Smoking ban in public places

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And some non-smokers can get very rude and agressive about attacking people for smoking. But yeah limitations on where you can smoke is fine.

It is more likely that smokers get aggressive when asked not to smoke even when asked politely. I have never heard of non smokers being aggresive towards smokers but it probably has happened.

Basically, any shelter must not have sides, including doors, windows or other fittings that can be opened or shut, that enclose more than 50% of the shelter. So basically it means that it offers little protection in the driving rain, the hailstones, the cold. This goes for all private property to which the public have access - pubs, restaurants, private members' clubs, working men's clubs (sort of like a cross between a private member's club and a pub, usually found in working class areas - these are undergoing a severe decline), bingo halls, hospitals, hotels and so on. Smoking rooms are illegal, although there was some debate about whether ventilation was brought in before the ban, this line of enquiry was simply ignored. Hotel rooms were smoking is permitted is also banned, although not in many European countries.

There is no debate about anything in this country, no real chance to change legislation. MPs pass laws without listening to the electorate. In this way, parliamentary politics becomes meaningless to most.

The bingo hall trade has massively decreased since the smoking ban. Where once there would have often been full, or nearly full houses, they are a third full.

The chief executive of one of the biggest bingo chains in the UK (Gala Coral), said: "Growth prior to the smoking ban was running at 10 per cent. Since the ban, we have seen a very sharp fall in revenue and admissions … The smoking ban is entirely responsible for that."

In government buildings, they often don't even bother with the shelters. They just have a tiny closed, gated area on the far side of the car park (about half the size of the average bathroom) for smokers to congregate in. It is designed to look pathetic and humiliating.

Like I say, pubs that try to cater for their customers as best they can live in fear of visits from the licensing organisation. If they get hit with massive fines (£2,500 is just the starting point - could be anywhere up to ten times that number) it could simply put an end to their business and leave them thousands of pounds-worth in debt.

So, essentially, the pubs are being made to police the actions of their customers - or else.

The fact is these bans are authoritarian, they ignore the human rights and freedoms of a significant proportion of the population. If it was a group that wasn't stigmatised, the powers that be would jump on this.

Problem is, the obsessive antis won't compromise. They don't know the meaning of the word. Any attempt at compromise, any attempt at acceding to any demand (no matter how 'reasonable' it seems), any attempt at reasonable debate is just met with further demands for more bans and restrictions. See the execrable Deborah Arnott, head of anti-smoker organisation ASH that receives less than 1% of its funding from private donations.

Last edited by Tequila on 03 Jun 2011, 5:33 pm, edited 7 times in total.

I've tried them - they're very strange but I think they are a good alternative for smokers who don't want to quit. You do get the smoke and the sensation of smoking, but they're strange given their weight and feel, they take a while to get used to, and most smokers I know who use them like them just fine, maybe with a bit more preference for real cigarettes - it's like a smoker will smoke a different brand if it's all available or if it's cheaper, but they'll prefer their own brand.

However - large initial cost, they're limited availability, many people don't understand benefits, the fact that many places don't realise that they're not cigarettes so cancelling-out the benefit of being able to smoke indoors, etc. - means they're not as popular as they should be. I've seen them in the little newsagents across the road from me, which is a good sign, but banning will occur before they become popular.

Probably about the same time that cigarette companies are forced to give up their packaging (and thus their brand awareness). Happy days for the local cigarette smugglers!

http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/2010/08/cataloguing-psychosis.html

Calls for smokers to die, calls for smokers to have their fingers broken, calls for smokers' extermination, calls for smokers to be beaten up, calls for smokers to get cancer, calls for smokers to be poisoned, calls to deny smokers employment...

Well if someone just asked me to quit smoking in general I might not be to happy.....I mean if its their house or I am too close to a building or whatever Im not going to get upset if someone asks me not to smoke there. But if I am following the rules and staying far enough away from buildings and all that I think I should be left alone about it.

Some of you are getting abit irrational over smoking. Just goes to show how addicted smokers are with their habit. When a smoker takes in a puff the nicotine, it takes 7-10 seconds to get to the brain. This causes a short lived feeling of pleasure. As the nicotine levels drop in the blood the smoker gets agitated so this starts of nicotine withdrawal. To stop the agitated feeling they have to light up again so a vicious circle starts. There is over 4000 toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke. Why should non smokers walking down the street have to breath in this filth. There are some smokers out there who are more considerate and go of out of the way so no one has to breath in there fumes.

Someone told me that it's this sudden, high-level rush that makes cigarettes particularly addictive, and is also a crucial difference between cigarettes and methods of nicotine delivery which are more gradual such as the patches and the gum. So it's not just nicotine, but also the profile of nicotine delivery. Herein lies the hope of the e-cigarette.

On the face of it, one might consider the preference for regular cigarettes above the patches, gum, or e-cigarette as having traded one's lungs for whatever the price difference works out to be, which says that some other factor must be coming into play here. Yes, I know that sometimes smokers can remain healthy, or at least they're not dying of some horrible lung disease right now, but even so it has to be harder than hell on a person, and even the apparently healthy smokers certainly must be feeling the negative effects at some level. Could the profile of nicotine delivery be the deciding factor here and not the price? What else, if anything, prevents a would-be former smoker from just using the gum or the patches or the e-cigarette indefinitely and with no intention of ever quitting? What could be so wrong about that? After all, the smokers I know are apparently doing that with regular cigarettes anyway, so why not at least cut out the discomfort and the lung damage?.

Last edited by sgrannel on 04 Jun 2011, 5:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

this has still nothing to do with health, or people "having" to breath smoke
as stated before most smokers dont mind the reasonable bans, they mind the ones that seem to purely have the function of singling out smoking individuals.
it is about personal freedom, you say your personal health is attacked if people smoke outside, yet you dont legislate against the vastly superior amount of pollutants in the air already, accounting for many more deaths than ciggaresttes.
you say your personal freedom is attacked because you don want to breath smoke, well someone might want to smoke, and in your wants you are equal, now i think smokers should show the respect of not smoking in large crowds and places where it is sure to annoy people, but if i am standing in one end of a train platform and smoking well then you might as well stay somewhere else on the platform.

you can pretend this is actually about health or addiction or whatever but at its core this boils down to personal choice, everything else is irrelevant.

if i wanted to cut the tips of my fingers off with a chisel or implant mettalic studs in my skull that should be my choice too, as long as one understands the risks one is free to do so without having the infringement on ones person that seem to be running rampant among people today.

I thought outside bans were generally unreasonable, too, although I am not sure that there are no exceptions.




Other source of pollution are a problem in their own right, too, and these must be addressed. But the presence or absence of other sources of air pollution doesn't make any single source any more or less objectionable. I'm all in favor of making the world cleaner and more comfortable, regardless of whether it's through improvements to autos or whatever.




Not just my freedom, but my health was at least temporarily damaged in ways that were quantitatively measurable on a lung machine. Keeping the smoke away from people who don't wish to breathe it, such as at the far end of the train platform, and away from crowds and closed spaces, is probably the only reasonable solution under the circumstances and I'm glad you're doing this. But until a law was passed, banning indoor smoking in restaurants, even the thoughtfulness of smokers didn't keep their smoke residue from irritating me and making me stink.




Actually, it's about all of the above, and some of these issues, like health (see above) are applicable to people on both sides. Your addiction, my health (yours too), your personal choice to smoke, my personal choice not to breathe smoke.




These changes would not make you stink, nor would they damage my health. Go ahead with it.

On second thought, no, don't.

Last edited by sgrannel on 04 Jun 2011, 11:40 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Addiction. Nicotine addiction is not what keeps smokers addicted, it is mental addiction - thus why nicotine replacement methods do not work and thus why a smoker cannot switch to nicotine replacement methods full-term....thus why people who quit using willpower methods such as nicotine replacement therapy may still continue to crave cigarettes weeks, months, years, or even decades after they quit.

Out of curiosity - am I right in thinking that Oodain and Sweetleaf are the only smokers in this discussion?

thing here is the pollution from cigarette smoke is so small i cant even come up with an analogy that works, if you want to go to that extent most materials we know today would become illegal.


if you had family members that smoked so you grew up with then yes, one could be affected, especially if there is other factors playing in, i have a little brother with asthma an d he is quite severily affected by smoke indoors.
as said before i dont think you can legislate away from this, i think people need to realize they have different views and adjust accordingly, indoor smoking bans on private property should be voluntary, public should always be banned with smoking cabins or similar.
i wouldnt want to smell smoke when eating either but just beause it irritates people doesnt make it grounds for the legislations we are seeing in the works.



not when you are talking about a complete smoking ban or outdoors smoking ban, there is no discernible health risks left to other when second hand smoking indoors have been removed.
i can easily see how the other issues tie into an indoors smoking ban and the likes.
i am willing to bet you that you take way more damage from atomized dust during your life than from second hand smoke, if you live somehwre that has similar laws at least.

probably, i am mainly staying because i think these legislations will lead to a slippery slope, the whole ethical and philosophical basis for the laws are hogwash to say the least.
in a way i shouldnt care as i know a similar law wouldnt be possible in denmark, but i thinki this attitude presented is way more troubling than second hand smoke ever will be.

Speaking of outdoor bans, could the OP provide a link or reference to the New York outdoor ban in question? If we've agreed that indoor smoking in public spaces is forbidden, and in some cases, smoking in rentals is forbidden, then outdoors is the last "out" for someone who, for whatever reason, wants to smoke regular cigarettes. It's unfair not to leave smokers with at least some options. I would much rather have them smoke outside where I might get a whiff of it for a second or two, than have them smoke indoors, where I might have to breathe the smoke for hours on end.

I'd like to see behavior changes brought about by offering better products and better options, not by iron fist rule. The switch from horses to cars happened because cars work better, not because people were punished for using horses.