Smoking in a Lease Vehicle

Over the years, I have lost count of the number of funerals that I have attended for life-long cigarette smokers who died in their 50s and 60s from heart disease, or emphysema, or cancer, but suffice it to say that it was a very large number of memorial services.
Additionally, I have known several cigar and pipe smokers who had to have their tongue, or–in a couple of cases–their jaw removed as a result of oral cancer.
Those guys lived for several more years after surgery, but their quality of life was so bad that they repeatedly wrote notes expressing the wish that they were dead.

By contrast, both of my parents gave up smoking when they were in their 40s, and they both lived into their early 90s.
All of this is–of course–anecdotal and does not constitute a scientific study, but I have observed that the odds of living a long, healthful life are very slim for those who smoke.

Ya never know what is going to happen, a friend, did everything right, exercise, no smoking, loving family and died after a 2 year battle with pancreatic cancer at 38. Grandmothers live to 96 and 98, smokers and drinkers till their 70’s, Grandmother sister a nun lived to 101, Grandfather 1 45 massive heart attack, grandfather 2 cancer, a spinal tumor, Dad 86 Brain cancer, Aunt 45 ovarian cancer as well as cousin 38. One never know do one? Figured I would be like Gaudi and get killed by a streetcar or bus.

My wife couldn’t quit smoking even when diagnosed with emphesema in her late 40s. She was 53 when she died.

I do service work on computers and go out to peoples’ homes ad businesses. There is one place I visit several times per year because the guy smokes so much is messes up his electronics. He is fully aware and willing to pay the price. There are literally streams of tar creeping down the walls of his home and everything has a yellow-brown tinge. He said the walls in his place were white when he moved in but that isn’t the case now.

I have to take off all my clothing, put it in the wash, and then shower immediately when I get home from a place like this. My GF will be like “You reek of smoke.” I don’t know how people do this but I consider a smoked computer basically scrap if they try to sell it used. This really gums up the fans and any other mechanical parts such as the drives. You get a tar-cemented buildup of dirt in all the cooling systems. This is a real nightmare with laptops.

I bought a well-used truck once that had been smoked in and just about everything else. It was so nasty that I disconnected the battery and actually pressure washed the interior. Mud and dirty water were streaming out of the doors with cigarette butts floating out. I then shop vac’ed the entire thing and was amazed at how much dirt, fast food and wrappers, etc. mouse urine and poop, beer can tabs, beer bottle caps, shell casings, condoms, you name it. I got the truck cheap but it wasn’t worth what I paid. It is my winter beater and firewood truck. Boy it smelled NASTY when I got it and it is still old and dirty but doesn’t smell after the major interior pressure wash.

I let it dry out for a week with a space heater inside and the windows cracked. None of the electronics seem to have been harmed.

@Rod Knox, condolences on your wife. That is way, way too young to go. My father in law did essentially the same thing and he passed while in his late 50s.
He was bedridden the last few years of his life and living on an oxygen bottle. He still went through a pack a day.

I’ve never smoked and hate the stuff but to each their own is the way I look at it.

One thing I hate is how cigarette smokers are vilified like criminals yet many weed smokers are given a pass “because it helps them health wise”. While medicinal marijuana may be fine for a few I’m of the opinion that most are using health as an excuse to support their weed habit.

There’s been a push in OK to legalize medicinal weed. Not long ago one Sat. afternoon I stopped by the local library to pick up a few books. Four college age kids had set up a petition booth across the street and were vigorously waving everyone down to sign up. A cursory look told me there wasn’t a thing wrong with any of them. Horsing around like grade school kids at recess. They waved me over and I blew them off. Traffic was very light in that area.

When I came out of the liberry (sic) one of those guys was standing by my car and started with the “Hey bro, care to sign out petition for medicinal marijuana?”. No; and I’m not your “bro”.

He asked again so I asked just exactly what was wrong with him that made him think he needed weed to get through the day. He said he “suffered from mild stress”.
After I asked, he said he was a college student and did not even work a job. I then told him he had no damned idea what stress was so he mumbled “Thanks bro…” and went back to flagging down passing cars.

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Those are extremely rare. You smoke for even 10 years your risk of life threatening disease goes up signifucantly. After 20 years of smoking it’s unlikely you don’t have some diminished Heath related to smoking.

The marijuana issue is all over the country. MA has legalized it. NH is working on it. I can understand the initial use of medical marijuana to help relieve the side effects of cancer treatment. But now it’s used for everything from migraines to a hangnail.

I’m not for it. But I do support decriminalizing it. There’s no reason should serve years in prison for posessing 1 joint

I picked up the habit of smoking when I was in college. I was 31 when I decided to quit. I was spending $40 a month on prescription drugs–quite a bit in 1973 I didn’t feel good a.lot of the time. I finally decided that there had.to be a.better way to live. I took advantage of a physical fitness program the university where I was teaching offered. I couldn’t run 3/4 of the way around the basketball floor at the time. I made it my goal to be up to running a mile by the end of the 10 week program. I made it to a mile and a half. I continued running almost every day for over 20 years until I developed a heel spur. When I went on the physical fitness program I quit smoking cold turkey. It was hard for the first week, but got easier after that. I found that running 3 miles at noon relieved tension better than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. I can’t run any more, but my wife and I fitness walk three miles a day five days a week and do it in under 50 minutes.

Remembering the 98 year old lady, a cigarette is the big reason I get up in the morning, remembering 48 year old guy who was a smoker and died from a number of cancers at 48, Make your choices and roll the dice, like another bud who is dead now from pancreatic cancer he said you gotta quit smoking, I said I am hoping to get hit by a bus. There is not an absolute answer to many questions, but screwed up biker motto, live hard die young and make a good looking corpse.

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@Barkydog.I want to live a long time because there are many more people on this Earth I want to irritate. The last thing I want to do is croak–I know where the hell I’m going

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Mike, while I agree that destructive behaviors greatly increase one’s risks, the above situation might not be as rare as we’d like to think. I did everything right and ended up disabled with degenerative disc disease, two heart attacks, diabetes, osteoarthritis, and a host of other medical issues.

No one gets out of here alive.

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That’s a completely different argument. Of course you can do everything right and still have health problems.

It’s like the guy who drives 90mph every day for years and years without a problem. The more he drives recklessly the higher the risk of getting in an accident. Yet there are people who’ve drive very carefully and obey all the laws yet still has had a couple accidents in the same time period as first driver.

But take 10,000 drivers like the first one and 10,000 drivers like the second one and over time the good safe drivers will have far far far fewer accidents then the first group of drivers.

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Back in the 50’s we were allowed to go down town from high school. I decided i was going to be a tough guy and bought a pack. I went out in the street and lit one up. A very tough kid two years younger than I was, walked up with a cigarette in his mouth and reached out, took the cigarette from my mouth and the pack from my shirt pocket, threw them on the ground and smashed them with his shoes. he said, “You are too young to smoke.” And, kept on puffing on his own cigarette.

I was angry at the time, but that was one of the biggest favors anyone ever did for me.

I never liked the odor of cigarettes at work. But, when they suddenly told people who were hired as smokers that they had to go out into -20 degree weather to smoke, I felt it wasn’t totally fair, either. Not that anyone cared what i thought.

In Criminal Justice class, I had to do a paper and chose to write on marijuana. At that time, in one of the Dakota’s possession of one marijuana cigarette got you life in prison. I thought that was not correct.

I did a lot of research trying to find the actual evidence that marijuana was harmful. I never did, as long as it wasn’t deliberately laced to try to addict you on the expensive stuff.

In 1895, the India Hemp Drug Commission, UK studied use of marijuana in India. The scientists concluded that it should not be made illegal because alcohol was much worse.

Some years later, La Guardia of NYC commissioned a similar study and they reached the same conclusion.

And, in the 70’s. Consumer Reports did a study and could find no evidence that Pure marijuana caused any great harm.

So, why it it illegal? After Prohibition was repealed certain companies who did not like the competition spent millions propagandizing the hazards and horrors of pot. Many years later, people still believe it.

The big problem is you buy it from crooks who do not hesitate to lace it with bad stuff.

Full disclosure: I have not ever used it, even without inhaling. I have no unmet needs to be solved with mind altering substances, including alcohol. But, we are destroying lives even as we preach that we can’t legislate morality.

Yet, because of pot laws, US citizens are at risk on our highways from forfeiture laws and stupid judges.

I would HARDLY consider reefer to be a “mind altering substance”

And I would also not consider alcohol to be a “mind altering substance”

That’s true, Mike, but my comment was regarding the question of smoking and health. I guess I failed to make myself clear. :grin:

These days marijuana doesn’t need to be smoked.
No need to pump combustion products into the lungs.
There are candies, cookies etc. with THC and liquids that can be vaporized like with e-cigarettes.
I’ve considered asking my 94 y.o. mother’s doctor about getting her edibles to boost her appetite.

Then there is the story of the guy visiting a modern psychiatrist and being offered a few joints. He refused because he did not want to use a mind expanding drug while his head was being shrunk!

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LOL, I love it!
Honestly, if there weren’t so many problems with the laws I’d love to try marijuana in the hopes that it would relieve my pain and help me sleep better at night… and it might help my glaucoma too. I’d be thrilled if it allowed me to get off the opiates.

Odd, isn’t it? Opiates don’t create any fights with the law, but marijuana probably would. Seems to me like the laws a bit backwards.

I agree 100%!
In my opinion, the differences lie in the fact that the multinational pharmaceuticals currently make billions of $$ from the sale of opiates and opioids, but they can’t currently make any money from the sale of marijuana-related products.

However, if the slimy lobbyists for Big Pharma start paying their…financial support…to key members of Congress “correctly”, then those companies could begin manufacturing marijuana extracts and such.
They just have to start spending their bribe money a bit differently–IMHO–and you would then see a revision of the existing laws.