When did the Red Line add a smoking car?
By adamg - 9/9/10 - 10:12 am
Librarian on the Run reports on the cigar-smoking fellow on the Red Line this morning:
This guy was different than the kids I've seen sneaking cigarettes on the platform, as they always look like they'll pee their pants if they get caught. This guy was actually enjoying a lit cigar on his morning commute and looked so comfortable and sane, that I think he'd have been apologetic if someone pointed out to him that it was prohibited to smoke on the T.
Comments
Chances are...
...if you had reminded him of the no-smoking policy on the T, you would *not* use the word 'sane' to describe him.
I have asthma which is triggered by tobacco smoke. So, I ask smokers on T platforms to stop smoking all the time. All but one* of the dozens of smokers I've talked to were non-apologetic; most swing right into angry rant mode. NONE of the angry rant ones have appeared to be sane.
At this point**, most smokers on the T know exactly that what they are doing is wrong and just seem to be looking for a fight.
*A German who truly did not know there was no smoking since he had seen no signs. And he did have a point. There are no signs and few announcements.
** The no smoking in public areas law has been in effect for 6 years.
More than 6 years
For T stations and platforms, try twenty years.
Some jerkwad at Harvard went into angry rant mode on me when I was pregnant with kid #1 over 15 years ago. I asked him nicely to stop and pointed out signs.
I did warn him that it was really, really making me want to throw up, I really did ...
The most effective approach...
...I've found is to lead with "I have asthma. You need to put that out immediately" and to then interrupt the rant with, "If I have an asthma attack, you are guilty of assault" as I take out my cell phone to take a photo and call the transit cops.
They know they are wrong; they throw away the smoke and/or hide when you take their photo.
Just so everyone knows, the T police have a twitter account to which you can send photos of miscreants: @MBTATransitPD or http://twitter.com/mbtatransitpd.
I'm looking forward to using that one since getting a T worker at a station to deal with the smoker seems to be useless. Not that a photo of a smoker sent to twitter is likely to result in an arrest, but you never know.
You'd be surprised
Smoking is to T cops as red-light running is to Boston cops: They love catching people doing it because the sort of person likely to do that is far more likely to have outstanding warrants.
I'll keep it in mind...
and will live in hope that one of my calls will result in a bust. I suspect it would be very satisfying!
How, In the Name of All That's Holy?!
How did humanity ever survive 50 years ago when everyone smoked?? How??
They Didn't
Pregnant women stayed home and didn't use transit. Asthmatics were often disabled and didn't use transit or drove because they couldn't stand the exposure. Productive working citizens with illnesses or disabilities would have been dead, at home, or in hospital.
People dropped dead and stayed dead - no parametics, CPR, defibrillators could bring them back to become ex smokers and survivors.
Somewhere along the line, the rights of all of these people to use public transit became more important than the rights of righteous addicts.
We should go back to the days
We should go back to the days where people smoked everywhere. I also wish we could go back to when walking down hanover street meant someone would throw a bucket of human waste on your head.
Oddly enough, the Boston
Oddly enough, the Boston Elevated reserved the last car of each train for smokers. Due to it being a somewhat inefficient practice (you needed a crew of men at the terminals to clean the car between trips, which lengthened the overall roundtrip time), they were phased out in 1918.