Let smokers smoke.

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So a bunch of anti-smoking crazies say. Just leave people in peace, for hell's sake - smoking rates are falling and will continue to fall without your bigoted interventions. You'll still win, you just don't need to be obsessive and nasty about it.

Us salad-dodgers are next. After those of us who like a pint.

Autistics won't be too long after that. They'll make us 'normal', so they will. So watch out.

Actually, I think that our bigotted interventions are helping.

It was bigotted interventions that caused a lot of people to start smoking in middle and high school in the first place.

If we bigots make smokers come to their senses, then you will eventually be grateful.

Imagine: you'll eventually be able to taste food again. You'll be able to run a few yards without gasping for breath. You'll be able to save money. You won't be so stinky. You may become less of a social pariah. You will cough less. You may avert smoking-related illnesses, and a horrible, painful, torturous early death.

After giving it some thought I've come to the conclusion that I'd rather be in a room surrounded by smokers madly puffing away than in a room full of liberals madly spewing away.

If you call dividing the populace, making smokers feel generally miserable and disgusted with themselves and driving them into the hands of criminals and buying their tobacco abroad is helping, yes.

A lot of people I know have 'given up' smoking - i.e. they haven't given up at all, they just say they have to avoid being ranted at by unreasoning lunatics.

These people are adults. They've smoked all their lives. They won't stop. They'll carry on, and when the political/lobby group pressure becomes too much for them and society - at all levels - becomes too obsessive about stopping them indulging at all costs - say, if there is a considerable rise in street attacks of smokers for example they'll go underground. This is already happening. it'll become a flood.

For every action, there is a reaction. That's human nature. You can't stop people doing what they want to do - as the tragedy at Utøya has shown. You can isolate entire groups, clamp down on free speech, intern people (NI again), and it gets much, much worse. Free people - i.e. a people empowered to think, smoke, drink, have sex with (excepting consent issues, and morality - though that isn't an area for the State), travel or buy what we want. Everything gets sorted out in the end and most people are happy. Other people might not think so but it's not their life.

Throughout history, prohibition has never worked. Has it worked with the drug industry? With video nasties? With pornography? With 'banned' books? With banning political processions and even the spokespeople of political parties (see Sinn Féin/IRA and the broadcast ban, where Gerry Adams and other representatives of IRA/SF ludicrously had his words dubbed over by a succession of Northern Irish actors). It didn't work; people just laughed at the ludicrousness of it all.

It's not simply a right-wing/left-wing thing either. Right-wing movements - like the Christian right - indulged in this kind of juvenile puritanical paternalism just as much as the healthists of today. Either side of the authoritarian coin is lethal. Whether it be by left-wingers with the deranged idea that they can mould society in their image, or right-wing social authoritarians and religious conservatives thinking that the word of God is... and so on.

If you hate smoking, don't let them be seen as martyrs, because that's the most toxic thing you can do. Ask the British Government about the aftermath of the Easter Rising in Ireland and what it did for Unionism in Ireland. Before the Easter Rising, there were lots of people who weren't too bothered about Irish independence that weren't unionists. After that? No chance. Irish people in the South wanted the Brits out at all costs and the island was divided after civil war.

At the end of the day though, extreme anti-smokers cannot be convinced. I'll concede that there are some a***holes on the extreme pro-choice side too, who want to be able to smoke anywhere and everywhere and sometimes in violation of private property rights. I haven't met many of these though, either online or in the real world. I've met more people who just want choice.



They made their choice. Underage people smoking is certainly not anything I'd agree with and the risks should be pointed out to them that smoking isn't good for you. At the end of it though measures can be taken but frequently they'll bypass those protections anyway.

(Incidentally, would you rather that there was lower cigarette taxation and a free market, legitimate trade in cigarettes where children are prevented from purchasing cigarettes? Or would you prefer it if cigarettes were unaffordably high - a packet of 20 here in the UK is £6.50 (around US$10.50), around 80% of that price being straight taxation - and people drawn to criminals and cigarette smugglers, who don't care whom they sell to and are very happy to sell to children? They don't care about social responsibility, they only care about money. And if that means selling to seven year olds and harming them when they don't pay, that's cool.)

In the UK, many people buy their cigarettes on holiday abroad and then run the gauntlet of the UK Border Agency, who confiscate cigarettes in contravention of EU rules, which we have signed up to? In fact, UKBA seem to be interested in little else. Consider this: you go on holiday and the price of 20 cigarettes is half the price you'd pay at home, even in Southern European countries where cigarette taxes have been massively increased. In fact, less people are visiting places like Spain for holidays because of the increases in costs for visiting - often it is slightly cheaper than the UK, often the same, and sometimes more expensive. Cigarettes are nearer £4.50 in Spain than the £3 they used to be.

Bulgaria is even cheaper and is very popular as a British tourist destination at the moment as it's outside the Eurozone - people pay £1.50 per pack and bring them home.

You risk losing them (and people often do, even if they're within UK guideline limits!) but what do you do? A lot of people at least bring some back to save money.

I don't smoke. I've never smoked. Not once. I wouldn't mind trying a good cigar at some point in my life with a glass of a really lovely imperial stout after dinner but I wouldn't go out of my way to do so.

British smokers pay far, far more into the NHS than is used on treatment - I think the UK tax take on cigarettes is four or five times the amount it costs the NHS. British smokers are helping to keep a public health system afloat that hates them, denies them treatment, gives them poor quality care, and so on. This is the legacy of socialist mismanagement and waste in our public sector. It cannot be changed, mainly because there are too many vested interests interested only in keeping it afloat.

Anti-smoking on this scale makes a bad situation worse.



They won't, though. You've been trying this for 30 years and it hasn't worked. Originally, the anti-smoking movement could be seen as being noble, asking for more awareness of the dangers of smoking and so on whilst still letting people have their choice of whether to partake. Then they turned obsessively prohibitionist. It's no longer about health; it's about hating people for what they are.

Last edited by Tequila on 25 Jul 2011, 5:42 pm, edited 6 times in total.

The most hideous irony is that these 'liberals' are nothing of the kind. They are righteous authoritarians.

As long as the room is hermetically sealed, then suit yourself.

Tobacco manufacturers are criminals.

But, do smokers generally feel miserable and disgusted with themselves?

Other people do find them disgusting.

I thought that smokers generally regarded themselves as "cool" and superior to others.

And, when they are hacking their last breaths, aren't they pleased with how "cool" their lives have been?

I can't say for the non smokers but pretty much all the smokers I've met have been inconsiderate a***holes. I just want to be able to go into a pub or club without having smoke blown in my face or being obstructed by the lit end of a cigarette. Is that too much to ask?


People buying from criminals, criminals will sell to children & cigarettes will be smuggled regardless of price or taxation. If people think they can get something cheaper from the unsavory individuals, the black market will thrive - regardless of what anybody else.

So, after threads of saying the EU shouldn't mess with UK sovereignity, you're actually complaining we've broken a rule? Despite the fact that France does this a lot?

Yes but it is 600 per person personal usage. Given 20 a week, that's seven months of cigarettes.
No, British smokers pay far more tax to the treasury. Only NI income is guaranteed to the NHS & no NI is paid on cigarettes. Considering I know of no NHS source that discriminates smokers in statistics, I call for proof on the latter statement.
I fail to see what socialism has to do with it. Socialist/Privatisation are both completely incompetent self serving empire builders.

Why do you say that? Can you list experiences? Perhaps they're just sick of being told that they stink, that they're disgusting, that they're poisoning people. If I was told that many, many times when having a cigarette, minding my own business, I think I'd become pretty hacked off with people.

They've been banned from the places where they used to socialise (and in fact are not even allowed to set up private members' clubs so they can get together and enjoy their hobby), they're banned from miserable windswept train platforms, they're banned from empty bus shelters, they're frequently banned from hospital grounds...

...I think they have a decent case for being persecuted. Bear in mind that tobacco is a legal product in the UK.



Who is obstructing you? And who blows cigarette smoke in your face? No-one would do that if it wasn't a direct provocation. People blow away from others. Common courtesy.

Also, post-ban, the sight of smokers outside looks more untidy and not-nice from an anti-smoking perspective when they were simply left alone. The law of unintended consequences - you try to solve one problem, you only succeed in creating newer ones.

And then there's the Bartlett fiasco...



No, I quite agree with you. I think the market should decide. So the places where the majority of people are non-smoking would be non-smoking. If they make more money and the customers are happier for it to be smoking, it can be a smoking bar. I would insist that all pubs and clubs are clearly marked on the outside so that one has the choice whether to enter or not.

Bars aimed at younger people will probably continue to be non-smoking whether for personal or economic reasons. Good for them. The backstreet, pie and a pint type places full of old codgers, can be smoking. Hooray!



Smugglers won't smuggle and people won't buy from smugglers and criminals unless there is an incentive to do so. We're talking about working class people here, who don't have a lot of money, yet the State insists on punishing them for their vices. Punish them too hard - by taxing them beyond what they afford - and people look elsewhere. People go on booze and fag cruises, or they go to foreign countries to drink (a lot of Dubliners used to visit Liverpool for nights out because of the sheer cost of boozing in Dublin - cheap hotel, cheap flights from Ireland to UK and the night has paid for itself).

My point is that, yes, smugglers will smuggle. However, if taxation is low and sensible and most people can afford, they'll choose the real deal. Less likelihood of being poisoned that way, and they know that what they're imbibing isn't filled with lots of nasties.



Excessive taxation encourages this on a massive scale though. Or people will produce their own. Not easy with tobacco, but easy with booze. Watch as beer taxes rocket. Watch as people stop going out. Watch as people start brewing their own. Watch as we have many, many more Bostons.

The cure is always worse than the disease.



No, I'm saying that the British Government are total liars. After years of telling us that we must follow this and that EU rule, they break them when it suits them. Liars.

I still want my sovereignty back, thanks. Watch as UKIP grows.



20 a week?! Where do you get the idea that any other than very light smokers have 20 a week?! Try 20 a day. And these are moderate smokers. That will last them a month. And they can still be seized even under those guidelines in any case. They're guidelines, not limits.



So my point still stands. British smokers pay out far, far more than they take.



It doesn't matter though - the point remains.



The NHS is a socialist invention - by the Labour party. It might have worked had it been strictly limited but it's far too big now, far too many people depend on it while giving appalling service to the sick, the vulnerable, the elderly. I would really love to see competition in the NHS - hell, the French system would be better.

This was before the smoking ban and they are all numerate minor incidents that involved waving cigarettes or clouds of smoke being blown where I was standing. I have actually had someone's cigarette in my arm, not purposefully but it still hurt!In addition, I've had smoke blown into my face by the person I was serving alchohol. You could argue that they are all drunk but I personally reckon it just shows people for who they really are.

Probably. Alcohol is legal in the UK, so should we not ban drunks drinking in the street?They have a decent case for being persecuted.

Except they wouldn't have that choice. If you are in a group(which most clubs try to attract), you go where the majority are going or choose to be a social outcast. I never went to most of those clubs because I wanted to go there. Plus, before the ban, I never even heard of a no smoking pub.
It's a lovely idea but I personally don't think it practical.

Ah British government are hypocrites, Gotcha. Without the fear of the EU to keep them in check aren't these hypocrites going to have near absolute power?

Have you ever come across someone who is pro Europe but anti EU before?


The point you think you have made still stands. Smokers do pay more into the tax system than they take out - I agree with you there but you said:
With no link from the cigarette tax returns to the NHS, the statement isn't necessarily valid. If nothing of the cigarette tax returns goes to the NHS, then smokers would take out more money in treatment than they put in.


You seem to have misunderstood what I meant by my sentence. everything in the UK, as I see it, is mismanaged and wasteful. I can't see competition making the damnedest bit of difference.

My attitude towards smokers has been shaped by my experiences with high school bullies.

Hence, I tend to regard all smokers as stupid, dangerous, destructive creeps.

Well looks like you've become the very thing you hated

Pooh. By merely existing - even if you stop breathing - you are "imposing on" those entities in a a ten foot radius significantly and arguably ultimately on all denizens of the planet.

Nope. Still not a smoker. Never will be.

No-one was saying you had to be a smoker at all. When did anyone ever say that? I'll probably never be a smoker either (though I wouldn't mind trying a nice cigar if I ever had the opportunity during my life) but just to allow people the choice to freely associate - for example, in bars, clubs, parks, bus shelters - with those who do. Everyone thus goes home happy - people socialise, and no-one (apart from extremist diehards) feels hard done by.

I'm very happy for those that have given up smoking and live a non-smoking life. I've never smoked and don't intend to. But I don't intend to do lots of things. I take exception to being bullied into doing things I don't want to do, or being bullied into not experiencing things I enjoy.

I have not lit up a cigarette in 48 years, but I still consider myself a smoker.

ruveyn