Do you think smoking will be outlawed in your lifetime?

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Obviously v.v. bad for you (directly or passively) - already banned in public places etc. Young people continue to start smoking (although I don’t know the figures for this anecdata)

My DM had been a smoker all her life and her lungs are giving up. Nothing official as she won’t go to the drs but wheezes and coughs all the time.

It’s gotten me thinking that a full ban on selling tobacco/smoking in public must be on the cards at some point - but when?

I wouldn't have thought so but I'd bloody love it. I fucking detest smoking. Rancid habit.

I was recently in hospital and the numbers of people at the front puffing away on their cigarettes while attached to drip stands was unbelievable. And the hospital does offer patches etc.

Also, someone was telling me that when her dad was in hospital he used to remind her mum to bring his cigarettes in (he had an aortic aneurism). And while I realise that giving up is never easy, like hell would I have brought cigarettes into hospital for someone with a serious health condition.

And yes, I judge. I judge people who start smoking in the first place. The risks at this point are well known, with older people it’s slightly different because the risks then were less known, but these days there is absolutely no reason why anyone needs to start smoking in the first place, and let’s be honest you have to make the choice to start in order to become addicted in the first place.

Why not stop judging people and banning things and live and let live?

Why not stop judging people and banning things and live and let live? perhaps because passive smoking is just as if not more harmful than active smoking?

And perhaps because the nhs then has to pick up the bill from smoking-related illnesses. What does that take away from I wonder?

And no, before anyone makes a comparison to sports injuries and such like,it’s not remotely comparable. In fact even obesity isn’t comparable.

Your children aren’t going to develop asthma from someone else playing football or over eating to the point of obesity. However they likely will if they come into close and regular contact with cigarette smoke.

I have just spent several weeks on a coronary ward due to a hereditary heart condition, and the numbers of people who came in who are heavy smokers, drinkers and even one who ordered a pizza to be delivered to the hospital was unreal. And giving up smoking was not addressed as a choice by the staff. People were given support, patches and referrals to support, but it was very much said to them as they needed to give up or next time (and there is likely to be a next time) they likely won’t survive to tell the tale.

Tightening the laws about smoking near children/vulnerable people would be good.

But prohibition isn't the answer. Maybe making it harder to purchase is, but that would need a study because it might just open up a space for organised crime to step up.

I also know some psychiatrists still unofficially recommend over other forms of anti-anxiety medications.

Surely the cost to the NHS is massive compared to taxes collected from smokers. Treating cancer and heart disease costs a fortune.

I don't think they'll ban it but I think they'll make it progressively harder to smoke anywhere.

Treating cancer and heart disease costs a fortune.

People die of something. Normally cancer or heart disease. So, yes, the particular cancer or heart disease the smoker got will have been hastened by smoking but they would have got sick and died anyway.

A dirty secret is that you want people to work hard until 60, pay taxes, then drop dead before they need pensions or old age care. Smoking, bad food, a lack of exercise, poverty and stress make that more likely. We don't actually want sprightly 90 year olds, claiming benefits and eventually still needing care, social and physical.

Driving cars will go first. Far worse than breathing in a whiff of second-hand smoke

Nobody starts smoking with the intention of long term addiction. Nobody thinks, hang about I'll grab 20 l&b and set myself off on a lifetime of addiction. I didn't! I nicked a fag off my friends dad when w3 were 17 and smoked ever since. A bit of compassion eh.

I just love smoking. I miss it. It always looks so cool and enjoyable when people smoke on films. Pesky blinders makes me want to take it up again.

They’ll never ban it but it will become unheard of one day, maybe in our lifetime.

Hell no. Governments earn far too much tax from the sale of cigarettes to ban them completely.

Hmm, heroin and crack are outlawed but we still have heroin and crack addicts. If we outlaw smoking, the most addicted will just buy smuggled ones. On that note, the government makes a lot of tax on cigarettes and won’t want to lose it. Big tobacco companies are very powerful now, although they are focusing their efforts in developing countries now.

Personally I think that the tax on cigarettes will just go up and more places will ban it. I noticed a no smoking sign on a train platform last week, which is not an enclosed space. I don’t know when this came in as I hardly ever get the train.