to hate smokers

[onemiddlefinger]

I don't actually hate the people (well, not all of them anyway), but I find it so disgusting walking though someone's cloud of smoke. There was just a woman having a cigarette next to the door of my office building and there is no way for me to enter the building other than though hercloud of death! And that happens frequently. Would IBU to bring this up with our office manager and ask for this to be banned?
Actually I wish all smoking in public could be banned, or at least in all bus stops and doorways that have people coming in and out of. In fact they should have designated areas only and those areas should be easily avoidable by others. But I don't suppose this will happen anytime soon...

Air pollution linked to one in 12 deaths in London – and it takes six months off the average Briton's life expectancy

Can you find me any figures for deaths and loss of life expectancy linked to other people's outdoor smoking? Maybe they're comparable? I don't know.

And yes, the same with BO. All are rude and unnecessary and anti-social and thoughtless to those who are forced to share your environment.

Very different from the odd smelly tramp. It's much worse and much more frequent.

I remember flying to Spain in the 1970s in supposedly no smoking seats on the plane which were 1 front in front of smoker seats. I also shared a room in the City when 1 - 3 months pregnant with a chain smoker. I remember when London Underground had one smoking carriage we always tried to avoid. Things are better than then but even so day in day out smokers seriously inconvenience non smokers totally disproportionately in public places and I would love it to stop. Would the smoker like me to buy a gas of skunk or other foul smell and spray it around them in the street every time I come across a smoker? If you accept smoking in public then you would have to accept my right to let off a noxious smell around smokers I see in the street surely? Same civil liberties argument - same issue about whether we inconvenience a very few smokers and pollute the vast majority who hate the smoke smell.

Possible solution- Decent smoking only shelters every 100yards or so on every street in the land. And none of this "Here's your dull, grey, clinical area, as soulless as you, you absolute leper of society". I want soft furnishings and naice ashtrays.

I have no idea whether the figures are comparable or not Plenty and I don't much care.

As I said, it's not just about the health risks, it's about smokers making non-smokers lives unpleasant by stinking up the place and causing them significant discomfort just because they don't care enough to concern themselves with how other people are feeling.

So what's your solution to the BO problem? Being as your smoking one is for everyone to give up etc.

Gosh what a brilliant and thoroughly tempting idea Greengrow

Perhaps you should patent the canisters of skunk gas/stink bomb smells.

I would go with that Shakey.

There is no solution to the BO problem. You can't ban people from not washing, sadly!

I have no idea whether the figures are comparable or not Plenty and I don't much care.

Clearly not

A case can be made for limiting individual freedoms if those limits actually reduce harm. Limiting people's freedoms just because you don't like something? No thanks.

People with BO are rude .

Or perhaps manual labourers making their way home after a hard graft.

Maybe the government should use some of the money they make from smokers to divide outdoor space into 'smelly routes' and 'not smelly routes'.

Or failing that, make smoking illegal. Then all the anti-smoking brigade can put their heads together and firstly work out where to find the £10 billion shortfall in their funds that they've lost, then find all the additional cost of enforcement. Which will be sky high as smokers have an addiction so criminals are likely to milk the new market that's been created.

Neither of them options appealing to you? Then stop bitching over a smell.

Yes, smoking ruins lives. But so does diet, drinking, extreme sports, gambling, etc. Smoking pollutes the atmosphere, but not nearly as much as car fumes...Which are ok because they don't smell and it would be inconvenient to ban cars. People are adults and we're not at a stage where we can stop people from becoming reliant on cigarettes...whether that be the nicotine it gives them or the money it generates for the government.

If we were, I'd agree they should be banned. But 20% of the nation are addicted to nicotine already. Hatred isn't going to fix that.

Fab. I reckon all the tax generated minus the health costs (approx. 10bn?) should cover the costs of the shelters. Thinking about it, a great idea would be to give smokers tax relief on most things, being as we contribute it all.

Okay, so a number of posters feel smoking is "unfair" to them as they find it unpleasant; they're entitled to their view, just as others are entitled to disagree

Can I ask, though, how many have done something practical about it ... maybe started a petition to their MP to have smoking banned in any public places, asked a school to disallow it within so many yards of the grounds or whatever? It's just that none of these things seem to have happened so far, so despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth could it be that most tend to take a more tolerant view than the more demanding posters on here?

Well it depends on how you define harm, doesn't it Plenty?

A case can be made against any form of anti-social or unpleasantly obtrusive behaviour. A neighbour playing incessant loud music for example, aggressive begging, loitering, ogling and jeering, being drunk and disorderly in public, being naked in the street, shouting, urinating, letting your dog shit on the pavement and not clearing it up, letting your dog bark endlessly, piling your front garden up with rubbish and a thousand and one other things that constitute a public nuisance.

None of them actually put you at risk of death. but then they don't have to in order to be considered a nuisance or a threat to your wellbeing. Just their sheer unpleasantness is sufficient.

Excellent post Jolleigh

Shakey I like the sound of your proposed shelters. Music would be good too. They could become self-sustainable if they had coffee bars in - some could even serve alcohol. What about a pool table and a bit of a garden out the back? They'd be like these really cosy adult environments where people could get together for a pint, a fag and a chat ... what could we call them?

I vape nowadays but I'd still like to drop in somewhere like that

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8086142.stm
Not sure how to make a link. But this says 5bn in 2009. And underestimated.
I think even if % smokers is decreasing damage has alreafy been done.
I think if say 17% women smoke in pg you are not looking at the people who care the most about others air quality. If they are unwilling yt? o protect themselves/their family they wont worry about people in the bus shelter/walking behind

For those arguing it's 'just' an unpleasant smell, it's really not comparable to bo or farts or anything else.

Smoke clings...it permeates everything. The most deluded smokers are those that say they don't smell because they have a smoking jacket/use mints. You only need to smoke one...the smell is stuck in your hair, on your face, your lips (even if you've had 100 mints) your fingers, your clothes.

I'm a vaper and I'm not allowed to vape inside at work. So I go out to the smokers area. I never step foot in the shelter and try to stand a few feet away from people. It's a big, open area. Yet every day when I finish work I come home and go straight in the shower because my hair stinks of cigarettes. Just from being stood a few feet away from a group of smokers for 5 minutes, 5 times a day. In the open.

Well it depends on how you define harm, doesn't it Plenty?

Deaths and shortened life expectancy are fairly uncontoversial as a definition so let's start there.

Plenty

Yesssss...something's niggling in the back of mind. I recognise the type of establishment you refer to. Trouble is, there's so few of them around now, not least because of the outrageous blanket smoking ban, the name escapes me.

This thread reminds me actually, DS has been learning about tolerance this week in school. Just sayin'

Plenty & Shakey - these places did used to exist! But then they took away the fags, leaving behind the smell of stale beer, BO and piss. Funnily enough, they started going out of business until they made a cumfy bit outside where they could let people smoke. Now nobody sits inside them

by the way, Hello, if we are talking about 'anti-social or unpleasantly obtrusive behaviour' then can I just say that I think advance-searching a poster so you can armchair-psych them is deeply unpleasantly obtrusive behaviour.

I can't tell you how often I am subject to verbal abuse in the street because I smoke, I have been told I am scum and that I should drop dead. I think treating someone in this way is worse than smoking. I always try find quite place to smoke, well away from people if at all possible. I get that people dislike smoking, but there is no need at all to be so rude to people who do smoke.

As an ex-smoker I notice when people are smoking now - I never used to (when I still smoked); it amazes me actually how few smokers there are around compared to before.

I have yet to 'fight my way through clouds of noxious smoke' to get into Morrison's, and am still unable to remember when I have been ' forced to walk directly behind a filthy smoker with their stinky smelly smoke catching in my hair'.

I also never seem to find myself choking and spluttering even when standing with the smokers in a beer garden or in the outdoor smoking area at work.

I am clearly not hanging around in the places frequented by the more dramatic posters on this thread!

Well yes, that is the whole point. It smells and we shouldn't have tolerate it when there is absolutely no benefit to us,

Okay, a complete misunderstanding of how societies work there.

I guessed you missed out on being taught to share toys etc because this is the grown up version of that.

What you want isn't the end of it since it has to be balanced against what other people want. You have to learn to compromise.

Otherwise smokers could say "why should we smoke outside when there is no benefit to us".

They'd be like these really cosy adult environments where people could get together for a pint, a fag and a chat ... what could we call them?

I love it :)