Damn anti smoking fanatics! Bars can't serve food and allow smoking? WTF!

[Drake Tungsten]

There was recently a "stop-smoking" campaign in Alberta featuring a woman dying of lung cancer who worked as a waitress for 20 years and died from second hand smoke.

How exactly did they prove that her cancer was the result of second-hand smoke? My grandma was a non-smoker who died of lung cancer, but she was a microbiologist, not a waitress. People do die of lung cancer not related to smoking...

[Asher]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

There was recently a "stop-smoking" campaign in Alberta featuring a woman dying of lung cancer who worked as a waitress for 20 years and died from second hand smoke.

How exactly did they prove that her cancer was the result of second-hand smoke? My grandma was a non-smoker who died of lung cancer, but she was a microbiologist, not a waitress. People do die of lung cancer not related to smoking...

You can tell from the tar in the lungs, Drake.

[SlowwHand]

Its from the bus. Don't you know by Asher that all joggers behind a bus are single mothers?

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by Wezil


I may be wrong, but I don't think Sloww was referring to firearms.

He was propositioning me? Ewww.

[Drake Tungsten]

You can tell from the tar in the lungs, Drake.

Is that what they did? Or are you just speculating?

[SlowwHand]

What did I miss?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Is that what they did? Or are you just speculating?

Autopsies are standard procedure, at least here...

[Wezil]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs


He was propositioning me? Ewww.

Yikes!

I've heard "shotgunning" as a drug slang but I think he was implying the same be done with a cigarette. While it is somewhat close personal contact I don't see it as intimate.

I may be wrong however. Sloww - care to clear this up?

[Dis]

I actually support smoking bans in most cities. But my city is not most cities. We are like the mecca for smokers. One reason people like my city is because they can smoke and drink where they want (well technically the only place you can drink on the street is on the strip and downtown-fremont street). It's freedom from the fascist society they live in back home. And similarly, we are able to attract workers easily because of the loose smoking laws. Employees are able to smoke on the job where I live. So you don't have cases of non smokers working in smoking establishments. You have smokers working in smoking establishments (with the exception of me- I'm a non smoker exposed to second hand smoke at work- but I have no desire to live long )

[Asher]

FWIW:

http://www.smoke-free.ca/heathercrowe/heathers-story.htm

My name is Heather Crowe. I’m 58 years old, and I’m dying from lung cancer caused by second-hand smoke in the work-place.

I was a waitress for over 40 years.

I worked in the hospitality industry because it let me earn a decent living for myself and my daughter. I worked long hours, sometimes more than 60 hours every week. The air was blue with smoke where I worked, but until recently nobody did or said anything about the smoke in our workplaces.

Until last year, I had no idea that second hand smoke was dangerous. People would say, ‘do you mind if I smoke?’ and I said, ‘I really don’t care.’ I didn’t have any idea that the smoke in the restaurants could do me harm. I just wasn’t protected. I just wasn’t told.

My cancer was diagnosed last year. My health had usually been good, but last spring I noticed some lumps on my neck that didn’t go away. Even though I wasn’t feeling sick, my daughter encouraged me to visit the doctor. My doctor measured the lumps and sent me for some x-rays and tests. When she told me that results showed a cancerous tumour on my lung that was as big as my hand, I had trouble believing it. “Are you sure it’s not tuberculosis?” I asked. “I’ve never smoked a day in my life.”

When she was a university student, my doctor had worked with in the same restaurant as me. She remembered how much smoke there was in that restaurant, and told me that she thought my lung cancer might be from second hand smoke.

It took many more weeks before they finished the tests and the specialists told me that my cancer was inoperable, and that they identified it as caused by second-hand cigarette smoke.

When I learned this, I became exceptionally angry. I thought I had to put my anger and my stress into something positive. I looked for a way to prevent anyone else from getting sick this way.

Because I didn’t know I was at risk, I figured there were a lot of other people in the hospitality industry that were working in the smoke on a daily basis that also did not know that they might get sick as I had done.

I realized I wanted to increase awareness and I wanted workers in the industry to have some protection if they do happen to get sick. Waiters and waitresses do not have second-class lungs and there is no reason why we should continue to have second-class protection for our health. It’s time legislation took over.

The first thing I did was to hire a lawyer to help me make a claim with the Workers Compensation Board. I figured by going forward with Workers Compensation claim it would help give other workers financial support as well as helping change the way workers in the hospitality sector are treated. Then I began to ask for letters to support my claim. I got some letters from my doctor, from the politicians, like the mayor and former mayor, and the medical officer of health for Ottawa, and from some Members of Parliament and councillors.

To my surprise, the Board accepted my claim within 8 weeks. I learned that mine was the first claim accepted for illness caused by second hand smoke in restaurants.

On the day after I had a biopsy of my lung, one of my regular clients asked me why I was favouring my left arm. I told him I had lung cancer from second-hand smoke. He worked at Health Canada and asked me if they could use me in an advertisement about second hand smoke. This would help people learn about the need to protect workers, and I said yes.

By coincidence, the advertisement started the same day that I learned that my claim for compensation had been accepted. My phone began ringing off the hook, there were so many newspapers and television stations interested in the claim.

Since then I have been across Canada talking to politicians, to schools and to communities about the need to protect workers from smoke. I think I help because I put a face to cancer. There are lots of statistics out there, but I am a person, and I think that helps people understand that this is a real problem. I just want people to become a little more aware of what second hand smoke can do.

I am hoping that the politicians will work at a solution and that we should get smoke-free workplaces right across Canada. I don’t expect it all to be done in a very short time, I’m just hoping that they consider this is a very dangerous chemical, and that all workers should be equally protected.

Some people say ‘well, if you don’t like the smoke you don’t have to work there,’ to which my reply is ‘if other people have protection in the workplace then why not us? ‘ All I’m asking for is equal rights. We should not be disposable workers.

I’m not asking the smokers to give up smoking, I’m asking them to step outside when they smoke, to protect all workers.

There are four stages of cancer and that I am at the third stage. That means that there is no way I will be able to get well. I have had five big and five small rounds of chemo-therapy and thirty radiation treatments. The radiation was supposed to kill the actual cancer cells and the chemo-therapy was supposed to shrink the tumour. That may give me two or three years if I go into remission, but eventually the cancer will come back and it will be terminal.

It helps me to do this work. At least I’m out there trying to do something, trying to make a difference. It’s too late for me, but it doesn’t mean that I have to curl up in a ball and let it go, you know? It’s not too late for future generations.

My goal is to be the last person to die from second hand smoke.

[SlowwHand]

I meant with a cigarette.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Asher

Isn't it a shame that the waitress who never smoked once in her life dies of lung cancer because she had to make a living for her daughter in a place where inconsiderate patrons smoked?

I guarantee you, the inconvenience of getting treated for cancer trumps the inconvenience of smokers smoking outside...

Except that said waitress made a choice to work in a smoke filled environment.

ACK!

[Asher]

Sometimes you don't have a choice where you work if you want to put food on the table.

Why should other people die for your addictions, I ask? It's a simple question.

Stop being so damn selfish, and do your stupid habit outside away from other people. kthxbi

[Drake Tungsten]

Have they banned smoking at home in Canada yet?

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Asher
Sometimes you don't have a choice where you work if you want to put food on the table.

Why should other people die for your addictions, I ask? It's a simple question.

Stop being so damn selfish, and do your stupid habit outside away from other people. kthxbi

It's just as easy to say she made a living off of people's addictions.

And I do smoke outside. However, that's not good enough for some non-smokers, they still come to the smoking area and do that sighing and coughing crap, even though they are in the smoking area.

I take great delight in walking up to a bunch of non-smokers in the smoking area, standing in the middle of them and lighting up.

ACK!