• HumanPenguin@feddit.uk
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      2 days ago

      If you’re in your late 70s. You have an excuse. But are not likely to think as you do. But if so. Sorry you were fooled by such arsehole Corporations lieing about their own research for decades.

      If younger. Then you grew up knowing how dangerous smoking was. Even if you failed to believe the government telling you so. You have no excuse for makeing the choices you did.

      And most of us who made those dumb choices do not expect others to take responsibility for them. Even if we find/found stopping hard. In nearly 60 years. Absolutely every government in my lifetime. Has reduced the excuses of the generations forward to fall for the stupidity. Including my father who gave up in his late 60s after cancer. But knew full well how dumb his smoking was when I was a toddler.

      You are entitled to your opinion. But everyone else is also entitled to consider you pathetic. For thinking the government is responsible for fixing your own stupidity.

      • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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        8 hours ago

        Even if you failed to believe the government telling you so.

        People chose to smoke not because they don’t understand the risk, they find the reward outweighs the risk. Why they think that varies, some like the stimulation, the ritual, the escape, same as the use of any drug (or other “vice” like overeating, sex, gambling). It’s what makes confronting these things difficult, not everyone has the same reason for indulging.

        Personally, I’m well aware of the risks of smoking, and that the likelihood I might have a reduced lifespan due to that choice is higher than that of a non-smoker. But it is my life to live, same as it is everyone else’s own lives to live. The information is out there, most of us have seen or know someone who’s experienced the consequences of smoking, alcoholism, drug abuse, reckless sex, gambling, food addiction. If they want help to stop and change, be there for them. If they don’t, no amount of coercion, force, or external consequence is going to make someone who doesn’t want to change do it. No amount of vice legislation has ever thwarted vice, it just turns regulating it into a revenue stream for the state because they’re in the business of law enforcement, not crime prevention.

      • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        But everyone else is also entitled to consider you pathetic. For thinking the government is responsible for fixing your own stupidity.

        So, you also think we should abolish drunk driving laws?

        • deathmetaldawgy@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          Smoking cigarettes isn’t dangerous to everybody in your vicinity only to second hand smoke and it’s kinda disingenuous to pretend the danger to society from the two is comparable. And like I said I smoked for over 10 years and I’m gen z. Society makes it look cool but I should have listened to my mom the whole time.