Smokers

Unpopular opinion incoming. If you can't handle touchy subjects or are here to be a self-righteous zealot, please leave now. Think before you comment, please.

I don't smoke, but it bugs me that people treat smokers like rubbish simply because of that. There are already laws barring them from smoking in various establishments, and the last I heard, somewhere was trying to pass legislation on smoking in personal cars/vehicles.



My best friend smokes, and when I hang out with him, people give us death glares or rail on him for being some kind of menace to society. For what? If a smoker wants to smoke, so be it. It's their body, and their choice of what to do with it. It's not considered a sin in most religions (as far as I know), and people have been smoking for a long, long time.

In fact, it's not so much the tobacco that's dangerous in itself- it's all the additives and chemicals the governments force companies to put in them. In fact, alcohol is more of an immediately dangerous drug, yet that is not as taboo (and at times even encouraged) by society. Yet, you see nobody whining about that.

Anyhow, for all the people complaining about people smoking in public? There's something called "move out of the way from the wind/smoke direction". I stand on the opposite of the wind direction when I hang with my smoker friend, and I have no problems. Besides, at least the people I hang out with have the courtesy to move when asked or avoid those who can’t tolerate the smoke. You can’t pigeonhole all the smokers for the few that do decide to be insufferable gits.

No amount of condemnation and threats about health risks or otherwise will force all smokers to quit. Whatever happened to free will and choices? Besides, we all die someday. If someone wants to guide themselves to their chosen method of death, so be it.

TL;DR? Smokers are people too, just like me and you. Everyone makes bad choices in their lives- be it smoking or whatever. Don’t be a hypocrite and single them out on one lone thing when you’ve probably done something just as bad sometime in your life.

Smoker Image © Unknown Photographer