to genuinely not understand why smoking is vilified

[Redpipe]

and yet drinking, overeating and other addictions that cost the NHS huge sums of money are not?

AIBU to genuinely not understand why it is just smokers in this country that are socially unaccepted?

Their friends and family suffer just as much.

Yes, that absolutely right. A small child killed while walking home from school by a drunken driver is exactly the same for their family and friends as the death at seventy of a man who would have lived to be eighty had they not smoked. Of course. Completely the same.

If you have family and friends that smoke, they're going to die young. You can either get used to the idea, or you can try to get them to change. None of that's true for the effects of drink driving.

I think the best thing you can do to get a smoker to change is to be supportive and helpful the same way you would with anyone else who had an addiction/problem.

Quoting facts that everyone knows, resorting to "you smell" type comments don't help. It doesn't show actual concern it just shows that you know smoking is bad - and everyone knows that already!

Its the smell Red.

The smell makes me feel sick.

My Parents used to smoke, and it gave me migranes as I got older, the only way to combat that was to smoke myself. .

I gave up about 7 years ago for my DH then the DC's ( who came after).
I still have the odd fag, I have had four this year, one on holiday and three at a funeral.

Its also where people smoke, we usually live in cramped cheek by jowl housing so if you live next to people who smoke outside regularly you probably cant open your own windows, and could be affected quite severely.

Then there is the health side of it. Smoking next to me, directly, immeditalty affects me. Drinking next to me does not.

HTH

BTW on threads like this - the impact of smoke is always wittled down the odd waft of smoke as you walk past a smoker.

Not so if you live in flats, terraced housing or anywhere where your windows are right by where people smoke.

Thats loads more smoke than a little waft as you walk past someone.

A small child killed while walking home from school by a drunken driver is exactly the same for their family and friends as the death at seventy of a man who would have lived to be eighty had they not smoked. Of course. Completely the same.

So smoking only kills old people who are of less value to their family and ready to die anyway

We should clearly accept the contribution smoking makes to cot death then.

I agree with UriGHOULer.

Alcohol related crimes and even greedy people are villified in society.. all in different ways.

Boo hoo smokers.

The difference with alcohol is that you can drink in a normal responsible way without causing damage to others. Those who do cause damage, e.g. by drink driving are vilified bug time.

It is very hard to be a smoker without causing distress to others either by the effects of passive smoking or by causing them to lose a loved one earlier in their lives.

That inevitably means that smokers are criticised and shunned, perhaps not as much as drink drivers but, quite reasonably, far more than drinkers.

"There is no way of proving that second-hand smoke caused his cancer, it's very unlikely that it did, and non-smokers get lung cancer too."

I worked in palliative care and have had lung problems, my Mum has lung cancer, I attend her appointments with her.
I don't understand why even though they have given her one bout of radiation, she carries on smoking.

I wanted to point out that there are different types and ways that tumours grow and "lung/cancer consultants" can make statements as to why people develop cancer, so " Roy castle syndrome" doesn't exist, people do get cancer from passive smoking. Consultants can tell why tumours develop and how they will grow.

I live in an area which has the highest rate of lung disease (North West), we know why people suffer from whatever lung problems they develop and what could of been done to prevent it.

Thanks to the under developed nations taking up smoking, we have gained better knowledge, as it isn't a coinsidence that we are seeing lots of problems that never existed before, without the use of cars increasing. China, for example has a high rate if lung cancer in those working in the lace trade, because they breathe in fibres, but it appears differently to a smoker.

Lungs are only one aspect, my Mums vascular problems and her needing to use a wheelchair is through smoking.

I don't have a strong opinion, two of my DD's smoke, my middle one is desperate to stop, because it is a waste of money and she likes clothes.

I think the financial argument is irrelevant, if smokers wasn't buying fags then they would be spending it on other things, or perhaps doing sports/hobbies which take up NHS resources, when injuries occur.

My hate of smokers comes from my hate of litter. Most smokers I know don't see themselves as littering.

I used to use sunbirds a lot when I was younger, but if I was short of money, I didn't. I found it hard to understand how my friends, who lived on Income Support and were good parents in every other way, could justify spending money daily on something so non essential and all round damaging.

But that is my thoughts to people that I care about, I wouldn't have an opinion on people that I don't know.

Friday16 - you said "People who smoke themselves to death have only themselves to blame" - and I would absolutely agree with you on that. The same goes for people who over-eat themselves into fatal heart attacks or strokes, or people who drink themselves to death.

But in all these cases, there is collateral damage. I didn't want my dad to die at 70, due to Congestive Heart Failure, caused by his decades of smoking - I would rather he was still here to see his grandsons growing up.

The daft thing about this whole debate is that is is being presented as an either/or debate, when the truth is that yes, we need to tackle obesity, and excessive alcohol consumption, and smoking, and over-reliance on cars - because all of these do have a negative impact both on an individual's health, and on their families and wider society too.

Perhaps we feel most passionately about the thing we have seen have an impact in our own lives. I am passionately anti-smoking, because I grew up in a smoking household, spent all my childhood and teens kippering in my parents' smoke (including in the car, even though this made me car sick - which my mother flatly denied, when I got up the courage to tell her), and lost my father earlier than I should have done, due to the effects of smoking. I have also worked on both medical and surgical thoracic wards, and seen for myself the damage done by smoking to people's lungs.

So maybe that is why smoking seems most important to me. Perhaps if I had lived with a heavy drinker, or had seen a friend or relative hurt or killed by a drunk driver, or if I lived close to a pub and saw a lot of drunken misbehaviour, then drinking would be my particular bete noire.

Sunbeds, stupid auto correct.

Based on a lot of the arguements here, perhaps we should make tobacco illegal and legalise cocaine.

perhaps we should make tobacco illegal and legalise cocaine.

I'd legalise all drugs and sell them through chemists, at cost price. Stamps out the illegal drug trade at a stroke, reduces deaths due to contamination and poor hygiene, massively reduces channels for AIDS and hepatitis, stops pretty much all acquisitive crime driven by addiction (and if it doesn't, you just subsidise it until it does), means that people taking relatively (about as dangerous as alcohol and tobacco) safe cannabis and MDMA derivatives aren't pushed towards more addictive and/or dangerous drugs, removes the "I'm so dangerous outside the law" glamour. What's not to like? Less crime, fewer deaths, less illness.

Apart from the obvious effects to others (passive smoking, risk of being burnt by a cigarette, house fires, the general stench of smoke on anyone who has smoked that day, which they are often oblivious to) just on a purely numbers basis smoking is the biggest cause of mortality and morbidity in comparison with all the other things you mention (overheating etc.)
The tobacco companies are to blame IMHO. It is a disgrace that ppl have been exposed to this addictive poison. And that the myth is perpetrated that it's sooooo hard to stop (kept going by the nicotine replacement product pushers among others).
Smoking is rubbish. It's a mug's game.

I am not sure why people are trying to compare passive smoking to passive eating or passive drinking and using the comparison to say smoking is worse.

Smoking = passive smoke and possible health implications for an innocent party plus it stinks.
Excessive alcohol = possible abuse, vomit on the streets, possible drink driving deaths, assaults and all these can have an impact on innocent peoples lives.

Over eating. Not over heating.

I'd do a whole lot more anti-smoking, anti-drugs, anti-alcohol education in school, and put more money into programmes aiming to help people come off cigarettes, drugs and drink.

And I would put lots of money into integrated public transport systems, that are affordable and accessible for everyone, to get some cars off the roads. And maybe if the roads were emptier, more people would cycle to work/shops/school/wherever.

I'd bring back cookery as a school subject, so every child leaves school able to follow a basic recipe, knows what the main cookery terms mean, and can put together a healthy (and economical) meal plan.

Basically, Mumsnet needs to put together a political party, and we should stand at the next election in every constituency, win by a landslide and sort this country out once and for all. I think we could do it!

Friday16

I like your thinking

SDTG

You're not comparing like with like though when you talk about excessive drinking.

Someone having one cigarette will affect others nearby.
Someone having one drink is unlikely to affect others nearby.

Murderofbanshees
Someone having one cigarette will affect others nearby.
Someone having one drink is unlikely to affect others nearby.

Whilst I agree with what you have written you have actually highlighted my point, they can't be compared like for like.

At the weekend many of our high streets are full of people having not had one drink but a skin full. Just this Sunday I tried to go to the cash point and there was a pile of vomit immediately in front of it and broken beer bottles around the floor.

Alcohol abuse in this country is rife and many people think it's hilarious.

I just don't understand why people get so upset about tobacco but not alcohol.

vomit immediately in front of it and broken beer bottles around the floor.

so how often have you had to wash your clothes/hair due to other people's drinking?

friday, you seem to deny that smoking can have any negative effect on passers by apart from a nasty whiff. Are you not reading posts by people like Titsalina and me who say how much effect it can have - an immediate and lasting one which could be every bit as fatal and devastating as being hit by a drunk driver?

Titsalina said 'My son has no choice about his lungs degenerating and he has no choice but to fight for each breath so it disgusts me that people with perfectly health lungs and a choice still choose to destroy them each time they light up.' - exactly how I feel. I just don't get why people would put themselves through this deliberately. I live with it day by day, every day for the rest of my life, through no fault of my own. Why on earth people would even risk it just dumbfounds me. They have no idea what they could be getting into :(

People DO get upset about the mental behaviour of drunk people though.

I don't smoke myself but am amazed at the seriously health conscious types who obviously don't smoke and probably hate anyone who does, but see no harm in jogging and breathing in all the dangerous carbon monoxide fumes from all the passing cars. Why can't they see that this is far worse than standing next to a smoker.

Huh? Titsalina is saying that they get upset at people ruining their good lungs, because her son has a lung condition. How is getting upset "every bit as fatal" as being killed?

redpipe, do you not see even in your own post that one reason people dislike smokers and smoking more is the fact that the effects of alcohol (the vomit and bottles you mention) only bother people in the extreme while smoking is annoying even at the basic level? One drink won't make a person vomit and annoy people. One cigarette will invade peoples' space and annoy them. Alcohol is annoying yes but people have to have more of it to become irritating and affect peoples lives whereas smokers only need to light up one cigarette.