Posted on 02/05/2014 8:12:20 AM PST by rhema
Because we don't have enough to worry about and the news is slow and it's February and, well, the whole country seems to be suffering from cabin fever, a new level of smoking has been defined just to shake us up. I suppose, whenever there is a lull in the national conversation, you can always count on a medical researcher to bring up smoking, just in case we forget it is a nasty habit.
There is, as we all know, firsthand smoke. Firsthand smoke is when you actually light a cigarette while you are standing outside in a frigid doorway and start puffing away. Firsthand smoke is dangerous. We have been told that for about 50 years now.
There is also secondhand smoke. People who have quit smoking but accidently walk past the guy standing in the frigid doorway and smell the smoke from the guy's cigarette are exposed to secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke is apparently responsible for there being no firsthand smoking anymore inside restaurants and bars and theaters and the like. A few of us actually remember when you would go to see the Saints play the Millers at the St. Paul Auditorium and you could hardly see the skaters because of the haze in the building.
Now, researchers at the University of California-Riverside have come up with a new hand. They have come up with thirdhand smoke. Thirdhand smoke is the smoke left behind by secondhand smoke on drapes and furniture and table tops and whatnot. In other words, it is the faint odor of smoke you get in many hotel rooms that have seen better days. Why it isn't the smoke left behind by firsthanders doesn't seem to make sense, but it does give a new heft to the seriousness of secondhand smoke.
I guess the secondhand smoke clings to surfaces and builds up as a toxic coating. When mice were exposed to thirdhand smoke, they started acting goofy and got a little hyperactive.
Manuela Martins-Green, a professor of cell biology who led the study, said in a statement reported by CBS News: "We found significant damage occurs in the liver and lung. Wounds in these mice took longer to heal."
By the standard of there now being a thirdhand smoke, we can never be safe. For if there is thirdhand smoke, doesn't it stand to reason there has to be a fourth- and fifth- and maybe even a sixth-hand exposure? I mean, if you buy a coffee table at a garage sale that was exposed to cigarette smoke, you are at least at a level four contamination. There was the original owner of the table, a smoker, all the secondhand smoke the table was exposed to on Sunday nights watching Ed Sullivan, the thirdhand smoke that has resulted in the table being so cheap in the first place and now the fourth hand, bringing that piece of furniture with its thirdhand effects into your dwelling, where, if you have mice, they will start acting goofy.
You have to grudgingly admire the zealots. They just don't stop. If they feel that they have not frightened enough people, they just come up with another hand.
I keep looking, but have yet to discover where the anti-smoking zealots stand on the legalization of marijuana. It seems to me that marijuana is just as dangerous as cigarettes. The residues are just as oily and toxic, thus meeting the criteria for first-, second- and thirdhand exposures. Not to mention that marijuana has the additional fault of contributing to obesity because marijuana smokers often consume whole loaves of Wonder Bread at one sitting.
But I have yet to see or hear the zealots go after marijuana. I don't see any billboards. I don't see any warnings. I don't see any force of public shaming beginning to gain ground. I don't even see any high-powered law firms looking for somebody to sue. Man alive, imagine what some of those early settlements would have been if they had had a third hand to work with.
Because Pot turns people into liberals and useful idiots. That’s why.
Cause they can’t tax smokes anyone since so few are smoking, going after left people smoke pot, tax it, them demonize it later.
If it wasn’t so pitiful it would be hilarious to watch the Tobacco Police twist themselves into pretzels trying to justify their support of dope smoking while opposing tobacco smoking.
Cultural reasons. Cigarettes are associated with the older, more conservative, pre-hippie generations... farmers, ranchers, housewives, blue-color workers. Marijuana is associated with hippie libs, the righteous self-absorbed “me” generations... and everything ‘they’ do is automatically a virtuous pursuit of enlightenment and freedom. The latter now control the culture, and their nasty vices require constant confirmation and celebration.
It’s their hatred of corporations.
Notice they are for De-criminalization of pot, not legalization
There is a significant difference.
De-criminalization, things a like now except nobody get arrested
Legalization, big corporations start selling their own mass produced brands
If they were huge Democrap donors we would all be hearing about the healthful benefits of “bathing your lungs in cleansing smoke”
Second hand smoke from a doobie is intoxicating! Unlike liquor, the person next to you doesn’t get drunk on what you drink!
....including fudge-packing, infanticide, and carpet licking.
Potheads are not fully mentally aware. That makes them excellent democrat voters.
Does Joe still think the Tea Party is a pack of rabbis dogs?
Did someone say carpet licking?
Prohibition of marijuana and other illegal drugs has been an abject failure if the goal was to end its availability in the underground market. Alcohol prohibition was a failure as well. However, the end of alcohol prohibition and the subsequent availability in the open market led to more drinking. Similar results will occur with marijuana.
Probably something to do with public smoking of marijuana not being legal.
Up until 1967, when the “Solid South” began to turn from democrat to republican, democrats had no problem with tobacco and oil. As soon as those industries began to give their sizable corporate campaign contributions to republicans, all of a sudden, cigarettes and gasoline became poisonous symbols of American industrial greed and the subject of intense government-financed scientific scrutiny. Always follow the money!
We have a stoner president and we know how that worked out another reason to keep it illegal.
Doesn’t it set off the smoke alarms in trendy apartments?
I’ve been asking this question for a long time. I used to volunteer usher at a music venue, and we had to direct tobacco smokers to their designated corner, but pot smokers could enjoy the music while toking. When I asked why, I was told pot smells better and is socially acceptable. (this was CA)
pot does not smell better
Some of it literally smells like skunk and some like poop.
I think people have to be stupid to smoke anything, especially if it smells like crap, literally
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