Stop Smoking Around Your Kids (You Selfish Asshole)

Posted on 06 27, 2006 under The Manual by foodad | Comments

To the smoker:

I see you everyday, pushing a stroller with one hand, a lit butt in the other.  You are outside. The smoke from your cancer stick is flowing around you and your kid.  I know it is bothering her because in the two brief seconds that I encountered you, it really bothered me.  How often do you do this? Are you doing it at home? Are you doing it in the car? Are you at least opening the bloody windows? If not then you might as well be jamming a cigarette in her mouth and let her smoke along with you.


You had a choice. You chose to live a life of setting your hands and face on fire, breathing in nicotine laced, cancer causing carcinogens. You became addicted and you think you cannot quit, or maybe you do not want to quit.  Listen to me now.  You have a kid and it is no longer just about you and what you want.  Your daughter did not get a chance to choose whether or not she is breathing in garbage air whenever your selfish ass needs a nicotine fix. Not only are you killing yourself. You are killing your family, you are killing me and you are setting a terrible example.

Smoking is affecting her breathing. It is giving her headaches. It is making her smell really bad. How do I know? I am also the child of a smoker.
 

Maybe your daughter has asked you to quit.  I know what that is like.  My mother smokes. She used to yell at me if I asked her to stop and she whooped my ass good when I buried her cigarettes in the back yard.  Since you have read this far, I am going to tell you what your kid wants to say to you- Adult to Adult.

Stop smoking.  It is not all about you, you selfish asshole.

If that’s not enough, here are some stories written by kids with selfish son of a bitch parents like you.  Thanks for being there for the kids, Kids Involuntarily Inhaling Secondhand Smoke – www.kiiss.org/stories/read.html

 

 

 

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Viewing 33 Comments

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    Its child abuse. Nothing less.

    And those stories from the link are heartbreaking.
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    I know, I know, I am need to quit. The baby is due 9/10 and I have set the final date for 9/1. I haven\'t smoked in our new house and haven\'t smoked anywhere but the street or work since we found out we were pregnant. Like you I was the child of smokers(3 packs a day each). I lost my father to smoking but it was the thought of having a son that made my mind up. I won\'t give him the oppotunity that my parents gave me, leaving stogies out for a curious thirteen year old who wanted to \"look cool.\" I won\'t miss the nicotine though, the tough part is the habit of 20 years. Wish me luck, I\'ll need it.
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    Smoking inside, in a car or any closed space, even outside while holding a baby would be irresponsible, but the author is jumping to all of those conclusions to pursue some blanket jihad against smokers.

    If it\'s merely a matter of giving the impression to your child that smoking is OK, well -- it is, as with anything, in moderation. The registration for this site asks about your favorite beer! Is it OK to drink in front of your kid?

    The title brands the stroller-pushing dad as a \"selfish asshole.\" What about moms who will not breast-feed their kids, or schedule cosmetic c-sections? Or parents who drop their kids in day-care at a young age? Or divorce? Or cry-it-out?
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    Quinn, welcome to the site, but look at the title of the piece. It isn\'t about smokers in general. It is about smoking in front of your kids.

    As for in moderation I couldn\'t disagree with you more. Drinking beer and smoking are not even in the same league. Smoking in moderation is NOT good.
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    Yes, a stroller pushing dad is a \"selfish asshole\" because he\'s putting his own \"fix\" ahead of his child\'s health.

    As for not breast feeding a baby, some babies just simply can\'t between allergies and anatomy, so I\'m not even going there.

    Parents dropping their kids off at day care at young ages is not selfish but often more out of a financial need to meet the bills and put food on the table or pay for the education that will help their children grow up to understand why the shouldn\'t smoke.

    Divorce.........a spouse leaving due to abuse or neglect is far from selfish, more like selfless.

    I too am the child of a 30+ year smoking parent, therefore I understand addiction. What I don\'t understand is not having at least the desire to quit out of respect for oneself and one\'s family.
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    QuinnFagizu,

    Welcome to noodad.com. Thanks for joining the site. I am happy to see you here.


    Let\'s cut to the chase. There is a huge difference between drinking beer and smoking. If I drink a beer, no matter how close I stand to you, you will not become intoxicated. Smoking is thought of as an individual activity, but it is not. You are sharing that smoke with the community. You are polluting the air that I ALSO need to breathe. You are standing in the doorway that I ALSO NEED TO ENTER. Smoke stays in doorways. It collects under the roof of that open air train stop. You are oblivious to this because you just had the cigarette, but people like me who do not indulge in cancer sticks are breathing this stuff and we DID NOT CHOOSE TO DO SO. Your moderation argument is faulty. Try comparing apples to apples next time. If you are thinking that a person who drinks beer could harm another person who is not drinking, that is true and is another form of abuse, however the actual act of drinking beer did not cause the harm.

    I fail to see how any of the list of things that you mentioned after your flimsy retort compares to smoking, which effectively slowly kills everyone around (and including) the user.
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    Is the article about smoking \"in front of\" your kids, or smoking in an enclosed space such that your kid suffocates?

    Harry, there are certainly exceptions to every rule. Ideally, I\'m sure all parents would want to breast feed and raise their kids themselves instead of shipping them off to a petting zoo run by chain-smoking smeth addicts so that they can afford a decent public education at the Indoctrination Center.

    I don\'t have the least desire to quit smoking because I enjoy smoking. I also shoot skeet now and then, but I don\'t toss babies into my line of fire and watch the infantestines fly.
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    A dog in the house could eat your child.

    Idling your car while loading your kids in it is exposing them to fumes many times worse than second-hand smoke.

    Some scientists consider UV radiation bad to ANY degree. Would you endanger your child by exposing any part of them to the evil sun?

    Seriously, though, I applaud anyone trying to make the world a better place for kids, and smoking in an enclosed space is at best not good for a child, but the hyperbole here does a disservice to a the message, as evidenced by my personal outrage at being branded a selfish asshole for indulging in something that, as I practice it, is [i]not[/i] harmful to my child.
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    you are fooling yourself Quinn. I don\'t deny you enjoy smoking. But after you light up, do you then remove all your clothing, dry clean them, and then run an air purifier for a few hours?

    For us non-smokers, we aren\'t immune to the stench like you may be. Now imagine a helpless baby who can\'t walk out of the room?

    Not to mention the example you are setting for your kids. Good luck with the skeet too.
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    What\'s the difference?

    Do you smoke around your kid? Did they breathe in the smoke? Then you suck.

    I do support a larger idea of banning smoking, but since I am not a legislator, I am using my soapbox, noodad.com, to speak for kids who cannot speak for themselves-- or are afraid of the response they will get from their asshole smoker parents.
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    I put sunscreen on my kids everytime they step outside.


    They do not make smokescreen.
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    Wingnut, good for you for realizing what may be good for you isnt necessarily good for your kid. I applaud your efforts to quit and wish you luck.
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    I am glad to hear you want to quit. I wish you the best of luck in your detox efforts!!! \"We\'re Here For Ya Man!\"
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    Wait a second -- now I\'m an asshole if I smoke /anywhere/ and neglect to change my clothes and dry-clean them? I assume that would also apply to any kind of environmental contaminants that may be clinging to my clothing.

    I agree that smoking with your child in closed quarters is not good for him. I feel the same about spray-painting, working on your car, or anything else that causes a direct environmentally adverse affect.

    The insinuation to which I am objecting is that smoking is worse than any of these other behaviors, even when done responsibly.
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    hahahahaha

    That\'s like saying

    Safe Suicide
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    The only way you can smoke responsibly is to do so in a remote area away from any other person (or with other smokers).

    Smokers offend so many people because the fumes from their habit are forced on those who choose not to smoke--like smoking in the doorway of a restaurant.

    The thing that bugs me about smokers is how they flick the cigarette wherever they please when they\'re done--especially out the car window. If cops would ticket these litterers every time they saw a still-smoking cigarette but skip across the pavement we could fund schools and other town projects from the fines. Maybe a smoker could answer the question: why do most of you think the world is your ashtray?
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    The thing that bugs me about those who eat fast food is how they toss their wrappers wherever they please when they\'re done--especially out the car window. If cops would ticket these litterers every time they saw a still-wet Coke cup skip across the pavement we could fund schools and other town projects from the fines. Maybe a fast food eater could answer the question: why do most of you think the world is your trashcan?
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    QuinnFazigu, at what point are you going to just admit that you are a religious smoker who is in outrageous depths of denial about the dangers that you are doing to yourself and EVERYONE around you. It WILL kill you and it will do harm to your family. What is so hard to grasp about that?! To compare throwing a cigarette butt out the window to throwing fast food wrappers out the window proves that you simply do not want to have a reasonable discussion about this subject.
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    I walked through downtown Boston\'s Copley Square area. I walked for 4 blocks. I could not walk 2 sidewalk segments without seeing a cigarette butt on the ground. I saw zero fast food wrappers. I am sorry that your town is full of fast food litter bug junkies.
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    Phillip Morris---the leading manufacturer of cigarrettes in the US has the following posted on their website:

    Secondhand Smoke

    Secondhand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke or ETS, is a combination of the smoke coming from the lit end of a cigarette plus the smoke exhaled by a person smoking.

    Public health officials have concluded that secondhand smoke from cigarettes causes disease, including lung cancer and heart disease, in non-smoking adults, as well as causes conditions in children such as asthma, respiratory infections, cough, wheeze, otitis media (middle ear infection) and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. In addition, public health officials have concluded that secondhand smoke can exacerbate adult asthma and cause eye, throat and nasal irritation.

    Philip Morris USA believes that the public should be guided by the conclusions of public health officials regarding the health effects of secondhand smoke in deciding whether to be in places where secondhand smoke is present, or if they are smokers, when and where to smoke around others. Particular care should be exercised where children are concerned, and adults should avoid smoking around them.

    We also believe that the conclusions of public health officials concerning environmental tobacco smoke are sufficient to warrant measures that regulate smoking in public places. We also believe that where smoking is permitted, the government should require the posting of warning notices that communicate public health officials\' conclusions that secondhand smoke causes disease in non-smokers.


    In another section titled Cigarette Smoking and Disease they write: Philip Morris USA (PM USA) agrees with the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and other serious diseases in smokers. Smokers are far more likely to develop serious diseases, like lung cancer, than non-smokers. There is no safe cigarette.

    You can learn more at: www.phillipmorris.com
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    Personally, I roll my own cigarettes, so they are both free of nasty terrible additives (urine, rat poison, ammonia? whatever) of regular cigarettes, and composed entirely of easily biodegradable materials.

    Harry, if I felt my smoking harmed my daughters, I would stop. As it is, I never smoke inside, never smoke inside a car, and am very careful of my smoke when I do partake when around my daughter out of doors.

    Additionally, I am very conscious of non-smokers and do not linger around a doorway or other cramped space. We smoke around the corner of the office well away from foot traffic.

    I smoke maybe ten cigarettes a day, and cycle to and from work almost fifteen miles a day at least thrice a week. As for the latter, even I was surprised that my smoking didn\'t seem to cause me any problems with the exercise.

    I\'m not trying to say smoking is \"good\" and it is most likely less than neutral any way you look at it (*); I merely objected to the initial insinuation that a man is a bad parent simply because he smokes. (And that was the intended insinuation, evidenced by the discussion and in spite of the \"around your kids\" modifier in the title.)

    (* Although I have heard it helps protect against Alzheimer\'s, and my non-smoking uncle is suffering from early-onset, so maybe it\'s worth it for me.)
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    Quinn,

    First of all I\'ll bet ten Iron Eyes Codys to your one Marlboro Man that there is no way people throw as many cans, wrappers, cartons,or anything else out their car window as they do cigarette butts.

    I was hoping for some insight from a smoker as to why he or she doesn\'t think it is wrong to flick the butt on the ground instead of putting it in a trash can or the ashtray in your car. Instead you counter with an I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I argument about fast food wrappers.

    Try a little experiment this weekend. First, drive past a cop and flick a cigarette butt out the window and see what happens. Next, drive by the same cop and toss a soda cup from a fast food restaurant out the window and see what happens. Again, I\'d bet that absolutley nothing would happen with the cigarette butt toss; and you\'d be slapped with a nice fine for the soda cup. For some reason cigarette littering has become acceptable.

    Clearly from the description of your smoking habits you are the exception to the rule and a model member of the smoking public. You roll your own cigarettes, always smoke in an area where you are sure not to force second hand smoke on nonsmokers, and you likely stub out the butt and dispose of it in a suitable receptacle. That\'s great. I wish other smokers would follow your example.

    Finally, I agree with you that you are not a bad parent simply because you smoke; but your smoking could be cheating your children out of time with their father in the long run.
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    I\'ve heard that even clothes that smell like smoke can be dangerous to a baby\'s health. Something about the toxins actually collecting on the clothing as particles and being inhaled by a baby like on your shoulder or something.
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    Well, I\'m on day 7 of not smoking. It\'s a pain in the butt(pun intended). Every now and then I mutter \"I want a cigarette\" which annoys my wife but she is understanding. Unfortunately I have started dipping but not all that much. My aunt and uncle who are farmers and swear up and down by the farmer\'s almanac told me the prime dates of the month to quit (something about the zodiac).
    My coworkers are buttheads (pun intended again), telling me they are going to go smoke and asking me if I\'d like to join them. They all have seen both my middle fingers raised in salute. When I do feel the urge, I just think of my son to come and chasing kids when you can\'t breathe isn\'t fun.
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    Wingnut, I applaud your decision to try to quit.
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    I appreciate the support.
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    GO WINGNUT GO!!
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    totally supoort u wingnut!! woooo!
    n i luved the article-its soooo true!!
    im 16 n doin smoking for my a/s level biology coursework subject and reading ur on going argument against quinn has been quite interestin.
    luk quinn-the article is about parents who smoke AROUND their child.
    if you can honestly say that your children never smell or acknowlege ur smoking at all (and that includes on your clothes and furniture)then the article is NOT referring to you is it!! so stoping getting pissy!
    its ok for YOU to smoke-its your choice killing yourself-but its not ok for you to smoke around other people because its not ur choice to make about whether THEY wanna die too.

    if your still \'healthy\'so far, then good on you! smoking can affect different people differently, but theres no doubt about it affecting you long term. i think you need to do a bit more research on your habit to be honest.

    n yes, there are OTHER selfish things out there quinn, but smoking happens to be a very very VERY large issue-ur in denial

    great article guys!! xxx
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    I\'m a second hand smoke kid.
    My mom and my dad smoked.
    I went to school everyday with my clothes and hair smelling like cigarettes.
    One of my teachers even pulled me aside one day and asked where I got my cigarettes from because my dad had accidentally dropped one in my backpack.
    When I was four, I saw a half finished cig in the ashtray and put one in my mouth and lit it. My parents beat the hell out of me. I thought it was ok because they did it. They do it around us. They did it with their friends. They would get up in the middle of a church sermon to go outside and smoke.
    Upon learning the ill effects of smoking, I\'ve read aloud the articles for \"homework\" to my parents about the dangers of smoking. They would tell me to shut up and get out of the way of the television.
    To this day, since I\'ve had my own child, I refuse to take her to visit her grandfather due to his heavy cigarette smoking. He reeks of nicotine. His hands and skin smell like nicotine and I don\'t want that smell or any cigarette particles to rub off onto her clothing.
    Quinn-you don\'t smoke because you \"like it\" you smoke because you\'re addicted. Chillax with that mess. You wanna damage your lungs and stuff? Cool with me, I don\'t care-it\'s your body. But man, your kids-hows about not doing it infront of them at all. Not letting them see you when you smoke so that they don\'t learn your bad mistakes. And if they say \"Daddy , Don\'t smoke, it\'ll kill you...\" listen to them.
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    Quinn,

    If you smoke 10 cigarettes a day, I don\'t care how \"clean\" you think they are, your breath and your clothes stink. Your daughter and everyone else around you has noticed and been bothered by this.
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    Quinn,

    If you see your baby girl about to eat half a bottle of aspirin, do you respond with \"Well, at least she\'s not eating a full bottle of cyanide pills\"? Or do you try to stop her?

    Responding to \"X is bad\" with \"Y and Z are also bad\" is a logical fallacy called \"Tu Quoque\" or \"You, Too\" (also known as \"Two Wrongs Make a Right\"). If I say \"It is wrong to abuse little children\" and you respond with \"It is even MORE wrong to commit genocide,\" have you proven that child abuse is okay, or that we shouldn\'t try to stop it because we have bigger things to worry about?

    So no, child care is not as good as home care, and yes, cry-it-out is child abuse, which I could prove at length if I cared to, but those are not the topic of discussion.

    Responding to \"It would be best if L\" with \"It would be ideal if also M and N\" is similar. That we do not take ALL efforts to live an ideal life does not mean that we should stop trying to take ANY efforts, or that we should stop trying to urge people to take ONE SPECIFIC effort.

    You can read about logical fallacies at http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/argu...

    As far as negatively affecting your child, perhaps you are taking very good precautions. We have reason to believe they are not as good as you believe them to be, but perhaps they are. If you are in the, say, .1% of smokers who do not adversely affect their kids through their smoking, accept that there will always be exceptions to any generalization, and move on. 99.9% of smokers are harming their kids, 99% of them thoughtlessly, and we have a right to lay down the gauntlet and tell them to stop committing an act of child abuse.

    As far as adverse effects, I don\'t know how biased the studies are that \"prove\" that secondhand smoke causes cancer. (Remember, it\'s a fact that RESEARCH causes cancer in rats....) But I do know some adverse effects that are proven.

    1. Non-smoking adults who are near smokers feel uncomfortable, and can get watery or burning eyes, as well as other symptoms of something similar to an allergic reaction. It is reasonable to assume that this happens to children as well.

    2. Many or most smokers STINK TO HIGH HEAVEN. Even if it\'s not a directly adverse effect, it is a considerable one. I don\'t like being near my brother when he\'s been smoking recently.

    3. Children exposed to secondhand smoke on a regular basis suffer from more more upper respitory infections and those with asthma suffer from worse/more common attacks.

    4. Merely by smoking regularly, you are reducing your quality of life now, your quality of life near the end, and your natural lifespan. This is your choice. However, it is a selfish choice if you have friends or family who care about you, and even worse if they\'re going to be burdened with your medical bills. Do you want your daughter to have to visit you in the hospital right about the time she wants you to be a grandfather to her children?

    Every choice you make affects your entire circle of family and friends. Choose wisely.
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    \"Second-hand smoke kid\": Sounds like your parents had problems a lot worse than merely their smoking.

    Oh, and Quinn: The number of fast-food wrappers, cups, and pop cans that are littered cannot POSSIBLY come close to the number of butts. First of all, few to no people eat ten or more fast-food meals a day. Secondly, I know people who would never even think of littering, but who do throw their butts down, and I think it must have become fashionable to think that butts aren\'t litter in the traditional sense.

    I used to clean up a parking lot every Saturday morning. At one point I thought of collecting a month\'s worth of butts and gluing them to butcher paper all along the edge of the parking lot as a plea to smokers to stop being so thoughtless. Do they believe that those butts just magically disappear? Decompose? Do they realize that many cigarettes contain RAT POISON, and that therefore those discarded butts are putting rat poison into the environment around them? Even where kids play?

    And as far as beer, like another post said, there\'s no such thing as second-hand drinking. It\'s another case of Tu Quoque, but I\'ll say a little to show how it\'s not even that good - it\'s a False Analogy.

    People who drink enough to harm someone else should suffer legal consequences. Those who drink enough to have an abnormal temper or the like have other problems, and need help - and someone should step in to help those families.

    I have been around people who drink enough for it to be noticeable in their odor, on their breath, in the way they talk, the way they move, and the way they don\'t think twice about certain actions or decisions. And yes, that much is disgusting, and not pleasant to be around. But unlike second-hand smoke, it isn\'t directly harmful to me.

    A person that drunk CAN harm his children, yes. But his judgment is impaired, and someone should realize that and take the kids off his hands for a few hours, much as someone should take his keys if he were trying to drive. By contrast, a smoker\'s judgment isn\'t impaired, merely his awareness of himself (i.e., his sense of smell), and he\'s likely - in his right mind, mind you - to convince himself that he\'s not harming his kids. And if someone said something like \"You have too much of a miasma around you to safely take care of these kids, so I\'ll take them off your hands for a few hours,\" the smoker would likely say a few bad words and not let her. The distinction may be slight, but it\'s there.

    But those who drink in moderation don\'t ever get that far. My dad, for example, drinks a little R-and-R in Coke when he\'s sick, or occasionally when he wants to relax; I\'ve never once seen him drunk, and on the few times in my 28 years that he\'s gone out with my mom to a place where he can drink, she\'s the designated non-drinker, and he never drinks enough to be noticeable when he comes home anyway.

    Dad raised me to believe that women should not drink (there\'s an increased chance of breast cancer), and that getting drunk is disgusting (Bill Cosby\'s routines helped there :p ). I\'ve never had any desire to drink. He used to give us little sips of his California Coolers, which was enough for me to realize that drinks don\'t taste very good (Dad never drank beer, but from somewhere or other I already knew that beer smelled bad). But he also raised me to appreciate that some people do drink, and that it\'s all right. I\'m glad that I\'m not uptight about other people drinking; it\'s an area of freedom. And I have the well rehearsed ability to say, graciously, \"No, thank you - I don\'t drink.\"
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    some can get cancer u no
 

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