Best Places For Smokers Traveling Abroad: A Top-10 List

LA Times:

With so many places around the world instituting smoking regulations, increasing taxes and, quite literally, kicking smokers to the curb, it's getting harder to find cigarette-friendly vacation spots.

Read the whole story: LA Times

Comments

[redsongia]

The traffic exhaust in St. Petersburg is so foul from all the cars that still run on leaded gas, that you may as well smoke to improve the air quality.

Not to mention, the trash cans always seem to be on fire, burning up all kinds of plastic bottles and delicious toxins.

[Pem3]

I do not mind the smoking bans being a smoker just do not understand the Bar ban. A person saying it is unhealthy environment that is going into a place that deals in selling poison is being picky.

[NelsonBig]

Boo. It looked like a joint on the pic. I was all over this.

Oh well, I live in Cali. So, it seems like the best place so far.

[pipetoe]

...so you are in favor of legalizing POT????

[NelsonBig]

Absolutely.

[FrTown]

Many tourist friendly 3rd world countries have so much on their plates that banning smoking from public places is the least of their worries. Even with very low percentage of smokers, visiting smokers can puff in all impunity in hotel halls, restaurants and other enclosed public places with total disregard to the kindness and health of the locals.
Another factor that the article did not take into consideration is the ratio men to women who smoke.
In some countries the percentage of men who smoke would go as high as 80% with less than 5% of the women sucking on cancer sticks.

[Knowbetter]

When I went to Bosnia in 2000, you could even smoke in elevators.

[KIVPossum]

Come and visit Chisinau. Three are maybe two non-smoking restaurants in town and they look the other way. Most restaurants have one ashtry for every 4 seats at a table. Cubs have a stack by the door so you can pick one up as you enter and set on whatever ledge you call home for the evening. Some theaters allow smoking. Taxis and most intercity buses don't object. And a pack of cigarettes costs 70 cents.

[Mattjoe3]

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[Proxy11]

To bad Bill Hicks isn't alive anymore. :'(

[Hedgehogging]

What about Japan?

The Japanese smoke and drink like WW2 sailors but guess what? They live a lot longer than Americans without the help of pharmaceuticals!

Why is that? OK, I'll tell you why, because the FDA is more concerned about getting themselves high paying jobs in the private sector than saving lives.

[pipetoe]

OH,,, you must know..

[weatherwaxx]

Courts may have slowed the tobacco pushers here, but last I heard there were huge government subsidies for "promoting American agriculture abroad..." ie, tax $ to Big Tobacco to sell the stuff overseas.

[N3M3siS]

Get Vapor Blu. Paper, tar, yellow teeth and cancer causing carcinogens not included. Smoke anywhere and save money.

[emsique]

I live in China. If you are a man, China is smoker's paradise. Almost no women smoke, but 67% of the men do. That's about 2/3! You can smoke virtually anywhere, except buses, trains and planes. Even though airports are "smoke free" I've seen guys hanging outside the packed smoker's lounge with the door wide open puffing away. A blind person would know they were on a Chinese airline, just by listening to the passengers cough. Smoke in the hospital, in the store, etc. To their credit, most guys refrain from puffing in the store. It's a government run business, so you get a pretty weak anti smoking campaign from the health authorities. Also, over 60% of doctors smoke.

[thefooligan5]

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall hearing that the Chinese government was subtly forcing people in a certain province to start smoking to help prop up the government run tabacco company. That is quite remarkable.

[PaceSetter]

in a smoking cessation clinic

away from children

away from non-smokers

in an oxygen tank

in a cancer clinic

[weatherwaxx]

Or, like my parents, in the cemetary.

[PaceSetter]

mine too

(could you sense the bitterness?)

[amdezurik]

and how many people do not end up in one? just curious?

[KIVPossum]

I am not going to defend smoking or ignore the health effects.

However, how do heavy, lifelong smokers in some nations avoid some of the things that seem to plague American smokers? Look around in Russia, Moldova, Ukraine, and you never see people carrying aroudn the oxygen tanks.

I am convinced it is something to do with the tobacco and the processing into cigarettes.

I am a smoker and American made Winstons kill my throat - two or three days with them and I am hacking. In Moldova I smoke Ukraine made Winstons without a problem.

[David Rozgonyi]

How do Russians avoid carrying around oxygen tanks? Early death. And I say this as an Eastern European (Hungarian) / US citizen living in eastern Europe. But Hungary is truly a smoker's paradise! Ask me how I know... :)

[redsongia]

Lame. Because in Russia, if you can't breathe, you sit on the sidewalk until you can. No one gets an oxygen tank.

The tough old Eastern Europeans are the ones that lived, my friend.

[Pem3]

My dad while in the ICU for lung cancer before he passed would turn off the Oxygen to his tent fan it out and smoke. They were very upset with him, He just told them what are you going to do not cure me.

[Mygirl]

There are a lot of smokers in the state of Texas.

[kyeshinka]

Another good place is Korea. You can smoke in most bars and restaurants and karaoke rooms. Women are more freely smoking in public as the stigma has worn off.