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?

review of research on passive smoking and children shows significant link between health issues

passive smoking and cardiovascular disease. Review of all recent research showed a definate link

Not sure why people would actively make a conspircy theory about passive smoking, surely it is the years of skewed research done by the tobacco industry that is more likely to be a conspiricy.

I smoked for 20 years and never realised how like shit you smell. Still love the thought of cigs though and could easily smoke again

YANBU. Give smokers a break! They pay enormous sums to the Exchequer and, die, on average, 10 years earlier than non-smokers, thus relieving the country of the cost of their healthcare and pensions.
As long as they don't smoke near me, I don't care.

I don't smoke, never have.

I think it's a horrible habit.

But I do feel sorry for smokers sometimes. There is no (adult) smoker in the Uk that isn't aware of at least some of the health risks of smoking - if they still choose to do so then it's their business.

Smoking is pretty much banned everywhere apart from private homes and outdoor spaces.

The non smokers have won. let the smokers enjoy what little freedom they have

I get really annoyed when smokers trot out the old argument about it being the same as when people drink alcohol. It's not, someone standing outside having a drink next to me has no effect on me at that particular time, regardless of any social problems it may cause in the long run. A smoker causes me to have to smell their disquisting fag, breathe in the stink or move - not always possible like at the bus stop or being stuck behind a walking smoker where there's no room to overtake. Also when someone's had a smoke, the smell does linger around on them and it's not nice.

If people have an issue with smokers take it to the government...it's still legal..'why?'..everyone is on the smokers back but not looking at the big picture...why is something that is proven to kill people and hurt those who do not partake allowed to be legal?...dont attack smokers..attack the facilitators...at the end of the day i could snort coke and it would not affect someone standing next to me..why is smoking still legal?..

I am curious to know how much you anti-smokers who hate it so much have to put up with passive smoking nowadays. As far as I am aware, we don't have to put up with it at all. The last time I was actually forced to breathe in someone elses cigarrette smoke was about 6 months ago at a bus stop when it was raining.

The one minute particle of cigarrette smoke you inhale once every 6 months is really not going to do you any harm as the risk of getting cancer through passive smoking is actually DOSE RELATED.

The smelling of it is another matter, if you don't like the smell move a few more centimetres away and you will be far away from that toxic smell and your hair won't smell (where are you in the first place? I can't imagine where I would find a high enough concentration of smokers to make my hair smell, except for outside a pub).

It is the smoker that suffers nowadays and the risks are increasing because they are forced outside and get pneumonia as well as lung cancer, throat cancer and CV disease. However, they have paid for the death in taxes through cigarrettes smoked so really let's focus on someone that doesn't pay taxes for bad health like people who are clinically obese who refuse to lose weight (I bet you weren't expecting that comparisom).

or people who are not fat but have a bad diet and increase their chances of heart disease or diabetes...

My dad used to smoke a pipe, until his doctor persuaded him to stop. He said, "I wasn't enjoying it much by then. I was feeling like a criminal every time I lit it."

It's a tad annoying when people wander about coughing or flapping their arms about...I mean we stand outside what the hell else do you want us to do? And yes, smoking IS as bad as alcoholism, however they make more tax from smokers. I'd like to see images on the front of whiskey bottles, and while all you anti-smokers are putting back that second bottle of pinot this evening-remember the primary cause of mouth cancer.
And YES alcholism is as bad as smoking in the sense that while you think you're not hurting anyone, I can guarantee the idiots who go out drinking and end up fighting cause more harm than the smokers who stay indoors because of the ban.

I'd like to add I do not smoke in my home!

I grew up in the 70s with a father who had a 40-a-day cigarette habit. He also developed a 2-bottle-of-vodka a day habit in the 80s.

I can walk down the platform at a train station in the early morning and the smell that makes me gag is the person who drank a bottle of wine the night before, not the one who's just had a fag.

Even if you've had a shower, alcohol comes out of your PORES and your BREATH. It is the most disgusting, rotten cabbagey smell, and I really don't think most people realise how badly it smells.

And for those of you who say that a drinker doesn't cost the NHS or hurt other people - what about the drunk driver who injures, if not kills, someone in his car? Or the fights that break out between drunk people at the pub on a Saturday night all requiring hospital treatment? Or the times when an ambulance has to be called because some girl can't get up off the pavement after the nightclub's closed? Or the liver cirrhosis? Or the woman who sets her house on fire because she's so pissed she can't remember turning the oven on? Or the entire families that require counselling because of the one alcoholic in the family? Or the cost to the NHS of the spells in the de-tox clinics that these alcoholics end up in (that's if they haven't killed themselves through it first)?

Sorry - soapbox I know, but I'd far rather the government banned drinking than smoking.

My head teacher used to smoke a pipe ...we could smell him before we saw him....I smoke..about 4 a day I'm a part-time smoker everyone says why do I botther..

I am also a pt smoker...about 2-5 a day. But it keeps me happy. HERE HERE Longgrass, finally some sense !

Can we please not talk about banning smoking (or alcohol)? It is a stupid idea. Really. Prohibition never works, just puts the supply of the banned goods into the hands of criminals. Society loses the tax revenue and we have to pay to try and police the gangs dealing in illegal substances.

Society has lived with alcohol and smoking for centuries. Far better to tax and control them then ban them. Here endeth the lesson.

(BTW this is not a closet argument to legalise drugs. Would need a bigger brain than mine to work out all the pros and cons of that one!)

I don't find it a problem now-I did in the days that I had to have a shower, wash my hair and my clothes when I got home. It is fine now they go outside.

'I do think there's a bit of militancy growing in some smokers because of it being outlawed.'

This is a fair comment. As with any other group who has had most of their rights removed from them, some of us get a bit defensive about what we have left. I am ridiculously exercised, for example, by non-smokers in beer gardens who flap their hands and cough delicately. They've got the entire pub and every in-door space in the entire universe (and many of the outdoor ones as well, such as train platforms) - I can have the beer garden. And no, I don't mean I can have the beer garden only when it's minus 7 and pissing it down, that includes warm summer evenings, too.

So there.

Isn't this a parenting site?

I grew up in a totally dysfunctional family-
Parents deafness/special needs took all the space and I suffered hugely for it.

Compared to the needs of my parents, the tobacco did little difference in the whole picture -Smoke has little to do with the type of environment children can be exposed to-

I do smoke- outside the house, not until 10h30 at work- never, in the morning or on the school run, never while we walk as a family-I know it?s wrong.

Live and let live that's what I say- We're mostly outside when we smoke and if you can't move on then just f* off- there I said it.

'We're mostly outside when we smoke and if you can't move on then just f* off'

I'm having a giddy rush of blood to the head now and have a compulsion to run down the road, blowing smoke through letter boxes before building a barricade with empty Marlborough Light boxes and seating myself on top wearing a 'I smoke - you f* off!' t-shirt and waving a small but brightly coloured flag.

Well-it is what it is!

Armi just tell me where an when, I'll join you!

I'm an ex-smoker. I'm quite anti-smoking these days, would never have it in my house or around my kids. But I find the hardcore anti-smoking brigade really unpleasant.

If someone wants to smoke in their own home or garden, or on a street, or outside a pub, I couldn't give a fig. I might campaign on the wider issues if I felt very strongly about it, but I don't see why attacking individuals in a rude manner helps the situation? I don't chase car drivers down the street saying 'Stop polluting my lungs with your evil exhaust!'. I don't tell the obese person on the bus that they are taking up two people's space and it's their own fault for being a greedy bastard.

Come on, show a little acceptance and tolerance, FFS.

i agree

i also smoke funnily enough!!!!

I'm in the YANBU camp, too. Even though my mother died too young from smoking-related illness.
I guess I'd be un-bothered if it were banned outright, but as long as it's still legal and done considerately (which many smokers do achieve), I don't like to see it be villified (and that includes pregnant smokers, too, in my book).