Thursday, September 4, 2014

smokers

Let me preface this that I have never used tobacco in my life.

I feel like tobacco smokers are unfairly discriminated against.  I was recently filling out a job application  and it addressed tobacco use?!?  Is that fair.  Also CVS is getting all sorts of praise for not selling tobacco anymore.  Are they really helping anyone?  Is that really going to stop people from smoking...no.  They are just going to drive farther to get it, after the resources are likely already strained enough just to smoke.  Smoking is an addiction and they are going to have plenty of natural consequences for it without people making their lives more difficult.

From my observation people that smoke tend to have life circumstances that already make their lives difficult, they are just trying to cope...just like all of us.  Some people (a lot) cope with eating too much sugar, some cope by drinking etoh, some had life circumstances that made it so that smoking was the obvious and modeled way to cope.  Does not mean they are not people and do not have feelings.  Picking on people who smoke is the picking the low hanging fruit.  Its PC to say bad thing about smoking and smokers, but that does not mean its right.

I wish no one smoked, I hate to be around smoking, I hate the smell, I would be devastated if any of my children chose to smoke but, making their lives harder when each of our lives is plenty hard enough does not solve anything.  All smokers know its bad, I am sure most of them wish they never started, so lets not rub their ongoing struggles in their face.

2 comments:

  1. Its funny to me that you are defending smokers, not sure you're on the right side of this one, but I do see where you're coming from. Still I think its great that we are turning the corner to the point where we can publicly shame smokers, the more pressure to stop the better, right? For CVS don't people just do what is convenient. I feel like if there is less availability it will generally think about it less, out of sight out of mind. Also I think a lot of the reason people started smoking were social reasons, like we made it look glamorous, so if we stigmatize it socially it should happen less right? Sure it wont stop of everybody but isn't it better to try, I guess its kind of like the same arguments for and against prohibition.

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  2. I don't think smokers just do what is convenient, its never convenient. I just don't think it should be allowed to ask if someone uses tobacco on a job application, tobacco use is already way down and the primary use is not with young people just starting its older people that can't quit. I would be much more impressed if CVS said they were going to donate all tobacco profits to something that actually helped smokers. Or if they actually took a stand against something like sugar or etoh...much more pervasive. Anyway, you are probably right that I am not on the right side of this, but my guess is that tobacco sales were no longer profitable for cvs anyway and they just made a big deal out of it for PR reasons.

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