WI? You also said "piece"!
I get ya hun!
Wasn't gonna post here anymore cause it really is a topic that get's my panties in a bunch (<---waiting...waiting...I know I won't be disappointed with that expression expressed)...!
Anyway...as to what WI said about the feeling of going to family member's home on Thanksgiving and getting the door slammed in his face...I HAVE to disagree with the analogy *ducks the wrath*.
It's really nothing like that with smokers WI. Least where I am anyway. Firstly, even if someone tells me I can smoke in their house...unless everyone is smoking I just don't do it! I go to an appropriate or designated area, ie: outside or in a garage or smoking area. I am more concerned for, what may be, the minority of non-smoker's around and I can just as easily go outside to smoke. My decision...even if I have permission to light up. I do it at my in-laws all the time. My father-in-law smokes and my mother-in-law doesn't and she insists she doesn't mind if we smoke inside. Matter of fact she yells at me when I get up to go out to the garage. Every now and then I hear this cough she has, that she swears isn't from second hand smoke...just that her throat is dry. I believe she thinks that...but I will not contribute to it's intensity. But that's not the only reason why. My father-in-law smokes inside but you wouldn't know it for how clean the house is and the air smells. I don't want to make their home yucky! Myself and Mr. Lixy smoke in our home and I see what the smoke does to the walls and curtains etc. It takes me twice as long as a non-smoker to clean my house thoroughly and I have to do it more often (a really intense cleaning) than a non-smoker would too! Another aspect/residual effect of smoking I hate with a purple passion!
But secondly...and more to the point...
When I go out to a public venue and am told I can't smoke...I either chose to go in or not. That's MY choice! That there are places/counties/whole cities that are smoke-free zones now...even outside, in the open air...on a council board's mandatory ban that you or I had no say in...well...where does it end? How much would you take of someone telling you that you CANNOT do something you have done for years (let's take masturbating for example
I'd call that an addiction...no?), even if you are alone and in your own backyard or bedroom...away from anyone who would be offended by it? Maybe that doesn't compare to smoking...but you get my gist about the infliction of an authoritative rule that shouldn't even apply to you if you aren't harming anyone, don't you?
I can't find an example of something that would hit home to those opposed if they've never had someone tell them that they have no say over something they've always done and now are slowly being shunned and treated childlike, with no option but to bend to the rules till they get so ridiculous and infringe on your rights far beyond what any authority has a right to impose! (<---whew! I'm outta breath!...<---little smoker's joke there...lmfao)!
I can take the rules! I can follow them to a tee! I can choose to go in or choose to stay out. I am polite about my addiction and I don't impose it on anyone else! I am a mature adult and I know what is proper and what isn't.
You've gone too far if you start telling me that I cannot smoke within 1 mile of your establishment! Hey! Merck, the drug company, has that rule in place...don't doubt it! Who the fuck is it hurting if I am 3/4 miles away from your freakin building, in my car, no one else on the road, and I am smoking? It's getting regodamndiculous I tell you!
My biggest objections to all those who are making the rules are...WHO DIED AND MADE YOU BOSS OF THE WORLD? How far are you going to push us? OK...if we all stopped smoking today...where will you make up for the lack of revenue that you'll be missing when the "sin taxes" aren't there anymore?
And where does it all end? How far into my personal life is still keeping within my right to privacy? And who the fuck voted for you anyway? (<---had to add that cause I never voted for any of these assholes who are standing on their holier than thou ground).
In essence...PF putting that moniker on the front door didn't keep anyone out who chose to peek in out of curiousity. You have that right! That you spoke up and got smashed down...well...now you know how we (smoker's) feel. And the more you (non-smoker's) try to sway our view and impose more and more ludicrous rules...the madder we get and the more we try to fight back. Know when enough is enough! Trust that we already know smoking isn't all that healthy! HELP us to find an absolute way to quit! Don't keep slapping us on the fanny and putting us in the corner and making us pay through the nose for something that truely isn't our fault (those who started smoking BEFORE all the warnings and disclosure of man-made addiction inflicted by the cigarette companies themselves).
For those of you who start smoking in this day and age of all the warnings...SHAME ON YOU!!!!!
Don't do it! Your life will suck fore it and sooner or later you'll be buying cigs from the black market due to prohibition! Look up the days of alcohol prohibition and see what I mean.
*wonders if that was enough words for the day while jumping off the soapbox*
*giggle*