Why are so many vapers against themselves?

[CommaHolly]

No, but I can tell you which political party to switch to in order for me to keep on top of my jones.

Does that help?

yep,,,,,forget the rest of our rights,,,,,,vaping is paramount.

 

[KenD]

Right, that's an important point because increasingly draconian smoking bans are becoming more and more commonplace -- outdoor bans and so forth. When we discuss this topic, I think a lot of us are talking past each other because we're used to a particular type of indoor smoking ban, and a number of people here don't think it's unreasonable to put the PV away in certain, if not most, buildings.

And that's fine, but if we allow vaping to be categorized in the public consciousness as akin to smoking, then we will face far more intrusive restrictions in the very near future. Or now, depending on where you live. We've already seen outrageous examples -- like the prohibition against vaping within 25 feet of a bus stop in Washington DC, or against vaping anywhere on a college campus, for instance. Or within 3 blocks of a hospital building. Or within your own car if you're on hospital grounds.

Honestly, restrictions like those would be unacceptable even if they only concerned cigarette smokers, but when the same establishment forces that insist you're a second-class citizen for smoking also go out of their way to oppose the most effective smoking replacements available -- to keep you paying regressive sin taxes or in pursuit of some misguided crusade against nicotine (which by itself is effectively harmless) -- then you know you've got trouble. We are, in a very real sense, fighting for people's lives here. Scoff if you like, but anyone who smoked for any considerable time before finding e-cigarettes knows it's true.

It should go without saying that private establishments (and even physically enclosed public establishments) have the right to prohibit vaping. It also goes without saying that individuals who pointedly flout such prohibitions should be more considerate. As I see it, those statements are self-evident, and therefore only of scant interest.

The real issue is that certain anti-vaping policies, public or private, current or future, bespeak an aggressive and malignant ignorance that must be opposed. That doesn't mean we should all march on the nearest health-food restaurant and conduct a cloud-blowing contest. That doesn't even mean that any particular policy maker doesn't have a right to enact ignorant policies on his own property. It just means that we should try our damnedest to educate the uninformed, and to fight the dishonest.

I'm of the exactly same opinion

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

 

[Criticalmass]

And though many people bemoan how this country is apparently going to hell in a handbasket because "all our rights are being taken away" fail to notice how many more rights - and protections - we have now than in the past. The right to fair wages (or at least minimum wage), the right for blacks and women (gasp and gasp!) to vote (and sit in any place in a restaurant or bus), the right to fair trial, protections from discrimination in the work place, the right to a free education, protection from mistreatment, protection from rape and beatings and abuse, the right for women and children to NOT be considered the sole property of a husband, the rights of children to be protected from physical and sexual abuse, the right to walk the streets, use the library and enter a hospital no matter our color or nation of origin, the right to a thousand little protections we DO enjoy to day that we DID NOT necessarily enjoy in the "good old days" people seem to want to remember...because back then, well, people could smoke.

Come on...

Education isn't free. If anyone here has kids, they will know what I mean. We all get the lists of school supplies every semester that we have to buy. All the crazy fundraisers. Etc. Yes, the law states that the public school system is supposed to supply that, but it is largely ignored.

And Fair Wages. Have you tried living on your own with a minimum wage job? I know people who have, and there's nothing fair about it.

But if you are okay with having your conversations recorded because a particular word you might have used in a telephone conversation, in a text, or email, then so be it. Just realize that those scantily clad or nude pictures you might have sent someone at one time are sitting somewhere within an NSA server farm aren't "really" private.

hehe.

 

[JMarca]

No, but I can tell you which political party to switch to in order for me to keep on top of my jones.

Does that help?

Sadly I don't think it will in this case.
Whichever one you pick someone will come along and tell you how wrong you are.

 

[CaliforniaGirl]

Education isn't free. If anyone here has kids, they will know what I mean. We all get the lists of school supplies every semester that we have to buy. All the crazy fundraisers. Etc. Yes, the law states that the public school system is supposed to supply that, but it is largely ignored.

And Fair Wages. Have you tried living on your own with a minimum wage job? I know people who have, and there's nothing fair about it.

These complaints are very, very indicative of a very, very spoiled society.

Try doing any of this 100-ish years ago and then you'd see what "unfair wages" and "unfree education" really were.

 

[CaliforniaGirl]

Sadly I don't think it will in this case.
Whichever one you pick someone will come along and tell you how wrong you are.

Crap. And here I thought I had things all wrapped up.

The formula seems pretty simple, it's the same one my children use for voting for class president. "Sure, she's a mean-spirited rich girl bully but she promised us all free cookies."

Done.

 

[Criticalmass]

How come I see a whole bunch of fat people (like myself) in various public places, but don't see any smokers (like myself) who are smoking? Seems like we live in a society that tolerates obesity, even if they loathe it on the inside, but absolutely hates smokers smoking, even if we still think it looks kinda cool.

I currently know of no one who allows smoking in their private residence. Pretty sure I know a whole bunch of people that allow us fat people to visit their residence, and oh my god, eat stuff while there.

Because you haven't been banned yet. That doesn't mean that we as a society are not perfectly okay with discriminating against fat people.

Go to an american beach, take your shirt off, and enjoy the sun. Then spend about 2 minutes looking around at people's reactions.

In Europe, nobody thinks twice about it. But here in America, you'll get the stink eye and maybe overhear a few comments about how the fat guy needs to put his shirt back on because it is traumatizing their kids or whatever.

 

[KillerStephen]

I tend to not vape anywhere smoking isnt allowed.

I may sneak in a little puff in the bathroom or something, but I dont do the whole non discreet haha I can vape anywhere I want thing that alot of people do. Thats what got vaping banned at my workplace... People walking around blowing huge clouds in the hallways, meeting rooms, etc.

I try not to wave it in peoples faces.

 

[Uma]

Rub it in people's faces and they'll ban it. We've seen it over and over. It's the jerks that ostentatiously vape in crowded public areas just to get a reaction that are really responsible for these ridiculous bans. Do we really expect local governments to bend over backwards for the fraction of 1% that vapes at the cost of those that are upset by it?

Keep it on the DL and it'll stay legit. Blow big clouds in public and it'll get banned. Simple as that.

It's not that simple. Even in this forum, this thread, we see exaggerated clouds of visualizations in protest of the right to quit smoking.

 

[Criticalmass]

These complaints are very, very indicative of a very, very spoiled society.

Try doing any of this 100-ish years ago and then you'd see what "unfair wages" and "unfree education" really were.

Listen. I went to public school when everything actually WAS provided. You needed a pencil? here it is. paper? sure thing.

I challenge you to live on minimum wage for 3 months with no support or help from anyone else and do it working 40 hours a week. You can pay rent or eat. Which do you prefer?

I'm sorry you don't like what I am saying. But don't attempt to tell me it's not true because I have witnessed it. These are laws that do not help, so they have no point, but we spent time and money investing in them. So we have wasted time and money on laws that either do not work or are ignored.

 

[Jman8]

You reading this ANTZ? All ya gotta do is get your 0 mg juice out, fill up your eCig and go into public places and obnoxiously vape wherever you can. Do that as often as possible. This will then lead to bans everywhere in public and make the overall goal of banning possession and sales of vaping that much easier. If you think you are doing something devious, don't feel that way. Many vapers will be right there with you to call for bans in public places. Who knows, you might even get our full support.

 

[Zealous]

These complaints are very, very indicative of a very, very spoiled society.

Try doing any of this 100-ish years ago and then you'd see what "unfair wages" and "unfree education" really were.

Minimum wage IS impossible to live on without some sort of subsidy. Spoiled or not as a society that statement is true.

 

[StarsAndBars]

Ah... the saga continues.
Yet another it's my right to vape anywhere thread.

Can't we drop these and talk about something else?
Anyone need battery advice or want to know which e-go battery to buy?

This is an important topic. Every time I join one of these threads, it becomes more obvious. People seem to have so many definitions of things like 'discretion,' and 'entitlement,' and that needs to be discussed.

 

[CaliforniaGirl]

Listen. I went to public school when everything actually WAS provided. You needed a pencil? here it is. paper? sure thing.

I challenge you to live on minimum wage for 3 months with no support or help from anyone else and do it working 40 hours a week. You can pay rent or eat. Which do you prefer?

I'm sorry you don't like what I am saying. But don't attempt to tell me it's not true because I have witnessed it. These are laws that do not help, so they have no point, but we spent time and money investing in them. So we have wasted time and money on laws that either do not work or are ignored.

I challenge YOU to live on NOT EVEN minimum wage, that's the whole point.

Kids in school can still get pencils if they can't afford pencils. They can get lunch if they can't get lunch. Where do your kids currently go to school? Just curious. Because I'd be interested to hear about a USD that refuses supplies to children living under the poverty level.

And please don't get me started on supporting children on a very low wage, I fully supported my son as a single parent with literally no assistance (family, or government...God forbid) and slept on a couch (and was lucky to do so) - that was after I fought and clawed and worked my way up from being able to afford only one room, yes one room total for us to live in) for nine years. And I was a very bright, very capable, very willing to work young lady. (And DID I work, whew.)

If it had happened even 50 years earlier I would not have been that lucky, it's likely I'd have simply been forced to give my child up for adoption. One hundred years earlier, and we'd have been run the hell out of town and I'd probably have been prostituting just to eat.

Yes, minimum wage is a right - just one of the many I mentioned - that we have today that we did not have in the past. Did I say it was perfect or could support a family? No, I don't believe I did.

 

[JMarca]

Because you haven't been banned yet. That doesn't mean that we as a society are not perfectly okay with discriminating against fat people.

Go to an american beach, take your shirt off, and enjoy the sun. Then spend about 2 minutes looking around at people's reactions.

In Europe, nobody thinks twice about it. But here in America, you'll get the stink eye and maybe overhear a few comments about how the fat guy needs to put his shirt back on because it is traumatizing their kids or whatever.

Must be their "right" not to look at fat people.
But when cousin Jimmy comes along to the beach with them it's ok when he takes his off and sits there eating a triple quarter-pounder while stalking the blonde chick next to him.
Because this here be 'merika and people here have rights doncha know?

 

[Criticalmass]

And insurance issues...don't even get me started. Yes, there IS quite literal, financial, legal and health care discrimination either already extant or in the works against the fat...which not very many people have so much as said "boo" to thus far...until the 60-some percent of us who are overweight start feeling it.

And yes. There absolutely is continuous media bombardment of shame and disgust for fat people (ironically, considering how many of us are fat), I'd say comparable to the order of shame and disgust for smokers. It is literally nonstop and everywhere you look. In addition, for many of us, if we're fat, "well-wishing" family, friends and even strangers will NOT HESITATE to say so...sweetly. (And intrusively and relentlessly...)

Whether or not one feels it's justified isn't the point I'm trying to make here (I won't make that judgment) - it's the fact that there is, indeed, discrimination on virtually every level right now for the fat, and it's getting (legally and economically) worse by the minute.

So yeah. I'd say comparable to anti-smoking, for sure.

Some may say "But people CHOOSE to get fat." Yeah. We CHOOSE to vape, too.

ETA: Even the fat hate the fat. I remember when I was 20 lbs. overweight after having my second son. My mother-in-law, who at 5'4" weighed TWO HUNDRED AND TEN POUNDS, told me RELENTLESSLY that she "wanted me to lose weight" for "your (my) health."

It was non-stop, this weight-deteriorated-kneed Weeble telling me "sweetly" over and over aaaaaaaaaaand over again how I was fat........

She even took a picture of me once, showed it to me on he digicam and said, "Don't worry, I'll just cut all this" (and she swept her finger FROM MY NECK TO MY TOES in the picture) out."

Can I get a ZOMG?

What's funny to me is doctors define obesity as being 20+ pounds overweight. I just call that healthy. lol. The women and dudes on the magazines? heh, The Women never eat and look like skeletons with skin, and the guys with the sixpacks have to constantly eat. No fat = no energy reserves = first one to die if they get stranded somewhere without food for a few days.

But it's popular so that's what they tell us is healthy. go figure.

 

[Uma]

The most important thing to fight for is to prevent vaping from being treated like smoking.
That one thing encompasses all the things you mention, and so much more.

Vaping is not smoking, and simply lumping vaping in with smoking restrictions is not right and it is not fair.

If you think it's fair, just wait until you get a ticket for vaping at the beach, or in a public park.
If you think it's fair, just wait until you have to exit the entire stadium to have a quick vape break during a football game.
If you think it's fair, just wait until you aren't allowed to vape in your own car in a parking lot.

If you think it's fair, just wait until they won't hire you because you have nicotine in your system.

By the way, I just want to clarify one thing about my post...

We should be fighting for the same distinction between smoking and other tobacco products.
And we should also be fighting against the further spread of increasingly ridiculous smoking bans.

But this is a vaping forum, and so I didn't think of mentioning that in my previous post.
Besides, it's hard enough to get people to stand up for vaping.

It's all about social stigma. I can think of one drug used largely for recreational and some medicinal purposes that was outlawed because the owner of a newspaper was racist and saw it being used by these people. So he used all media outlets at his disposal to demonize it until laws were passed making it illegal. For close to a century now we still operate under beliefs that this mogul professed to be true which we know are not.

E-cigarettes suffer a similar stigma because people see the smoke so it must be bad for you and everyone around you, despite what reports are saying.

We suffer from a society that is A: Largely uneducated, and B: Love to hop on the bandwagon of whoever is preaching this week about something that is "bad". We have played into the trap set by people in power who see this kind of thing as a way to assert "control" over the populace by feeding them incorrect information under the belief that because so-and-so said it, it must be true.

Many laws and policies like this are based on uneducated opinion, not fact or science. Welcome to America.

To me it's the same as someone coming up to me and complaining that they do not like the smell of my coffee and to please throw it away or move away from them. (I have actually had this happen). My response was for them to "get over themselves".

Our society is continually finding new ways to become intolerant of more and more groups of people within this country. As a people, we have become incredibly snobbish, smug, and arrogant. And I amuse myself by distributing verbal slaps to the face when I encounter these people and they make the foolish mistake of making idiotic requests like this.

Sadly, we have also lost our will to fight back. I believe Prohibition and the underground bars and speak easy joints, running moonshine (which eventually led to Nascar), etc. Was the last time that we as a society decided a law was stupid and we not only weren't going to follow it, we rebelled against it and won.

The World Health Organization has recently listed AIR as cancer causing... 244,000 people last year died from Lung Cancer due to air pollution. Not cigarette smoke or second hand smoke.

How many times have you gotten behind an old SUV or Truck and were left in a plume of horrid smelling throat choking exhaust.

We haven't we banned SUV's and Trucks for personal use? Because they're popular.

Right, that's an important point because increasingly draconian smoking bans are becoming more and more commonplace -- outdoor bans and so forth. When we discuss this topic, I think a lot of us are talking past each other because we're used to a particular type of indoor smoking ban, and a number of people here don't think it's unreasonable to put the PV away in certain, if not most, buildings.

And that's fine, but if we allow vaping to be categorized in the public consciousness as akin to smoking, then we will face far more intrusive restrictions in the very near future. Or now, depending on where you live. We've already seen outrageous examples -- like the prohibition against vaping within 25 feet of a bus stop in Washington DC, or against vaping anywhere on a college campus, for instance. Or within 3 blocks of a hospital building. Or within your own car if you're on hospital grounds.

Honestly, restrictions like those would be unacceptable even if they only concerned cigarette smokers, but when the same establishment forces that insist you're a second-class citizen for smoking also go out of their way to oppose the most effective smoking replacements available -- to keep you paying regressive sin taxes or in pursuit of some misguided crusade against nicotine (which by itself is effectively harmless) -- then you know you've got trouble. We are, in a very real sense, fighting for people's lives here. Scoff if you like, but anyone who smoked for any considerable time before finding e-cigarettes knows it's true.

It should go without saying that private establishments (and even physically enclosed public establishments) have the right to prohibit vaping. It also goes without saying that individuals who pointedly flout such prohibitions should be more considerate. As I see it, those statements are self-evident, and therefore only of scant interest.

The real issue is that certain anti-vaping policies, public or private, current or future, bespeak an aggressive and malignant ignorance that must be opposed. That doesn't mean we should all march on the nearest health-food restaurant and conduct a cloud-blowing contest. That doesn't even mean that any particular policy maker doesn't have a right to enact ignorant policies on his own property. It just means that we should try our damnedest to educate the uninformed, and to fight the dishonest.

Well said!!!

There were more posts too, but I've already collected a full page worth.

 

[twgbonehead]

we in the US have become lazy...that's all.....when's the last time you seen a real protest (peaceful or not)? in the street....on TV that happened in the US?

Well, there was that guy standing defiantly in front of the tank! (Oh, wait a minute.......)

 

[Wildflowers69]

Vaping is new to our society. We are the future. We are role models. So we must remain courteous of others. We can make it or break it.

 

[Jman8]

Because you haven't been banned yet. That doesn't mean that we as a society are not perfectly okay with discriminating against fat people.

Go to an american beach, take your shirt off, and enjoy the sun. Then spend about 2 minutes looking around at people's reactions.

In Europe, nobody thinks twice about it. But here in America, you'll get the stink eye and maybe overhear a few comments about how the fat guy needs to put his shirt back on because it is traumatizing their kids or whatever.

I acknowledge and agree that fat people are discriminated against. Usually in a fairly rude way. Still doesn't compare to discrimination that smokers face. Not even close in my book. There's only 2 groups of people in America that I can think of who are treated less fairly than smokers, and both of those would be of the variety that are persons who many think deserve the death penalty just for being who they are (or choose to be).