Meh, I learned because I rolled my dad's cigarettes for him when I was a kid. He would hand me a can of Bugler Tobacco and papers, I would spend the evening rolling them since there wasn't much else to do out in the AZ desert at night. I even started smoking because they were cheap and I knew how to roll.

Later, when I got into the sticky, I pretty much did the same thing. I know for a fact that I wouldn't touch a joint that someone dunked into their mouth. It isn't even necessary if you packed your wad tight enough, just if you rolled sloppy and want to slow the burn rate down.

Of course, I gave all of that stuff up a long time ago. Don't think I've smoked a joint since 2000. Funny thing , though, roll your own cigs are coming back in a big way because the bulk tobacco doesn't get hit with all of the same taxes as pre-made. My former smoking buddies tell me that you can save 1/2 to 2/3 the price of pre-mades now.

The gov't will always have varying degrees of "business" when it comes to things like this. And it will always change, because of varying interests. Private industry is largely responsible for why marijuana is illegal now. So you can't really treat gov't as this outside, independent authority, because it's going to respond according to enough voters or through lobbyists who are, effectively, us. Gov't is just caught in the middle between those various forces.

Shit changes though. Just look at cigarette smoking. Cigarettes used to be pretty harmless, until business got ahold of it and added all sorts of shit to it. Not only that, but it really wasn't that long ago that you pretty much had to smoke if you wanted to be socially accepted. Now the tables have turned. Smokers are pretty much shamed now. If you want to blame gov't for that, fine, but again, as I said before, we are the gov't. either through votes or through lobbyist influence.

You can look back at past gov't decisions and make judgements, sure, but that's hindsight. There's always going to be this dynamic of "Gov't should regulate X, but gov't shouldn't regulate Y" and every person has a funny way of evaluating such things and they don't always reflect reality, but some do.

But even when something is legalized like marijuana, there's always going to be some sort of regulation, like now, it's being regulated through taxation. Cigarette taxation is also a thing. A bartender acts like a regulator when they cut you off from drinking. Don't like it? don't drink there then.

yeah, but unless you're going to go to the level of attempting to ban alcohol and cigarettes and all the other things that are demonstrably harmful when overdone, there's nothing wrong with what Bill is doing here.

The problem is, Maher is pretty much one of the more vocal spokespeople for legalized marijuana. He's only reinforcing the people who were already supportive. Obviously by the reaction of the Jeb supporter lady, she wasn't convinced or swayed.

One of the things that helped legalization gain strides was the recession. Even conservatives were considering legalizing and taxing it if only to help the budget. Now that the recession is effectively over. That steals some of the urgency away and now they can go back to being against it for ideological reasons, where pragmatism isn't needed as much.

So we need to start publicizing the financial benefits of legalization. It's my understanding that Colorado has been getting tons of new revenue because of legalization, but for some reason, that's not advertised more. Or showing things that dispel the usual myths about marijuana that people have been clinging to for decades.

I feel the sudden urge for a cigarette, and I've never smoked a day in my life. And that fucked up office chair looked like someone's experiment in building office furniture using castoffs from the local liposuction clinic.

The trick is to also make sure you smoke extra cigarettes to suppress your appetite. Then it all evens out and everything is cool.

We just stuffed strips of magnesium into a few of our friend's cigarettes.

"The idea is that if you smoke during the flight e-cigarette you publicly display your addiction and that is not a good pedagogical example for others and so on and so on."

Or (far more likely) the airline realised that other passengers don't like people smoking around them in a confined space. You want to vape at home or outside? Knock yourself out. But kindly refrain from doing so in my cramped airspace. Otherwise, we'll test the old adage about how my right to swing my fist ends at your face.

He hasn't really presented any kind of decent argument here. Ok, the Carmen thing is stupid, but if you actually read the story behind that, it's because the Opera house was sponsored by a health company. Essentially they bowed to commercial pressure. Nothing to do with PC.

Even if WAS a "PC" decision, on what planet is that "a more dangerous form of totalitarianism"?

Someone decided they didn't want to stage an opera because there's smoking in it... oh no! Save us from opera-hitler!

Did the government step in and force them to do this? Nope, they made the decision themselves.

Wait... so if "some" processed meats are as carcinogenic as cigarette smoke, does this mean feeding your children bacon is child abuse?

Well, at least I don't feel as bad about smoking around children. Their moms are giving them more cancer than I ever could.

Remember that one time you found out that all along you were a hypocrite -- but you didn't give a fuck?

Bacon and cigarettes for all!

Here in California, for well over a decade, it's been far easier for teenagers to buy marijuana than it is for them to buy cigarettes. That backs up his position 100%

I'm sure banning guns will be just as effective as banning drugs or alcohol or cigarettes or anything else that is in high demand. There's no way people would continue to obtain them illegally or find ways to circumvent the law if they desired them strongly enough. Nope, bans have been completely effective throughout the history of the U.S.

I'm overweight, had a heart attack 9 years ago when I was 30. I'm on low sodium diet, have 2 cordis brand stints in my chest. Grade 1 diastolic dysfunction from a little scar tissue on left ventricle.

I had severe depression and the heart attack at 30 messed my head up fierce in my thinking. First off I've never had a physical before then and I've never been sick. When my parents caught flus and I didn't they had me tested and I was a 1 in 10 or 100 thousand I forget that are immune to flu. Once a year I donate blood here in Ga that is sent to Emory in Atlanta I get paid $350 for my blood once a year.

But back to heart attack since I never had physical due to never sick I knew I was not eating healthy and used to smoke and nicotine is a vascular constrictor. It triggered the attack and was my last cigarette. It scared the addiction out of me and never had withdrawals.

But my severe mental depression although obese I became scared to eat, I went on starvation diet. I'd drink water but no food at all.

After 5th day I was so weak I couldn't move. Later I realized it takes a lot of calories to move my fatass. But I had a new danger that almost triggered cardiac arrest.

I live alone and was able to crawl to phone and call 911. They first thought it was another heart attack but heart was slowed but no problems. They did blood test and took 7 vials. About 6 hours later was the embarrassment.

Doctor came in, along with psychiatrist, nutritionist, and another counselor. I was hypokalemic. Which means potassium was dangerously low almost fatally low. Which was red flag for usually the stereotypical teenage girl with anorexia.

Took 2 IV bags of riggers lactate, shot of potassium, a little amphetamine to boost blood pressure up to normal and 24 hour observation on regular saline IV.

I still have severe depression due to weight. I have degenerative disc disease in my back so I can't get around very good. My diet is set at 1800 calories yet my I only lose 1 to 2 pounds a month. Extensive testing has shown my metabolism has come to a stop. So even though I eat very little calories and low sodium protein diet with barely any carbs with no metabolism the body only stores it as fat because at zero metabolism the body thinks it has to store instead of burn thinking its starving but its not.

But my cardiologist and general doc are trying an extremely dangerous and risky treatment to try and JumpStart my metabolism. I have to record my blood pressure hourly and go in once a week for ekg and blood enzyme test but they are using a drug not made for this as "off label" use and you aren't supposed to even use it with heart disease but that's the strict monitoring by both my doctors. The controversy is they are using adderall to force my metabolism up. Your body is forced to burn through energy stored, and the idea is once my metabolism kicks back in it should stay up on its own.

Tests look promising its my second week on it and I was averaging 1-2 sometimes 3 pound loss in one month. Now since the low dose adderall trial I lost 5 pounds in 1 week!!!

And that little victory has done wonders for my severe depression. I've actually got hope.

Your statement that other forms of preventable death have no bearing on the argument may be correct for your interpretation of that argument, but you are clearly missing the point of the comparison. Nobody is saying that we shouldn't regulate guns because people smoke. The comparison is that if society can sit by and watch people die from totally preventable deaths due to cigarettes and alcohol, at a rate 35x higher than gun related deaths, then why not start there, or even include guns, alcohol and cigs in the same crackdown? In the hands of responsible people, who are the majority of owners, guns are a very low threat and can serve a purpose other than killing people. Cigarettes, in contrast, are perfect killing machines, and 100% of the time are harmful to anyone who sticks them in their mouth and serve one purpose and one purpose only - to degrade your health. If you're fortunate enough to be stuck near someone who smokes, they are harming your health as well. If those who wish to start imposing limits or controls on peoples personal freedoms by controlling access to things that kill people, why not start with something that affects 35x more people than guns do? And if anyone tells you death by gunshot is a gruesome horrible death that nobody should have to endure (and hyped to be so by media and anti-gun activists), go spend some time in a cancer ward to experience what these poor bastards go through during a prolonged death from lung cancer. Give me a bullet any time over that.

The examples you provide aren't particularly accurate.

The formaldehyde results in the study you're talking about have been misrepresented often. The study actually only showed higher formaldehyde when the vaporizer was run dry, meaning the coil wasn't vaporizing liquid but burning the liquid, wick and coil. Nobody would ever inhale that because it would taste horrible. The actual conclusion of the study showed fewer harmful chemicals in ecigarette vapor than cigarette smoke.

As far as teens using ecigarettes at a higher rate, the only available studies show teenage smoking rates dropping by about the same amount as the adoption of ecigarettes. There's no evidence of a net increase in nicotine use among teenagers. Instead, some teens that would have smoked are using ecigarettes.

Rock music is corrupting kids, comic books are teaching children bad morals, pinball leads to juvenile delinquency, video games make kids violent and ecigarettes are turning teens into addicts. Great headlines, zero facts.

If I were a smoker I'd definitely make my own because the industry has so little regulation, you have no real way to know what chemicals you are getting that may cause even more harm than a cigarette. As an example some brands have been shown to release more formaldehyde and other dangerous carcinogens at significantly higher rates than a regular cigarette.

E-cigs can definitely be used to help quit, but the opposite is also true. I see more teens than ever smoking e-cigs who wouldn't have otherwise smoked cigarettes because they don't ruin your teeth, your sense of taste, your breath, you don't have the smell of cigarettes on you. Those are teens that wouldn't have been addicted to smoking otherwise and now are, even if that addiction is less severe.

As an example, my step-nephew (18) for example and his father both use e-cigs and have for the last year or two as they've gained popularity. His father has since quit after much reduced smoking but the nephew goes through multiple flavored bottles a week. He never puts his down.