Smokers

Ok, this is the 89754th time I got agitated by Reddit, and second third time to the point of writing an article here. This time I haven’t been browsing this shithole as it’s finally time to ditch this rage inducing machine, but unfortunately found a Reddit thread posted in a comment on HackerNews. And I clicked on it.

Smoking neighbors hate this little trick

My neighbor is smoking on the balcony, and smoke goes to my home with little kids. I talked with him several times, didn’t help. It’s his territory, so not much I can do, besides closing the doors. But at least i can use this fake smoke detector with VERY ANNOYING random buzzer. It starts buzzing when i connect to it my iPhone via BLE. Makes it not as relaxing to smoke on the balcony as it planned to be for him. I'm going to train this mofo with reinforcement learning like a fkn Pavlov Dog.This is fucking hilarious. No matter your stance. Laugh or be a bitch.

Alright, let’s dissect this problem. Why is this a problem in the first place?

I mean, logically, why is this guy bothered by the smoke? This is the first fundamental question that arises before all others.

There is a couple of answers to this including:

• Avoidance of passive smoking; not wanting to breathe in toxic substances
• Heightened sensitivity to cigarette smoke
• Not liking the smell

Ok. To a sensible person (which means: not a smoker) just the first argument should be enough. Just take a look at this list of negative health effects of passive smoking from Wikipedia. That’s a lot. Cancer, heart disease, lung problems, cognitive impairment, dementia, miscarriage, and more.

During review of one of the sources I found a very interesting observation.

Conclusion
1. The evidence is sufficient to infer a causal relationship between exposure to secondhand smoke and sudden infant death syndrome.

Interesting! Looks like it can even kill babies!

If you are a smoker - it’s very likely that you haven’t done any research about this. But if you are, and are reading this article - reconsider your life decisions. This is obviously an argument to a sensible person. Many smokers live in delusion, or lie to themselves that “you’ll die anyway”. Yeah, choose your own death, not mine.

Heightened sensitivity to cigarette smoke

This is obviously self explanatory. Someone may feel actual pain after inhaling smoke, even secondhand. Someone may cough, sneeze, or react in any other negative way.

But this might not actually be a case of heightened sensitivity, it may just be that smokers are already used to the deadly effects of smoking and their bodies started to tolerate it. Obviously, you are still destroying your lungs, you are still feeding your cancer (About 80% of lung cancers and about 80% of all lung cancer deaths are due to smoking), but at least you’ve stopped coughing like crazy. You still sometimes let out a cough, but just sometimes. What a relief.

Do they care about bringing discomfort to other people whose bodies are trying to fight this toxic shit? This coughing is of course, for a fucking reason you moron. Your body wants to let you know to not do this shit. You not only do this to yourself, but to others.

Not liking the smell: so selfish!

A person unfortunate enough to have their window open as some smoker starts blowing clouds of toxic waste into their home might just not like its smell!

It for some reason is incomprehensible for some, that people might not entirely appreciate your smells in their homes. But we’ll get to this later.

Now that I think about it I might have gotten the order of questions wrong. The true first question should be:

“Why does the smoker need to use their balcony to smoke?”

The answer is: all or most of the reasons I listed above.

The smoker will avoid the smell of smoke in his space, let it get into your home without warning, and cough occasionally while doing it.

I thought that we’ve established that smokers are not sensible people already.

”Mmmmm prob gonna get downvoted, but it’s his balcony he’s allowed to smoke on it. Don’t like it? Go buy a house”

This is the first line of defense you hear after filing a complaint about smoking anywhere. This is where the logic gets a bit backwards and really exposes smokers’ or smokers’ bootlickers way of thinking.

First of all, it’s the smoker who’s annoying other residents, and annoying is quite an understatement. If you are the annoying one - you get to be expelled from the society, not the other way around. Precisely because you are in society, you are expected to behave and tune your habits to others. This is how it works, this is how it always worked.

I won’t fart in public, I won’t take a shit on the street, the same as I won’t expose other people to toxic smoke because I live among other people. You are expected to behave, we are not expected to tolerate you.

I want to reiterate because this point is quite important. It’s not like living in society, among your neighbors gives you the right to be obnoxious. It’s the opposite. If you are alone, you can be as obnoxious as you want. Go, and fuck yourself.

Ooh but it works both ways! What if someone cooks food and I smell it and I don’t want to?

I’m not fucking joking, this is the argument that some “people” make.

Listen, give me a list of foods which causes you as much or more health effects as smoking. I dare you.

Also, eating is a necessity. Smoking is optional.

Well, smoking is probably a necessity for you now, but that’s because you are addicted. Normal people don’t need to smoke and live just fine. Probably better and longer than you.

You are “Trying to police someone on their own property”, you have no right to!

The smoker ceases smoking on their property once it exits their property. It’s as simple as this.

If your smoke leaves your balcony and hits my nostrils inside MY home, you’ve just invaded my personal space. It literally is fucking harassment.

I should be able to stop you from invading my property with toxic smoke. If you are protected by law because the tobacco industry is profitable to your country and they don’t care whether you end up addicted and others end up getting cancer, it doesn’t make you right. You are still an invader of my space, and to be precise — my body.

The analogy

I want to present you an analogy I came up with the other day;

Let’s say I get a smoke machine and I want to generate some smoke that will inevitably end up in other peoples’ homes, and respiratory systems.

I could put some fart spray in there, or something more troublesome.

Here’s a list of highly toxic gasses for you to pick one.

Thrice a day I will be going out to my balcony, and releasing clouds of smoke for my neighbors to inhale.

Guess how fast the police will arrive and what consequences I will face.

Jail for what, half of my life, or an entire life sentence?

Now tell me, why are all the terrible adverse effects of secondhand smoking well documented and known, including that it can literally kill people, and nobody is doing shit about it?

This is probably something to leave for another article, but the takeaway is: you wouldn’t allow it.

You would call the police on me, exit the building to avoid inhaling the noxious gas (if you knew or suspected of that it was, of course), and probably shame me for the rest of my days. Smokers don’t get this treatment. They are left here to harm themselves and all the people around them.

This desperately needs to stop.