Smoking

[weebarra]

I'm 36 and have been being treated for breast cancer for the past 9 months. I was diagnosed when DC3 was 8 weeks.
I've had 6 months of chemo, a bilateral mastectomy and now I'm doing the radiotherapy bit. AIBU not to want to walk through clouds of smoke at the entrance to the oncology centre?
I get that people are addicted. I've smoked myself and both parents do. It's just that I feel really pissed off when I see both staff and patients puffing away.
I was going to get cancer anyway - I have the BRCA2 gene, but these people don't have to get it. I just want to shake them.

I wonder how the NHS would cope without the £5 billion per year from tobacco tax?

Ironically, obesity related illness is said to be costing the NHS the same amount and it's steadily rising.

If all the smokers gave up overnight, it would probably grind to a halt.

It's a good point you raise gamerchick. Exhaust emissions are a terrible problem, ie, people in Fulham making short, needless journeys in big, fat inefficient vehicles. But for another thread I think.

It's not for another thread- the issue is, if we hate smokers and walking through fag smoke then why don't we hate drivers???

It's because smokers are an easy target and looked down upon

I suppose because there is literally no benefit to smoking, either for the smoker or those who are exposed to it.

But vehicles benefit most if not all people, and so their emissions are a by product of that benefit.

Smokers IMO can feel free to smoke. But I'm another one who doesn't understand why it HAS to be inflicted on non smokers. I found it especially difficult when taking my poorly newborn to hospital and having to carry him through clouds of smoke.

I also struggled when leaving the hospital with an empty car seat after my daughter died, having to walk past pregnant women puffing away.

I don't see the harm in smoking shelters a decent distance away.

Same thing to me it all boils down to people's convenience. Climbing out of a car that's just poisoned the air for the sake of your own personal journey and then bitch about second hand smoke doesn't make any sense, well to me anyroad.

i can sit in an enclosed space next to a burning cigerette and be perfectly fine, however if i sit in an enclosed space next to a car with its engine running i will most definitley NOT be fine.

there is a reason why people used to attach a hose from their exhausts directly into their cars to try and kill themselves, strangely ive never heard of anyone trying the same with a cigerette.

The entire of our hospital campus is now smoke-free, thank goodness.

But in the same way I have a choice not to expose my baby to (for instance) to a petrol forecourt, with all the fumes and emissions that has - I should have the choice not to expose my baby to fag smoke when going to Asda or hospital or the library or the swimming pool. Etc.

As a nurse, it never ceases to amaze me how determined smokers are to continue with their disgusting habit. Some years ago, we had a patient who had her leg amputated due to a clot caused by smoking. She was warned that if she continued to smoke, she would lose the other leg. She smoked 20 a day until they cut the other leg off. Her family had begged her to give up the fags.

Babymonkey, that is to do with Co2 emissions. Just because people can't commit suicide with fags, doesn't make that a valid defence against people who don't want to walk through smoke.

It's not some sort of Sophie's choice between cars and fags.

So gamer - two wrongs make a right?

Would it not be better to move the smoke further away (simple solution) and then have a separate focus on reducing car emissions (which is slowly happening)

Slithy it's carbon monoxide not carbon dioxide that kills

Bollocks I meant to write monoxide - I did know that, googled and everything!

But fags are carbon neutral - that's not the issue with fags

The addition of the 2 was just habit

slithy, my point is that seond hand smoke is not any more dangerous than car emmissions.

I don't blame people for not wanting to walk through cigerette smoke. but to despise the thought of inhaling a bit of second hand smoke yet think the emmissions from cars are fine just doesn't make sense to me.

I think you've misunderstood, I don't hate smokers. Nor do I hate drivers (who probably are just as guilty as smokers of polluting other people) either, though I do get very f*ing frustrated by both. But driving is, not always, but often more justifiable. To get people to work, kids to school, to make deadlines, take the elderly, disabled places they couldn't ordinarily go and where public transport doesn't serve. The reason's for driving are sometimes, not always, but sometimes more justified than smoking, which IMO is blatantly careless to one's own health and others around them.

I think the hatred of particular groups is a concern in society - aside from op's valid point re smoking round hospital doors. I wonder if in 25 years time eating sugar will be the same. All of these undesirable lifestyle habits have class connotations - the vast majority of smokers now are working class and have had hard lives, certainly based on family experience. I think it's a myth middle class people buy into that others just need to pull themselves together and stop/make better choices etc, it's not that easy when you also have mh issues, poverty issues etc.

That's my point exactly baby

Cars v Fags is absolutely ridiculous!!
Without motorised vehicles you smokers wouldn't have cigarettes!!!
I've never tried to smoke a car exhaust. I drive. I try to keep myself and my children more than 20cm away from exhaust pipes.
I DON'T take my kids for picnics on motorway hard shoulders.
'We' don't hate smokers because of who they are, 'we' hate the smoke that lingers at public entrances we use, which in turn makes us dislike the perpetrators.

Grumpy your children are breathing in poisonous exhaust fumes every time they walk down a street. What's this 20cm nonsense?

As a severe asthmatic with cigarette smoke being a huge trigger for me to have an asthma attack, cigarette smoke is a bane in my life. A dangerous one. Thank God I have prednisolones steroids to hand all the time as inhalers only sometimes work.

Going into building entrances I have to hold my breath big time and for someone who has a 30-40% lung capacity this is not easy, believe you me. I'm gasping for air by the time I get inside away from the cigarette smoke.

PLEASE be considerate and smoke far away from people. You don't know how your habit can seriously affect them.

Oh please don't try and turn it into a social class issue, that's total bollo - "All you Posho's leave us working classes alone!!!" My dad died at 62 from cancer from smoking, he was a painter for Southwark council OK? So he's exempt from blame is he? Well I blame him, Sorry, but I'm furious he didn't stop smoking, and at the fact he'll never know his grandchildren, or they him. Also, there's no such thing, to my knowledge, of secondary sugar consumption. For every tablespoon I eat a microgram or so fly in someone else's face for them to digest. Perhaps it will one day be looked at as socially unacceptable as fag smoke, as might listening to radio 5 live.

We all use engines, which are being made cleaner.
How are cigarettes being made cleaner?
I take it you walk to Majorca/Skegness?

Well put Grumpy.

Baby - my point is that I choose easily not to hold my child in front of a car exhaust, or take him to environments where emissions might be higher than just being out and about.

I do not have a choice about leaving the hospital with my newborn when there is a fug of smoke at every entrance.

And is it really that hard to fix? Or that offensive to smokers?

It doesn't matter if there are ten worse things in the world, I can still hate the smell of fag smoke. And not that it matters, but it makes me physically sick while pregnant which isn't great.