Feedback Time
Don't take any of my comments personally. Instead, consider them, consider the feedback I'm offering, and consider whether you think the areas can be improved. I'm going to focus more on actual flaws in argumentative processes (or positives) than on the arguments themselves. Note that I'm offering feedback on debating styles, not necessarily participating. I will of course be commenting on the debate's subject, but my focus is not to take a stance.
I am not a smoker myself, but I think smokers are always looked down upon, in NY smoking was banned from all public places including bars and resturaunts. And some malls even prevent them from smokeing within a certiant distance of the facility.
I understand Most public places, like libraries or Resturaunts, but bars? I mean most people who go to a bar have a beer and a smoke right? But now you must stand out in cold if you want a smoke. And malls? If we are outside it is preety ventalated, becuase it is outside!!!!, if you dont want to breath smoke, stand somewhere else, if you have a cold, I will stand somewhere else cause I dont want to breath in your pathogens, so smoking should be no diffrent.
Your thoughts?
- Wrath of Koarin
-Grammar checks are always desired in this room.
-Most people go to a bar to drink and socialize. These are why bars were created. Smoking is just something a lot of people who go to bars happen to do. Try not to make generalized assumptions.
-Your point of outdoors is reasonable enough, but try to word it better. the analogy of colds is better than your opponents are crediting.
(rhan)
I agree with the ban in public places. Bars may be inviting for drinkers and smokers, but there are people who are smoke free because of the side effects that come with smoking or getting second hand smoke. Also the employees who work at the bar may be drug free.
Define drug. Illegal narcotic? Then cigarettes are not drugs. Intoxicants? Alcohol is more of a drug than cigarettes will ever be. Don't try to sensationalize your wording if it doesn't click with reality.
This would put their health in danger. They do not have a choice to move away from the smoke when they're serving the smoker(s). They either have to accept the fact that they could potentially be at risk for lung cancer or lose their job.
Citation of studies would help your point here, otherwise it is reasonably well laid-out.
Resturaunts and malls are pretty much common sense because they are family oriented places. Even outside the second hand smoke may cause a problems to others with weak lungs (such as some elderly people and asthmatics). Even with different ventilation systems in resturaunts, that separate the smokers from non-smokers, the employee(s) are still at risk.
You're not considering all factors. Smoking sections, for example. Your qualms about servers remain, but having the smokers sequestered from the "families". And remember, life isn't always run by technicality -- practically speaking, it is unlikely to have an entire staff in today's workforce that does not smoke. Consider everything before you make a point and anticipate things that will poke holes in it.
Yes malls are family oriented, but what if someone is hack upp a lung, it will affect an elder/infant/easily pron to infection person as equaly as smoke. But you dont make sick people stand 50 from the mall to cough. I just think there are some many other things more dangourous out there than smoke.
(wrath of koarin)
Spellcheck. And while your illness analogy is apt, the point about "more dangerous things" is a flawed one. Your odds of getting hit by a bus and expiring are higher than that of dying from second-hand smoke, for example, but the situation was not created by the bus operator's need or desire to drive said bus. Consider the internal logic of your points.
(handsockpuppet)
The main problem with smoking in public areas is secondhand smoking (
http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=35422). I don't know about anybody else, but I don't want to be put at danger from secondhand smoking when I'm at a restaurant, bar, or mall. Why should I move because a smoker want to ruin his/her lungs? Restaurants used to allow smokers (even airplanes did!), but then they found that other people find it more enjoyable when the facility is smoke-free. There are still some smoking bars, but most restaurants are now smoke-free or have a designated smoking area.
You're falling prey to sensationalized and omission-heavy studies, and your citation here is infact thirdhand, but it's good to at least
see citation, and I'll leave the quality of the citation be for a moment.
One thing you're doing, however, is ignoring the information present in your own citation. Where does it say that smokers sitting in another section of the restaurant, bar, or mall are putting you at risk? Your lungs are not a vaccuum. They do not draw the smoke toward you unless it was already surrounding your face. Trace amounts of the smoke will travel somewhat from the point of origin, of course, but they will also be rising upward rapidly the entire time. Don't make claims on the coattails of sources that don't necessarily back them up. As for peoples' enjoyability -- well, this is about smokers' rights, not vice versa. It's a nonfactor. Convince me or the reader that smoking is dangerous in the second hand at
all times and in
all situations, rather than tossing a blanket like "enjoyment" over it.
As for designated smoking areas or bars that specifically allow smoking, well, personally I support that. I'm a bit confused by the fact that you would support them, however. It's rather inconsistent with your moralistic argument. Or does second-hand smoke only apply to yourself?
Does smoking really annoy people? I remember a friend of mine saying he likes having a drink at a bar, but won't go to the one near his house because it's filled with smokers.
Tough. That's right, I said it. This is a topic about the
rights of a particular group, in this case, people who smoke tobacco products. I don't like going to some McDonald's because there are a lot of morbidly obese people there, and they make eating less appealing. I don't go to some malls because they have outrageous prices that I don't intend to pay. I don't like a whole lot of things, but not liking something is not an excuse to outlaw it. Sorry. People engage in a whole lot of behavior that is more obnoxious than smoking, and if a place is reknowned for it, you should question why you have such a desire to be there in the first place.
Many Americans (including myself) believe tobacco should be illegal.
Great. Too bad this topic doesn't regard that. At all. Does the opinion of one group negate the rights of another? No, it absolutely doesn't. This comment is irrelevant both to the topic at hand and to all faculties of logical application.
This would be difficult due to the taxes the government gets and the people who are already addicted, but (in my opinion) taking it out of public areas is a step in the right direction. Smokers can smoke outside or in their house if they need to.
But you still aren't arguing the topic, which is the rights of smokers. Do they have a
right to smoke in public places? All you've said is where they can smoke. Not whether they have the right to, or where, or really all that much that illuminates a stance on the issue this thread was created for discussing.
slightly off topic: It's pretty funny; when I read the title of this, I thought of a different issue that was raised at the town meeting a few months ago. Businessman didn't want to give smokers a smoking break while non-smokers didn't get any breaks. Even though I know smokers are addicted, I don't know if it's fair to give smokers a break when non-smokers can't, say, have a break for a granola bar. (this ties in with smoker's rights, even if it's not about public places)
Oh. Are you addicted to granola bars? Do you feel that if you go an hour without a granola bar, your hands start to shake? Breathing quickens? Stress starts to overcome you? Blabbity blah blah? Sorry, but this statement is logically bankrupt. You're just tossing out a strawman in the hope that hyperbole will appeal to your opponents and make you appear to be correct. It won't, and it doesn't. It's a cute comment, but it's BS. And the Hall doesn't like BS, even if it is cute.
Positives: You have good grammar and spelling.
(S.O.L.I.D.)
See, in the OP you use the thing about "if you have a cold, you don't have to stand 50 feet away from a mall" as your argument, but those are really quite different. Some people have asthma, and therefore smoke is very threatening to their health, and is very dangerous to them.
Colds are also harmful to people with asthma, and people who are elderly, and young, and so on and so forth. It is threatening to their health and in some cases can in fact be very dangerous. In fact, if someone coughs directly on your face, you are more likely to get sick than you are to contract lung cancer from a direct blast in the face. Seems like you've tried to question the legitimacy of a logical analogy.
Also, like the poster above me said, you shouldn't have to move away if you don't want to be by a smoker, the smoker should move, because they are the one not only hurting themselves but also people in the immediate area.
Consider all points of view. In the case of, for example being out doors? Certainly. If you are preforming a behavior that is intrinsically adverse to that of the norm, and it irritates other people, you should move. This is a solid point. (However, if the smoker was already there, and no one else was around, it would be unreasonable to expect them to move. That's, uh, what I'd say if I was participating xD) On the other hand, why could there not be bars specifically designed for smokers to visit? What, precisely, would be the harm in that? There is certainly a market for it, so it is not economical. And there'd be no excuse for nonsmokers to expect THEM to move. So using what I call "misfit logic" is a double edged sword, because it will almost always make you speak the words of a hypocrite.
Especially families, like in malls and restaurants, because those are mostly filled with families. Even in places where there are smoking and non-smoking sections, it really doesn't matter if those areas are separated or not, because smoke still travels pretty far. I'm in 8th grade so I don't really know about the bar thing.
Well, I would assume you don't know very much about the movement of smoke, either, in that case. Cigarette smoke drifts upward unless guided otherwise by an external force, such as someone blowing it or a breeze. Scientific fact. Furthermore, when restaurants were in fact separated into smoking and non-smoking sections, each one I want to had doors separating them, or at least an impossible distance for the smoke to travel in the absence of a guiding factor.
Overall, I think smoking should be illegal everywhere in public, if you want to smoke it should be in your house or car or other space of yours, don't go polluting the rest of the air outside.
Once again, the caseline of an argument in a topic about the rights of smokers has devolved into I think smoking should/should not be banned in public. Always tie your stance in to the focus of the topic, as there are often several ways to view a subject, and this particular topic, which had an interesting take, devolved into a ho hum discussion already talked into the grave.
At any rate, I ask you to re-evaluate that statement, there. Pollute the air outside? If you really think smoking shouldn't be done outdoors at all, you're a fool, and you better impose that people never drive any vehicle that runs on gasoline or diesel fuel, because those do immensely larger amounts of damage than a tiny little wick of cigarette smoke. If you're going to make a silly claim like that, try looking up some scientific basis. If you were "just being sarcastic", well, don't. There's no place for strawmanning in the Debate Hall. Smart-aleckery, yes, but not statements that are devoid of logic.
(Yoshi-Kirby)
I think that smoking should be illegal in every public area. One of the most important reasons is passive smoking. Why should other people be forced to take in something that they don't want in their lungs? Passive smoking is exactly like regular smoking, except passive smokers don't have the cigarette in their mouths. But they suffer the same consequences. The environment also takes a toll on smoking in public. If you want to smoke, you should do it alone, in your own space, like a car, or room in a house. No one else needs to suffer from what you're suffering.
Hyperbole is the backbone of your argument, and that breaks in half like a twig. "Why should other people be forced..." and I stopped reading there. Smokers are not bludgeoning people, plugging their noses, and exhaling into their faces. They're just
around, and typically quite far away. Avoid that kind of language. You might think it makes your argument sound like it has more zip, but it just makes it sound like it has less logical base.
Passive smoking is absolutely NOT like regular smoking. Regular smoking is a direct intake straight from the filter, ALL of which travels into the mouth/larynx/trachea/lungs. Some of this is absorbed BY the lungs, trachea, etc, and remains there. And most of the rest is lost not only to the air, but the fact that the person is not wilfully inhaling as much of the smoke as they possibly can. So I'd say having the cigarettes in their mouths is a pretty key difference -- instead, you tried to glaze over a legitimate mitigating factor and undermine its value, an ignorant and almost disrespectful debating "technique".
They also do
not suffer the same consequences. Look up some statistics for me that say that the risk factors are exactly the same for firsthand smokers and secondhand smokers. You're just contorting statistics to the point that they don't even resemble their original point, and this goes for a lot of you. These studies prove that a risk exists, and y'all try to pigeonhole this as a doomsday prediction, and equate it (or suggest it's
worse than??) direct smoking. And if there's one thing I hate more than a numbers claim without numbers, it's a misconstrued numbers claim. Here we have the one thing I hate more than THAT... a misconstrued numbers claim with no numbers.
As for the environment, see above. If you think smoking takes a toll on the environment, you don't understand a thing about it and need to do some research. If you want smoking banned, hopefully you'll also press for the ban of petroleum-fueled vehicles and farting cows as well. Environmentalism is becoming a crutch in too many debates these days, and I won't accept a new wave of Debaters that commit this sin. The Hall is full of grizzled people that sense a crutch and they
will kick it out from beneath you.
(D-Fat1)
It's kinda Common sense not to smoke indoors. Everyone knows about second hand smoke, but not everyone understands the risks and the effect's it has on people. It's more dangerous than smoking itself.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Citations or get out, seriously. This is getting tiresome. If you're going to make a shaky and unfounded scientific claim,
cite. your. sources.
A cigarette has a filter in the bud that blocks poisonous smoke or something like that, to keep it away from the smokers lungs to be safe. What about the people that are not smoking?
What? That means that the smoke that does reach them is filtered through 1) The actual filter 2) The first smoker's entire respiratory system 3) Whatever is absorbed by the smoker's lungs 4) The air itself and of course 5) The fact that you're not attempting to inhale it.
Unless you're talking about the truly insignificant (think: mass of an electron) amount that wafts from the tip. You know, the amount that isn't blown in any particular direction and wafts straight up if unperturbed by outside forces.
That's why it's so harmful. Second hand smoke is smoking without a filter.
Actually, it's 'smoking' through five filters. It's a far, far lower risk, and for good reason.
So, I should move if I value my health? If you really need the smoke, you could walk the 50 feet. If your gonna hurt yourself, don't hurt innocent people that don't deserve it.
Generalizations and ignorance. "That don't deserve it"? Wow, harsh. And, you know, not really... helping your cause in the debate in anyway. Unless your caseline is that smokers don't have rights, which you have not proven. And fifty feet? Why don't you go outside and measure fifty feet -- it's a pretty unreasonable distance, when you consider the fact that people are often on some kind of deadline (taking a break, walking to catch a train or bus, and so on).
(Some restaurants have a smokers section, so some bars must have them too)
I read your entire post and I don't know what the hell your point was. Do smokers have rights to some indoor sanctuaries, or not? All you did was bash them implicitly and say that they should walk fifty feet (fifty feet from where, exactly?) if they want to smoke, every time. Your argument, if I can call it that, has no stance, no evidence, and no real basis in anything I can justly call logic. It's just a big slathering of opinion with a bunch of made up facts.
I have officially turned blue in the face.
