While I know that blanket generalizations are not a good idea, I have to admit I have encountered a significant amount of of JerkAss behaviour from smokers. I understand they feel infringed on by the laws that restrict them, but sheesh!

...including my own mother. I developed a sensitivity to cigarette smoke as a kid. When I complained about her smoking around me, she'd blow smoke in my face. By the time I reached adulthood, and we had better information about secondhand smoke, I had asthma.

I think many people would consider that child abuse.

I've also encountered people who called me a Nazi for saying I was grateful that certain public places had been declared No Smoking. I am not myself a JerkAss; I think making it illegal to smoke inside your own house or your own car is ridiculous.

I do and don't agree. On the face of it, yeah, it seems ridiculous to forbid people from smoking in their own homes/cars, but what if they have kids? Don't children have the right to grow up healthy? Kind of hard to do that if the adults they live with are filling up their sleeping spaces with smoke.

And because of a "what if?"-condition, everyone should be banned from smoking inside their vehicles or homes? I strongly disagree here; Every parent should be smart enough to not expose their kids to second-hand smoking, and those who don't understand that should've considered the limitations that parenthood causes. And this doesn't even come from a person who smokes inside himself; I always go outside for a smoke, unless there's a designated place for smoking inside.

Even when I smoked, I made a point of going outside to do so (also makes it a lot easier to quit when you get fed up of freezing your butt off 10 times a day!). If people come to visit, they're told they can only smoke outside.

This troper has actually read a letter to the editor on this subject. The opening paragraphs were structured similarly to a complaint about some nasty '-ism', including the writer and her husband basically having to 'flee' from California due to the prejudice... but when the writer revealed that it was all due to the fact that she and her husband were smokers, every scrap of sympathy that this troper might have had for them vanished.

This troper is not a habitual smoker, but embodies this trope nicely when he does choose to smoke. A cigarette by itself marks him as "one of the lads." He also has a long cigarette holder for when he wants to appear aloof and slightly fey; a pipe to evoke an easygoing, avuncular image (or alternatively to mimic J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, since it's exactly the same kind of pipe seen in the Dobbshead); cigars for the CorruptCorporateExecutive image; and a large hookah for purposes of sitting on a cushion and looking exotic and mysterious. He also has nasal snuff to make him look aristocratic. And yes, he's seriously not a regular smoker... just a versatile one.

When this troper was younger, the majority of her friends (sadly) had separated parents, with them living with their mothers, all of whom smoked. She remembers them swearing to never smoke (as well as some other things). Now, this troper isn't a fan of smokers either, and hates the fact that she has to walk through a crowd of them every morning and afternoon when going and leaving school, as all the smoking students congregate along the sidewalk and (annoyingly) around the crosswalk in front. She found it incredibly ironic that after drifting apart from these friends in high school, one with asthma was a smoker, as well as another which had once threatened to leave her home if her mother continued to smoke. The other one she isn't sure about, but hasn't heard the greatest of stories about her.

This troper's a ten-a-day, rolls-his-own smoker and loves it. Specifically, the indoor-smoking ban in the UK means that he tends to make some really great friends when he pops outside for a quick fag (and it's even more fun using that phrase around Americans, to whom it means...something ''different'' from what it does here).

But any American who pays the slightest bit of attention to context can usually figure it out. After all, how would you smoke a human being?

Good god, does the phallic imagery need to be any less subtle here?!

Actually since 'smoke' can be a euphamism for 'kill' you could be saying that you are going out to 'kill a gay person'.

Emperor Zombie managed it in the Screw-on-Head cartoon.

Its true, there's a certain we're all in it together feeling among those standing outside the pub or the like.

This Troper is a habitual smoker (read: addict) who, while understanding the plight of the non-smoker, feels that anti-smoking bans are ridiculous. There are more short-term health problems caused than reduced due to being outside in inclement weather and the laws themselves are unconstitutional based on the fact that they have taken the right to choose away from business owners. Non-smokers always have the right to leave or refuse to patronize an establishment that allows smoking. The next person in line may now use my soapbox. :D

1. Going outside in bad weather to smoke might be worse for your health, but it's better for the health of all the non-smokers still inside the building, who are already doing all they can for their own health by, you know, not smoking. 2. Patrons of a smoke-friendly establishment might have the option of leaving, but ''employees'' of that establishment don't. You can't just switch jobs as readily as you can switch restaurants.

If the ''employee'' is so anti smoking, why did they ''apply'' to work in a place that allows smoking to begin with? That's where arguments like this fall apart. It might be hard to switch jobs, but if the employee didn't want to be around smoke ''they wouldn't have applied to a job where people are allowed to smoke around them''. If they applied to said job knowing people would be smoking around them, and decide they don;t like it ''it's their own damn fault'' It's called '''personal responsibility'''. If they didn't allow it when you started but do now, the boss is being an ass, but that's his right.

That doesn't make it not an option; especially given how many service workers for restaurants statistically don't work for one employer that long, and usually have multiple potential employers within a small radius. Note, as well, that between a fourth and a third of all restaurant workers report smoking (depending on location). I'm sure ''that'' isn't unpleasant...

Even in a seekers' job market, switching jobs takes time. Suppose you're a restaurant worker with an acute sensitivity to tobacco smoke (asthma, allergy, etc.), and your employer decides to make the restaurant smoke-friendly. What are you supposed to do, just quit and be unemployed until you can complete the job-hunt process with a smoke-free restaurant? Bear in mind that food-service jobs generally don't pay too well, so you are unlikely to have savings to live on in the interim. What if all the restaurants in the area play follow-the-leader and start to allow smoking?

Restaurants, fine. But bars? If you don't want to work around smoke, work at a restaurant. Also, it's not as if there are any minors in the bar being protected by the ban.

It's the health of all the workers and patrons, not just minors.

Okay, let's put this in another way; Why ban smoking in places, which have already been established as smoke-friendly, and where both the workers and the patrons accept it? Couldn't it just be an option to keep the place smoke-friendly and inform about it at the entrance, and if someone has a problem with that, that someone could just go find another bar? Shouldn't be that hard. The point is, I don't have anything against places banning smoking of their own interest, but when it's mandated by law in spite of the owner's, the workers' and the patrons' interests, it's bullshit.

This troper was the ''Only'' kid in his neighborhood that did ''not'' smoke, and we were the only completely non-smoking family on the block, this only gave the neighborhood kids all the more reason to ridicule and tease me.

This troper used to walk to school every day and had to hold his breath when he passed by a group of no less than a dozen smokers that stood outside the school, otherwise it was like walking into Auschwitz on a Monday. Because of this he stares daggers at anyone who stands by him and asks "mind if I smoke?".

Drama Queen much? This is why I A) don't even bother asking and B) completely ignore all the pansy little glares and pointed coughs.

The above troper is part of the reason why some people hate smoking so much; not so much that it affects your health but that people have a blatant disregard for your health. Don't smoke when you're in a public place and non-smokers are ''forced'' to be around you, it's incredibly disrespectful. There's a time and a place for smoking.

Coughs are not pointed for me.

For the original poster; How about staring daggers at the people who DON'T ask? It's in my opinion quite dumb to discourage a courteous smoker from asking permission in the future. Oh, and "Drama Queen much?"-fellow? Fuck off, you're giving a bad name for smokers who actually have some manners.

I've got plenty of manners, but if someone is going to act like a pissy little bitch, they shouldn't be surprised when that's how they get treated. As far as 'giving smokers a bad name' goes, I think you attribute a degree of world-wide importance to my actions that they don't actually possess.

This troper doesn't smoke, and doesn't understand why so many people assume that he does. It got very annoying when people were asking him on the street for a light.

OH NOES! Someone thought you were a dirty, dirty smoker!! Call the police!

Uh, what? What's with this reaction?

You know what? SMOKE MY POLE

This troper has taken up smoking cloves (yes, I aspire to the Cool Smoking suspension) and once applied the logic of pro-equality movements (namely in relation to Gay Rights) in a rather tongue-in-cheek manner one frigid day (I also grew up around and currently reside forty minutes outside of Buffalo, New York; make of that what you will). Turning to a friend who so happens to be both a fellow clove-addict and a lesbian, I cried in my best falsified indignation: "This isn't a personal choice! This is a lifestyle! Why should we be treated as inferior citizens for it? What happened to liberty and equality under the law?" When she pointed out what exactly I'd just done, we decided to start a new political organization: Fags For Fags (or: F-Cubed). We plan to bring tobacco, cloves, marijuana, shisha, and what-have-you to all underprivileged inner-city gay youths.

And just an addendum to all the debate of regarding finer points of etiquette and smoking?honestly, folks, I've been on both ends of this argument as a former asthmatic and as a smoker. While it's courteous for a smoker to stand a decent distance from entrances, to ask before lighting up when in mixed company at close quarters, and to assume that enclosed spaces over which the smoker holds no form of ownership are not kosher within which to smoke, non-smokers need to lay off the proselytizing. Yes, I choose to smoke; yes, I can respect your choice not to smoke. The dirty death-glares and over-dramatized, self-induced lung-hacking are unnecessary and rude when a few simple, polite words would do. Would it be acceptable to walk into a [=McDonald's=] and start protesting obnoxiously the very idea of ordering any food there and talking loudly about clogged arteries, aneurysms, heart attacks, type-two diabetes, and obesity as customers go about their business? No. The same concept is in play: manners. Other people have just as much a right to make unhealthy choices as you do.

Some of us are so terribly sensitive to cigarette smoke that we are trying desperately to NOT hack-cough when we catch a lungful walking past because we don't want to seem rude. Yes, I have the same problem with road repair and roof work in some cases. It's the tar, not the nicotine. But my point is that not all of the lung-hacking is self-induced or meant to make a point.

The difference being, if I don't want to eat at [=McDonald's=] because I disagree with unhealthy food, ''I don't have to eat there.'' If I am trying to walk into a building and someone is standing right by the entrance smoking a cigarette, ''I have to walk through the smoke to get in.'' So, it's really not the same thing at all. As Isaac Asimov said "When you drink around me, it doesn't destroy my liver; when you smoke around me, it does affect my lungs."

Faulty logic. If you are not uber-sensitive to smoke due to a condition like asthma, just walking by smoker does absolutely nothing to your health. The only way a healthy person can be affected by second-hand-smoke (other than just disliking the smell) is when he has to live or work with an insensitive smoker in a closed building. The usual "on the street" second-hand-smoke is far too diluted to be harmful.

Yes, but every bit of secondhand smoke breathed in contributes to eventual health problems.

So does every bit of secondhand vehicle exhaust breathing. The low quantities of smoke you get can easely be absorbed by the body.

No. No it isn't. As said below by another troper, if you smell it, it's much more harmful than car exhaust because it's very heavily concentrated. Also, this troper would be polite about it... if it weren't for the fact that when he used to be, people would almost always just tell him something along the lines of "screw you". I know a few aren't assholes, but the majority have stated their unwillingness to be courteous.

First of all, you can smell car exhaust. You don't notice because the smell is pretty constant, but if you go from a quiet street to the center of a city you'll definitely notice. And the dangers of secondhand smoke are really exaggerated. Being able to smell something doesn't make it dangerous. Second, saying that smokers are assholes but conceding that maybe afew aren't is still a gross generalization. I don't smoke, but you have to understand that many people smoke when theyre aleady stressed, and they are constantly getting shit from people like you who are afraid of the slight danger to their health of being ear a smoker, while they're breathing in the smoke directly. And a lot of people have brought up asthma, but I know smokers who have asthsma, and none of them have had an asthma attack from smoking.

Smoking Ohio Tropers, raise your hands now.

This troper is highly sensitive to cigarette smoke- it gives me terrible headaches and makes me sick to my stomach. Therefore, I feel justified to glare at smokers, since their habit literally makes me sick. Combine that with the fact that my grandmother died because of her smoking, and her smoking gave my grandfather cancer, and you have someone who is very anti-smoking. I'm not anti-smoker- I've got several friends who smoke, but they only do it outside in their own backyards- however, the ones who feel entitled and that they are some kind of "opressed minority" like the letter mentioned above really piss me off. There was an incident last summer at camp when I was a Leadership program participant- sort of like an in-between camper/counselor combo. We were walking a bunch of younger kids to a cafe, and one of the 5th-grade boys, seeing a smoker, said "Hey, he's smoking!" Not as an insult, just as a statement of fact. The smoker ''blew smoke in the little boy's face'' and said "Tastes good, doesn't it, you little twerp?" I told him that was an inappropriate thing to do to a small child, and he called me a bitch. And smokers wonder why non-smokers don't like them...

That guy was a jerk. But to say all smokers are jerks based on that is stupid. I'm not a smoker, never have been, but smokers ''are'' an oppressed minority. Smoking is '''legal''' but people who chose to are constantly treated like criminals. In my experience, religiously "anti-smoking" people tend to be much bigger jerks than the supposedly "evil" smokers.

When I was in college there was often a crowd of smokers right outside the door, littering and letting smoke drift inside. I go to RenFaire and all the smokers there that I've met don't litter and stand so the smoke isn't in your face. Thus proving that it isn't smoking that's the problem so much as self-centered lazy twats.

This smoking troper would like to remind you all that for every smoker you see, there are two you don't. I, for example, almost never smoke at a bus stop if there are other people there and if I do, I position me in a way that the wind direction blows the smoke away from anyone else. I, too, hate those pricks that think it's OK to light one when they're standing in the middle of a group of people. If you have one annoying smoker in a group of people, it doesn't mean that all the others are non-smokers. It just means that the others aren't assholes.

Oh, another thing that JustBugsMe: If you dislike smoke outside because of the taste, that's fine, but please don't act like it's because of your health. If you aren't in a building, the smoke is so deluted that there's actually more harm from car exhaust.

NOT true. If you can smell it that means it is definitely concentrated enough in that area to be MUCH more harmful than car exhaust.

You fail chemistry forever! There are many things that are detectable long before they are dangerous. Second hand smoke requires ''years'' of ''constant exposure'' (ie: 10 or more ''hours of exposure per day'') to have ''any effect whatsoever'' on a healthy person. And for people with respiratory disorders, it's no more worse than any other kind of smoke.

If you are both outside, and you can smell it, it's likely not the smoker's fault that '''you're too damned close to them.''' If you're both near the entrance to a building, look around. Where are the ashtrays? They are likely next to the smoker. 95% of glare-downs by non-smokers I get is outside a place of business, in which the ashtray is close to the entrance.

This non smoking troper actually likes the smell of cigarette smoke and didn't mind hanging around with smokers, until she was diagnosed with asthma. Now, even in the supposed diluted street smoke, her lungs can get irritated and whatnot. She has no problem with smokers still, as long as they aren't asses who light up right next to her without asking.

This troper is a habitual pipe smoker, who has yet to receive any complaints about smoking anywhere. Then again, smoking a full pipe takes more than twenty minutes, meaning it's very hard to do "on the fly", and usually means finding a place to sit where smoking is allowed. Smoking four times a week rather than five times a day helps too.

This troper once had to shoo off a new neighbour asking for sugar because he was standing at the open door smoking. And then he had the gall to accuse this troper of being rude. I'm sorry, but it's bad enough at the door to public buildings. Letting smoke into the house of somebody you don't know is ''unacceptable'', and is just as rude as telling you to leave immediately.

This troper works in a hotel that is completely non smoking, though you can smoke outside. Yet, we still get the occasional guest who decides they'll light up in the room despite signing our No Smoking policy. Then there are those smokers who will smoke right in front our sliding glass doors and thus allow the smoke to come inside.

This troper used to nag her middle-aged smoking neighbor to stop smoking, but eventually stopped being a BrattyHalfPint and realized what a JerkAss she was being.

This Troper was nine when her teacher taught us about the dangers of smoking. I promptly went home and ripped up all my father's cigarettes before flushing them down the toilet. My father ''did'' quit, and as far as I can see, it didn't bother him. Though now I frequently say (when asked) that I would rather shoot myself than smoke. Why lose thousands of pounds to something that just kills you?

Because we're adults, can make our own choices and it tastes good, that's why.

This troper has spent her life around smokers, thus has grown used to the diluted smell of it floating about the house. This doesn't stop her from coughing rather profusely whenever her older brother decides to blow some of the blue haze into her face.

This troper can tolerate a lot of things in the people around her. But she will give you hell if you light up a cigarette anywhere near her husband, who has asthma. It's a bit of a BerserkButton; she had to rush him to the emergency room one night when someone's cigarette smoke triggered such a severe asthma attack that his face turned ''gray'' and she honestly thought he was going to die.

This Troper grew up in a household where both of her parents smoke. They always smoke outside and always make sure they are far enough away from other people when they smoke in public. They don't smoke around kids or nonsmokers. She gets rather irritated when people go on and on about how horrible and inconsiderate ''all'' smokers are. She doesn't mind when people say that ''some'' smokers are rude, but when people imply that her mother and father are horrible she gets a little miffed.

This tropers father was almost a chain smoker, though he was polite enough to go outside to smoke. Also pleased with New Zealand's ban on smoking in work places, never had the lung capacity to hold my breath all day.

I have some kind of prejudice against smokers, and I always feel a little anger towards anyone I see smoking. I know it's wrong, but it's still there. One of the main reasons I respect my dad so much. (He quit smoking)

Me too. Living in NYC and having to breathe in someone else's carcinogenic fumes ''every goddamned day'' has fanned the embers into an inferno. Humans should not be leaking smoke from their mouths unless they are secretly robots.

Robots dont have smokes coming out of their mouths....

This troper had to hold her breath when going into school because of all the smokers hanging around the doorway...right in front of the no smoking sign. Made worse when I was weakened by tonsil surgery. However, I disagree with the stereotype that ALL smokers are EVIL.

This troper's campus has an area outside for people to smoke. It's also where most people without cars wait for their rides. There may be as many as ten smokers out here at any given time. After class I came out to wait for my ride...just as a freak rainstorm started. Do the arithmetic here: Troper with asthma + 10 smokers + freak rainstorm in the middle of November.

Just to provide some actual data, cities that impose smoking bans see reductions in heart attacks of ''25% to 40%.'' That's ''huge.'' New York City had ''4,000'' fewer heart attacks in the year after the ban. (See ThatOtherWiki, Smoking Bans, Effects On Health.) So, let's be clear here: ''Smoking bans save many lives.''

This troper's wife had an aunt who was 100 years old and a smoker. She was in excellent health until the smoking ban in Ontario was extended to retirement homes. (Really, someone who has lived for 100 years should have earned the right to not have to leave her own ''home'' to light up a smoke). She ended up dying do to complications from being outside in cold weather, which she wouldn't have been without the ban. Tell ''her'' that smoking bans save lives.

This troper smokes occasionally (in his own words,"not with regularity, usually when it's offered"). He considers himself to be "jolly smoking" rather than "good" or "evil". He also lights them with matches, rather than a lighter. To evoke a bit of a Waits vibe. It doesn't work when he needs to strike off three or four before it catches.

This troper always smokes away from entrances, politely asks if he can, and holds in the smoke so as not to accidentally blow it onto babies, kids, or into the faces of people who decide to walk A FOOT IN FRONT OF HIM (seriously, there's like 10 feet of walk there folks, use it!), and yet I still get glares from people, and I still get ridiculously fake hacking coughs from some people. I consider myself a nice person, I will smoke in the pouring rain rather than under the overhang here at my college, in NEWARK of all places(we're not known for our clean air). I would rather get soaked than impose on someone, but I swear to god, the next person who vehemently (and I mean Shakespearian levels of ham here people) fake hacks at me is gonna get a cigarette in the frickin' EYE.

To be fair, cigarette smoke does irritate some people's throats, including mine. I don't fake-cough though, that's a fricking douchey thing to do.

This troper completely empathizes with this original poster. What's more upsetting is if I excuse myself to the outskirts of an outdoor party to have a cigarette with a couple people who don't mind and from several feet away get a loud "HACKHACKCOUGH" chorus from a group of people huddled around the beer cooler. I have the same smoking habits too; I rarely feel the desire to smoke unless I'm stressed out or in a social situation and then I limit myself to no more than 2 in a 24 hour period and take great consideration of the people around me.

So far as this lurker is concerned, smoking is an inherently JerkAss thing to do. You're emitting foul-smelling fumes with absolutely no societal benefit to show for it. Even if it never causes harm to anyone, it's as rude as deliberately passing gas in someone's face--except without the excuse that it was necessary.

In other words, anyone who does something you find mildly annoying is evil. As far as I'm concerned, people making out in public places is a jerk ass thing to do, trying to do a ban on it wouldn't be any ''less'' of a jerk ass thing to do though.

At least you'll always have that great feeling of being to look down on people, because you're so much better than them :)

This one's brother is a heavy smoker and she almost hates him for it. He only smokes in his room so now the entire upstairs reeks of cigarette smoke and I can't visit his room without getting smacked in the face with a year's worth of accumulated fag stink. It seems like a JerkAss thing to do to me too.

This Troper is a non smoker, and while he thinks people shouldn't smoke he's pretty much leaves people to their own devices, I only really have a problem when they deliberatly blow it into my face, which doesn't happen all that often and it's usually just my friend being a douche.

There's no such thing as 'good smoking', forever. He's a non-smoker who lives with two lifelong chimneys. He has no bedroom as the house is too small, and as such no smokefree bolthole to retreat to. Pissed-offness ensues, as he is forced to inhale the cloud, as well as breathe in a very erratic harsh-exhale tiny-inhale way to try to minimise the smell (and the effect on his lungs, although that's probably not gonna work). He did once literally pull an emergency stop when he caught his mother lighting up in his car. The phrase "Get the fuck out of my car and don't come back in until you've put it out or finished" was uttered. And yes, I swore at my mother. Happens all the time. She swears back. :-)

Although I am ironically not totally in favour of the smoking ban. Call it DoubleStandards, but I reckon the owners of establishments like pubs should have the option of including a designated, segregated smoke-room away from the bar if they want to, rather than kicking everyone out onto the street so anyone wanting to get through the door gets a face full of the Cloud of Death. Anyone who says "in the street it's not harmful" is talking out of their arse.

Smoking bans do not save lives. Everyone dies. The hate filled anti-smokers would do well to watch the South Park episodes The Death Camp of Tolerance and Butt Out.

Yeah, but it stops people from dying from preventable issues such as the cancers smokers are going to get. The lung issues people get around smokers and that butt ugly smell they have.

This troper does not believe in good smoking. You are killing yourself. It's basically suicide by fire in this tropers oppinion and I have made people quit smoking before. It;s just gross. Like do you want to die young and breathe from a tube?

This Troper is an ex-smoker who even six months later is still on the smokers side, if a person wants to smoke they should be able to, if a person can`t be around it they should run the other way! (I don`t much care to be around the smoke myself, so I avoid it whenever possible)

This troper uses Camel Snus, and occasionally smokes handmade cigars, but still doesn't like cigarette smoke.

This troper comes from an area where most people smoke. Her grandfather is a chain smoker, and she always liked visiting him when she was little since she always really liked the smell of cigerette smoke. She'd sit by his feet and smell the smoke while he chatted with her. Her father has asthma and he smokes too.

This troper is rather conflicted on the subject of smoking bans. On the one hand, business owners should be allowed to make their own decisions regarding smoking in their establishment. On the other hand, I really do like to TASTE my food when I'm eating it.

I don;t know where people get the idea that a bar or restaurant is a public place from. It's a privately owned business and if the business owner wants to allow smoking it should be their prerogative. If you don't like the smoke in the air, eat somewhere else. ''personal responsibility'' goes a long way.