Since when is smoking such a crime?

[HeathcliffMoorland]

I don't smoke. I never have (this is not a reference to the other thread, btw).

I find it unpleasant. Because of my field of work, I am more aware than most people of the health dangers. I would NEVER promote smoking.

If someone smokes in the same room as one of my children, I take the child away.

However, I've noticed a recent increase in the number of people talking about smokers almost like they're criminals, or disgusting people, or generally offensive because they smoke... It's not like they actually want to be addicted (for the most part, anyway).

It really does seem like there's a recent increase in intensity of people's negative reactions to smokers.

People seem very precious about the whole thing, or something like that. Anyone else noticed this?

Boo, I have never encouraged anyone to smoke, I have provided an ashtray so ash would not fall on my floor. Not encouraging it, merely being polite and hospitable.

I don't visit my anti smoking relatives in Surrey in winter, too cold to sit outside, but they still come and stay in my smoking home for weeks on end. Strange

Sugar, I also mooted that point about smoking and non smoking pubs. But you know what would happen, the non smokers would follow their smoking pals to the livlier, busier smoking bar, and the whole ediface would crack

I feel sorry for the older women at bingo halls, my 89 year old nana included. And the older men. They started smoking when it was seen as positively healthy, and now are social lepars. These are the folk who need the lifeline of the pub the most.

Personally, I don't miss pubs, they didn't put up a fight for us smokers and underestimated how many would stay away.

muggle, I am a smoker, who has given up a few times so got over the addiction, but for some reason I start again, that's why I'm not sure what it is about it.

I understand the addiction process and how long it takes to get over that, but it's the phycological (sp) need I will never understand. Maybe it's the weight control aid or maybe it has a calming affect, addiction aside, I don't know.

Cory, I'd never say asthma is funny, never, and I didn't.
If you are so concerned, why not get a diagnosis and medication for it?

Asthma kills.
Get a diagnosis and medication before moaning at smokers.

I think that nations cohere around scapegoats, especially in times of stress.

I think that people can often feel powerless, overwhelmed, and filled with animosity, feelings for which they may not have a direct referrent. It's useful, then, to have figures, who are gneralised "others", onto which you can target those feelings of rage, loathing, and contempt.

I've noticed a rise in general hostility, and it's increased since the smoking ban. People are downright rude, and feel OK about it, and actually feel licensed to cross the border into interfering in the personal choice of others, beyond what is reasonable, or would be considered polite in other circumstances.

Some of it has a rational basis, some of it really, really doesn't, and goes skittering off into the psychological zones of the Very Strange, masked by a discourse of "health".

Imo.

PMSL at 'evidence' which lists the dust in the air at a horse show as being as harmful as passive smoking. You'll have forgive me for sticking to the medical evidence to inform my attitudes towards passive smoking.

I think people notioce it more becuase if youa re a non smoker you dont seem to come across it as much- I certainly am very much mroe aware of the smell now when I do encounter it.

I don't have zero sympathy though, if people want to smoke that's fine as long as it doesn't mean I am exposed to it in my normal day to day ctvities. My choice as valid as someone else's choice sorta thing. I am not opposed to smoking rooms etc as long as they are ventilated away from the non smokinga reas.

I don;t think the parallel with alcohol stands btw: I once read a definition that cigarettes are the only thing which can kill you when used as they are designed to be used.

A glass of wine with a meal will not kill you or indeed addict you.

However when alcohol is used to excess absolutely tehy are a muchness- indeed alcohol becomes the demon becuase of what it can do to otehr people (fights etc).

No, I agree that smoking propped up the pub industry for many years, & smokers are probably generous net contributors to the public purse (not just the tax, it's the considerately dying young...).

For me, it comes down to the fact that I chuffed away carelessly in public spaces for years. Then I got pregnant & quit.

& honestly, if you still smoke, you haven't the first idea how much it reeks! Really you haven't; I certainly didn't know I stank.

Oh & the long weekends of wheezing as a child whenever we stayed with my grandmother. My brother never smoked & grew out of his asthma in his teens; mine lasted till I quit the fags myself in my 30s. But BOTH of us first experienced symptoms courtesy of grandma.

So I'm afraid I do wish smokers wouldn't. If they took snuff or chewed tobacco, fine...

Smoking is officially anti-social. It's always been a disgusting habit and, more recently, we've understood the harm it did to the smoker but it was seen as impolite to object. A private sin. Now we know the harm it does to other people it's the reverse. If you want a drinking comparison go for 'drunk drivers'. Own up to having a drink and getting behind a wheel and you will be treated like Satan's slightly nastier kid brother. Social death. Have a drink in the privacy of your own home... not an issue.

winnybella, quite a few people do speak up about pollution and car exhausts, you know

as far as I know there is no conclusive evidence that they are all smokers

personally, I would not petition anyone for smoking to be banned in outside places

(just move away if they light up near me)

There is tonnes more, have a look Sassy, remaining cloistered in your rigid belief is a narrow way of living

animula, spot on.

I'm an ex smoker, and I can honestly say, I liked to smoke. The reason I gave up was that I liked my money, and my health more. Even now, I still miss the fags, particularly when stressed and my mate lights up right next to me. Its been 3 years now, I suppose its like being an alcoholic, even when you are sober, you are still an addict, and it would only take 1 drink...........

OP YANBU, smoking is smelly, expensive and bad for the health, but generally, there are worse things. Some threads I have been on recently you would think that smoking was worse than child abuse the way its talked about. I know some really lovely people who smoke 40 a day, and some utter tw*ts who would rather drink their own piss than light up. Cigarettes really do not define who you are, its just something you do.

abouteve
Try an electric cigarette.

I used patches to lessen the craving, lozenges when I really wanted a fag, and an electric cigarette so I could still 'smoke', when I needed.

I smoked over 20 a day for 17 years, and I don't smoke now.

You are absolutely right - the bit about the light from the full moon has me reaching for the Lambert and Butlers with gay abandon

A couple of glasses of wine might not kill you but three bottles of wine every night might.

6-8 cigs a day might not kill you but 50 a day might.

Most smokers and drinkers understand about moderation.

ANd even if it were not a carcinogen as secndary smoke, which I don;t beleive but anyway, smoke still stinks to non smokers.

Just as I would not want to sit next to someone with severe BO, I would nto wish to sit next to someone smoking.

But I admit I have no smoker friends so probably I am especially susceptible to noticing it. Completely out of my comfort zone, as it were.

Thanks Muggle, tried the lot, I'm afraid.

I think smoking's PR irretrieveably hit the skids with events like Roy Castle (a non-smoker) dying of lung-cancer and cot deaths being linked to smoker households. When we finally woke up to the idea that smokers weren't just puffing their way to their own destruction but potentially making other people ill in the process.... then it went from 'annoying' to 'unacceptable'.

Poor Roy Castle but I don't think his illness was linked to passive smoking, it was just a maybe this is why you got lung cancer rather than a most likely genetic link. As for cot death, I'm sure the babies who die this way are in non-smoking households too.

Ah Sorry Abouteve, I wasn't wanting to lecture you.

Anytime anyone did when I was still smoking, I pointed out their addiction to food.

We all have our issues, we would all love not to have them.
Just don't lecture me when you can't conquer your own.

Did anyone notice who provided the data for that bmj passive smoking article? Smokefree UK or whatever. If you read a similar thing with a pharma company promoting their drug you would think they were talking bullshit.

after being brought up with a smoking mum who chain smoked through all her pregnancies and blew smoke into our faces as she fed us as babies, I'll be anti smoking if I want. As a child I hated the smell, it used to make me boak. I always had coughs, colds etc - all mostly gone now that I'm in a non smoking enviroment. Long journeys stuck with a chain smoker in the car or forced to sit long haul for 20 hours in the smoking section - Mmmm! Worked in pubs and clubs as a teen and loved the smoke being blown into my face behind the bar, loved cleaning out the stinking ashtrays, loved having to go into the loos to bathe my streaming eyes. Loved having fag burns on skin and clothes, loved my clothes stinking aftera night out. Loved the smell of my hair as I tried to sleep. Loved smoke putting me off my food in restraunts - remember the good old days when you could smoke on buses, planes and cinemas? And finally, loved nursing my mum and sitting watching her dye from lung cancer when we should hopefully have had her about for another 20yrs to see my kids at least make it over 6yrs old. Love worrying that all that earlier exposure means I might choke it earlier than I should.