It's really disturbing when you have to wonder who is really in charge.
Navy and Marines to extinguish the smoking lamp aboard ship?
Navy and Marines to extinguish the smoking lamp aboard ship?
Big Brother Infiltrates The U.S. Navy
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Yeah right.
We want you to be moving targets, cannon fodder for the wealthy but don't want you to be able to avail yourselves of simple pleasures while your doing so.
Right
We want you to be moving targets, cannon fodder for the wealthy but don't want you to be able to avail yourselves of simple pleasures while your doing so.
Right
This is getting out of hand. Where will it stop? At this rate, tobacco will be illegal, but marijuana will be sold at the Quik-E-Mart....legally!! :evil:
(Kevin, you need an emoticon that shows a head blowing up)
(Kevin, you need an emoticon that shows a head blowing up)
Maybe I didn't read the article closely enough, but I didn't see anywhere that smoking would be forbidden. Only 'steps would be taken to denormalize' smoking within the ranks. As I remember from my days in the Navy, this might mean a few mandatory "health and safety' lectures, but I'd be surprised if this was a rule most skippers enforced.
But maybe I'm being overly hopeful.
But maybe I'm being overly hopeful.
I have quite a few friends in the navy. They all smoke...
And right now, I will guess that they're not very happy.
And right now, I will guess that they're not very happy.
It may be that they will have designated areas for smoking like with public smoking. There are more smokers then non-smokers in the military. Thats like 30% of the U.S. population.
From the Press Release:
“This initiative smartly incorporates aspects of the recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2009 to implement a systematic approach to denormalizing and eliminating tobacco use by members of the U.S. armed services.
“It is our hope that the Department of the Navy will continue to press forward and further implement the IOM’s broad range of recommendations to develop and enforce a timeline for achieving complete tobacco-free status,
So sad.
Yes, the press release says the IOM made recommendations to eliminating tobacco use, and apparently the Department of the Navy is going to 'incorporate aspects' of those recommendations. That's not the same as forbidding it. I'm not saying it can't happen, I'm just being hopeful.
I don't normally get my blood pressure up about things like this, but it's easy to see that the stated intention of creating a "tobacco free military" is never going to come to fruition and constitutes, as many of these things do, alot of sound-bites and back-slapping on the part of the medical establishment and its public relations tentacles. Simply put, there is no way to eradicate tobacco use any more than there was a way to eradicate alcohol consumption (which, one could argue, would seem to have been far more impractical given creation, transportation, and consumption issues).
There will never be a time when tobacco consumption is eradicated fully. I'm sorry for those of you who love to throw around bumpersticker phrases like "Nazi Germany" and other hyperbole, but at the very most, a decision to do so at the ultimate cost of creating what would likely be an apparatus of widespread tobacco addiction (consider cocaine, heroin, other illegal substances) will keep the pendulum swinging as opposed to stopping the pendulum on one extreme side. If anyone honestly thinks that the Institute of Medicine recommendations will be carried to their fullest legal and practical stated extent, then you're fanatical about the issue and we can't discuss it rationally. I respect those of you who do feel these things, but I refuse to buy that party line just as I refuse to buy the Institute of Medicine's. I see alot of these points of view on full display in cigar shops, pipe shows, and the like, people trying to convince me that it's in my best interest to obsess about these political issues in a vein-popping, unhealthy way that (frankly) I think they really enjoy. There, I said it, and I say it because I know a few of these people personally, one being my father. The man is obsessed with hating Obama, sends 5,627 anti-Obama email forwards a day, and has shaved about 10 years off his life sitting around screaming and yelling about how the government is a fascist state that is hell-bent on eradicating freedom because cigarette smokers have to smoke outside now. Lots of people actually enjoy being this way, and if Obama loses the election and we all go back to "Mad Men"-tobacco levels and pipe smoking is as popular as Starbucks, trust me - they'll find something else to complain about.
This is an interesting article because it shows that there are still groups of people who are extremist about lifestyle politics. But those same extremist impulses are in our midst as well, and it's the extremism I despise (on both sides), and that scares me far more than some think-tank's unrealistic plans for a tobacco-free utopia.
Kevin, I respect your forum rules about politics, and I tried to speak diplomatically. But my viewpoint is that turning up the heat gets everyone boiling hot. Personally, I won't buy that ticket.
There will never be a time when tobacco consumption is eradicated fully. I'm sorry for those of you who love to throw around bumpersticker phrases like "Nazi Germany" and other hyperbole, but at the very most, a decision to do so at the ultimate cost of creating what would likely be an apparatus of widespread tobacco addiction (consider cocaine, heroin, other illegal substances) will keep the pendulum swinging as opposed to stopping the pendulum on one extreme side. If anyone honestly thinks that the Institute of Medicine recommendations will be carried to their fullest legal and practical stated extent, then you're fanatical about the issue and we can't discuss it rationally. I respect those of you who do feel these things, but I refuse to buy that party line just as I refuse to buy the Institute of Medicine's. I see alot of these points of view on full display in cigar shops, pipe shows, and the like, people trying to convince me that it's in my best interest to obsess about these political issues in a vein-popping, unhealthy way that (frankly) I think they really enjoy. There, I said it, and I say it because I know a few of these people personally, one being my father. The man is obsessed with hating Obama, sends 5,627 anti-Obama email forwards a day, and has shaved about 10 years off his life sitting around screaming and yelling about how the government is a fascist state that is hell-bent on eradicating freedom because cigarette smokers have to smoke outside now. Lots of people actually enjoy being this way, and if Obama loses the election and we all go back to "Mad Men"-tobacco levels and pipe smoking is as popular as Starbucks, trust me - they'll find something else to complain about.
This is an interesting article because it shows that there are still groups of people who are extremist about lifestyle politics. But those same extremist impulses are in our midst as well, and it's the extremism I despise (on both sides), and that scares me far more than some think-tank's unrealistic plans for a tobacco-free utopia.
Kevin, I respect your forum rules about politics, and I tried to speak diplomatically. But my viewpoint is that turning up the heat gets everyone boiling hot. Personally, I won't buy that ticket.
I can see this saving the Navy a lot of money--on wages. They will have a flood of Captains masts for guy caught UA smoking and/or smuggling tobacco aboard ship. Bust that salty old Chief down to 2nd class for smoking his pipe on the fantail and save a few hundred every month
I remember the Army badgering smokers to death in the 1990s. It didn't make any difference then, either. Even in Basic, everyone had some sort of contraband, be it food, candy, cigarettes or whatever. You gonna tell me that the Navy is going to pat down every Sailor or Marine that boards a ship and keep them from smoking? Yeah, right.
UCMJ Punishment for Sedition- (b) A person who is found guilty of attempted mutiny, mutiny, sedition, or failure to suppress or report a mutiny or sedition shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct."
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