Smoking ban in public places

Post Reply New Topic

By that same token, do they have the freedom to carry on smoking and not be punished for it? How about setting the cigarette tax at a more sane level than at present? How about restoring the ability for hospitals to offer smoking rooms and pubs to be smoker-friendly? Or, even if not that, how about being able to offer a proper outside shelter for smokers rather than the basically useless situation that smokers have now?

Not aimed at you Bloodheart but I find that it helps if you don't dehumanise people, I find.

There is similar bigotry out there towards autistic people. Just tonight I have basically been told that we are making all our symptoms up. How would the anti- (not non-) smokers on this thread like it if that sort of thinking was in the ascendant?

I dunno, I can kinda see both sides of the argument here. However, I am a non-smoker though I did try cigarettes in my early 20s (big mistake for me). My issue is that I have trouble breathing as it is without being around smokers. Cigar/cigarette smoke causes my lungs to go into an immediate asthma attack which is most unpleasant. Smokers seem to think my distress is funny too. I've also lost numerous people in my life due to smoking related illnesses. Yeah it sucks to be demonized, I understand that. But it also sucks when you can't breathe because someone is smoking in your presence, & it sucks when people get very sick & die from something that is totally voluntary.

I think there should be designated areas for smokers that has good ventilation. I also think if people are non-smokers, they shouldn't have to be subjected to such a harmful substance against their will.

Tomboy

It's not voluntary.

You're saying you're born with a cigarette in your hand or that you were forced to smoke? Smoking IS voluntary. I know, I tried it. No one forced me either....I did it on a whim.

No, we're not born with a cigarette in our hands, but that doesn't mean smoking is voluntary.

Voluntary means doing something of ones own free will.
The first cigarette or two is voluntary, once you're a smoker then smoking is no longer voluntary, addiction is NOT voluntary....it's very nature takes away a persons free will, their actions are determined by their need to obtain more of the drug.

That's a problem because I can see this as the only realistic solution to the problems concerning health issues for people who want to keep using nicotine in something akin to the usual way, and also the problem of conflicting interests between the smokers and nonsmokers. Pharma sells items intended to wean smokers off nicotine, otherwise they'll keep smoking. There needs to be a third solution, that is, nicotine users need the option of continuing indefinitely without any intention of ever quitting, and that's fine if they can do it without making the objectionable smell and mess or harming themselves excessively. Even if I didn't care about the smell, and even if I didn't care about how my lung functioning was down to 80% at one point, I still have reason to care about what's happening to family members and others in whom I have an emotional investment. I could think "well, it's just them and not me, so it's not my problem" but it still affects me indirectly even if I myself am not breathing the smoke anymore.

But they do choose to smoke that first ciggerette knowing that it is addictive I would imagine. I mean it says right on the box 'ciggerettes are addictive' it also says they can cause cancer and cause other health risks. I have been smoking for like three years and stopped enjoying them but was still smoking, now I have found I enjoy a ciggerette on occasion but I dont need one every hour so I decided to stop smoking as much with the exception of when I get drunk then a pack might dissappear.

If everyone based all of their choices on what other people feel....no one would be doing much of anything for fear of possibly indirectly doing something they feel is not right or ending up in a situation where they feel bad for you and thus indirectly causing them hurt feelings.

Or, for example, not doing something because the power of offence is that strong that if they do that something people will kill them if they do it.

There are lots of places in the world where backing down to "offence" is considered a weakness. If you continue backing down in situations like that pretty soon you will not have anything left. You will be under the control of the "offended", who will still try to extract concessions from you. Much like the smoking debate.

percisely why the arument that by smoking you are causing harm to people because they might not like what you are doing to yourself does not work....and besides they do have the choice to realise its the indivuals choice and they should not be losing sleep over other peoples personal lifestyle choices.

When you had your first cigarette, did you smoke it knowing you'd become an addict?
They choose to smoke that first cigarette - not to become addicted.

Most smokers start in their teens, when they're too damn stupid to fully understand the risks and when peer pressure counters any common sense anyway. The first cigarette always tastes horrible, so you think you'll never become addicted. You smoke again for whatever reason, there's less of a horrible taste because you're body is already starting to learn to tolerate the poison, and so you experience more of the head-rush...you smoke again to get that head-rush again...you find you want to do it more than once a day...more than twice a day...and so-on. By the time you realise you're addicted it's too late, addiction is a trap.

Smokers or people smoking? Big difference in that of course, not all smokers are smoking at that time.



How old were they generally when they lost their lives? If they were in their 70s, say, it might not actually be that but natural causes. The way I see it is that in most cases, they chose their lifestyle and were happy with it more or less. They had a good life when they were around and weren't languishing in care homes for the rest of their lives.

I know a lot of elderly people locally and a lot of them are very depressed because they know that the time's near but they can't do too much.



This can be applied to a huge range of behaviours: drinking, eating too much (or "unheathily"), unprotected sex, extreme sports, football, boxing, running, lifting weights. The list goes on.



Like outside? Smokers have already been banned from all bars, cafés, cinemas, shops, government buildings (and the car parks of government buildings!), even vans where the owner uses it for a business. Even if the general public are never going to take a ride in this van, it's illegal to smoke inside his own property.

In Holland where this has happened café owners have rebelled at ordinances like this as they understand that it directly affects their livelihoods.




But they should also know when to quit complaining with the fake coughing if there's a guy sat two tables away with a cigarette, in a pub garden, in summer, outside. A lot of that is psychosomatic. They're whipping themselves up into a frenzy. They full well know that in summer, outside a pub, there are going to be people smoking. They have the entire pub to themselves. That they choose to sit outside and be offended - usually not for any real health reason, but just because they believe their right to dictate other people's actions is paramount - looks suspiciously like wanting to control people to me.

They've bullied that smoker out of pubs, telling the government that there would be an influx of non-smokers to make up for smokers. That utterly failed to materialise. In fact, all that happened was that, while the pub got a few new customers in they were generally of a "two Cokes and a salad" sort who would very rarely go into pubs anyway. When faced with a huge number of your normal customers that drink day in, day out deciding not to bother, you're knackered. You can't set up proper smoking areas outside, because it's illegal and punishable by heavy fines. You can't let them smoke in your pub because informers are everywhere, there's a huge fine and it's illegal. So you offer food. In fact, that's the only way a lot of pubs today are really surviving - by offering food. So it's degraded pubs from being a place where locals would meet to enjoy a pint, a fag and conversation into vulgar "restaurant that serves beer" rather than "a pub that serves food" or in many cases closing down altogether or becoming Indian restaurants. In many city centres, a pub chain called JD Wetherspoons has capitalised on this, offering cheaper beer than in regular pubs to pensioners and aggressive younger men and women out on a night on the town. Later on at night, these tend to be very tense places.

In Britain, the anti-smokers are perfectly fine with leaving the pub garden to the smokers, frequently elderly and infirm, in November or December when it's absolutely freezing and no-one wants to go out for a pint but come the time when any sane person actually wants to sit outside, they sit, fake coughing at the ready, whingeing about the "selfish smokers".

That's the other issue: in Southern European countries the smoking ban isn't such a big thing because smokers can be outside on the terrace pretty much all year round. That's not true of the UK.

As I say, this has vastly increased the speed of the decline of the British pub. The traditional beer campaigning organisation supported this ban, and many of its members support further rules towards "irresponsible drinking". They can't see that, to anti-alcohol 'charities' (government mouthpieces in all but name - when the state funds them to the tune of 98% of their entire income, what else could it be?), they're considered the irresponsible drinkers. They wish to bring about a new temperance age.

Last edited by Tequila on 27 May 2011, 10:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I smoked my first ciggerette when I was almost 18......and I knew ciggerettes can cause lung cancer and are addictive, it was a risk I was willing to take at the time. And actually that first ciggerette tasted amazing and I was like hmm I think I will continue doing this because I like it. Also a month ago i realised I was 'addicted' and from what I heard I figured cutting down at all was going to be really hard. Then I tried going longer then usual without ciggerettes and realised I was more addicted to the act of smoking then the actual tobacco so I realised I can hold a ciggerette for a while without lighting it and I will forget about smoking for a few hours. And now it does take a bit of will-power not to light one up every hour but its not that terribly difficult. And I plan to go a week without alcohol so I can actually get into the routine of smoking very little(I smoke more when I drink which will not help this step of my process) so I can actually enjoy a ciggerette when I smoke it instead of criticizing myself for smoking an entire pack within two days.

I'm waiting for another case like Ionel Rapisca.
This is the guy who pushed the anti-smoking women on the train tracks - obviously he shouldn't have been smoking and he certainly shouldn't have pushed her onto blood train tracks, he deserved the jail time! - my point is that if I remember rightly she fake coughed and was not far from verbally abusing them before ordering them to stop smoking. Not all smokers are nice, and all smokers are highly-wound whether they like to admit it or not, it's only a matter of time before another snaps at people like this again...imagine too if we did have a blanket ban, apart from not seeing how it'd work, I think we'd see if not a rise in violence then a drop in productivity in work environments. I could be wrong of course, depends how they'd go about it.

And not all smokers are mean....also no its not good to push people onto train tracks, but its also not good to harras someone who's smoking when it is none of your buisness, and yes it could esclate to something like that. Why would you hope more senerios like that take place?

I don't hope to see more cases like this, I just expect them.