no obligation to be there EVER.
Without choice, this is more than just a rights issue, it’s an EQUAL rights issue.
“Choosing Job over health” Another argument without merit. It is already well documented that institutionalized anti-smoking proponents could care less about jobs, and proactively seek to ensure that people are fired, or never hired at all for this specific lifestyle choice. (re; Scotts Co. the Cleveland Clinic and now Humana are easy examples to be cited.) The claim that “jobs aren’t that easy to find” may have some merit in highly specialized fields, and in light of the current economy/job market conditions, but not while the hospitality industry maintains a “voluntary turnover” rate of more than 50% from year to year nationwide. Hospitality and leisure industry jobs are in fact very easy to find, and in a weak economy such as now, “It’s the only job I could get”, or “this is the only place that was hiring” is an all too common refrain. Jobs for Nuclear physicists, Chemists, Blog writing Behavioral Scientists and any medical related profession such as a nurse in the Cleveland clinic are much more difficult to find, especially if you smoke.
You don’t have to like smoking, and you don’t have to like people that do.
You don’t have patronize a business that allows it, but you don’t have to smoke either, in order to do so.
You don’t have to agree with the choices other people make, but then again, no one asked you to.
No doubt there are many smokers who don
’t want to stop, and choose not to even try to quit. But what about the ones who tried to quit smoking and failed? I’m told this applies to most smokers. Can you really say they are making a decision to smoke? Obviously not. So when Siegel speaks of smoking as a health decision (another way of saying choice), it raised my interest. Let’s see now, smoking is a lifestyle decision, a personal choice, just another risk people choose to take…where have I heard that before?
Actually, LB (and Mr. Bill), the world would be a better place if ALL employers got out of the health insurance business and individuals simply bought their own policies through employee co-ops. That would get employers out of the business of caring what their employees smoked, drank, ate, did, and of attempting to measure their blood pressure, cholesterol and body mass index by standards (usually set by pharmaceutical companies) that are ever-harder for most normal, healthy people to attain.
We would all-- employers and employees alike-- be immensely liberated. Until, of course, the government took over the role of our Mommies.
:
nightlight,
I was aware of the doctors orders caveat in the veterans study and have never been sure of what to make of it. Have you anything more to go on?
Walt,
I absolutely agree.
Third party co-pay insurance schemes are the leading cause of rising healthcare costs regardless of the reason for the doctor visit, whether one smokes or not.
Unlike the Anti-Smoker Patrol, I don't care how my employees live their lives on their time, and getting back to the point, if they want to smoke on MY time, I reserve the right to allow it. The State of Ohio however now says I can't allow them to smoke while on MY time, on MY property, for the protection of non-smoking personnel,...of which I have none.
Bill Godshall, you are so full of crap.
Taxpayers are NOT paying their health care costs, they are paying themselves. Excise taxes on cigarettes amount to approximately 5 times the cost of treating smoking related diseases in the UK. I sincerely doubt that the ratio is significantly different in any US state.
In Slovenia, where the price of cigarettes is still relatively low, the excise tax and VAT amount to approximately 3 times the cost of treating all smoking-related illnesses. Also excise tax on cigarettes (approx. EUR 300 mil.) amounts to more than 15% of entire country's health-care budget (approx. EUR 2 billion).
Go crawl back under the stinky rock under which you came from and die of something horrible! And most of all, let me live my fuckin life!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N...h?
v=Nn4IH3yng4k
Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.~Ben Franklin
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.~C.S.Lewis
LIBERTY not TYRANNY (haven't we learned ANYTHING from history?)
Dr. Siegel
Didn't you say that the anti's smoker groups were NOT advocating, and pressuring for smoke free homes? How many more smaller districts are they "testing" the monetary incentive strategy in; for the rest of the country? Your not advocating for smoke free homes, but by being a member of these groups (quietly) you are advocating it.
Take advantage of going
smoke-free - we can help you:
* Save money
* Receive up to $500 towards marketing your property
* Increase the value of your property
* Improve the health of your tenants
Contact us
Erie-Niagara Tobacco-Free Coalition
http://smokefreehome.org/
http://smokefreehome.org/images/...ages/
ENC2x3.png
"The Erie-Niagara Tobacco-Free Coalition was established in 1993, as a result of a collaboration of health and service agencies interested in reducing the risk of cancer, heart, lung and other tobacco-related diseases in Erie and Niagara Counties by decreasing tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke. "
American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, Amherst Task Force for Healthy Communities * Healthy Youth, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of WNY, Boys & Girls Clubs of WNY, Catholic Charities WIC, Cancer Information Services Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Community Health Connection of WNY SUNY Clinical Center, Erie County Council for the Prevention of Alcohol & Substance Abuse, Erie County Health Department, Erie County Department of Senior Services, Erie County Reality Check, Erie County Youth Department, Family and Children's Services of Niagara, Health Association of Niagara, Incorporated, Independent Health, Independent Health, Kaleida Health, Niagara County Reality, YWCA .....
http://enpowerny.com/members.php
LB:
You don’t have to like smoking, and you don’t have to like people that do.
You don’t have patronize a business that allows it, but you don’t have to smoke either, in order to do so.
You don’t have to agree with the choices other people make, but then again, no one asked you to.
Let's carve this in stone!
Commenting by HaloScan
