i would fricken BAN smoking at tables outside eating establishments

[ElizabethHoover]

Its just GOPPING.
Its like a nicotine based apartheid ( slight overstatement) where the TINY percentage of smokers (a sixth of the population) in the country force the rest of us inside to get away from their stench and litter.

GRR

Tiny percentage.....

That percentage is larger than the percentage of under 15s in the country. So let's not bother making laws that allow them to do things they wish to do either

Icimoi, terrible statistical analysis I'm afraid. Dead people don't get a pension or need a publicly funded care home.

Go back and deduct that number and see where we end up.

Well, conversation then IKnow

I really wish threads like this wouldn't always go off on tangents about passive smoking and the alleged health risks and barbecues and bonfire and the like.

It's actually far more simple than that. It's about selfish people inflicting their horrible unpleasant habit on others. It mars our enjoyment of any outdoor leisure environment and our food, if eating outside. It's no different to setting off stink bombs or playing really loud tinny aggressive music out of your phone into someone's ear while they are trying to sleep or relax, or constantly belching or farting really ostentatiously around people who are trying to eat. It's no different!

We don't need to discuss whether it's a health risk to non-smokers or wether it's worse or better than a barbecue wafting from a garden three houses down, or a lorry spewing diesel fumes (both those things are a means to an end and generally not 3 feet from our noses) we just need to make it clear to smokers that it is offensive and tiresome and rude that they can be so casual and apathetic about how their habit affects others.

I don't even bother checking the weather report any more. I see how many MN threads are harping on about people smoking outside.

Because God forbid smokers go to where they're legally allowed to smoke after the smoking ban.

Serious case of 'careful what you wish for'...non smokers wanted smokers to smoke outside and now they do, they appear to want them banned from recreation.

It's actually far more simple than that. It's about selfish people inflicting their horrible unpleasant habit on others. It mars our enjoyment of any outdoor leisure environment and our food, if eating outside.

So please let us know where we can have a smoke with our coffee/cake etc then?

*in public

They can't apparently.. Unless it's raining or snowing n junk. Nobody gives a toss then.

'we just need to make it clear to smokers that it is offensive and tiresome and rude that they can be so casual and apathetic about how their habit affects others.'

Who is this 'we' of whom you speak? Plenty of non-smokers don't give a toss about people smoking outside, even in areas where food is served. I am an ex-smoker, a vaper, doesn't bother me a jot.

Speak for yourself.

Because God forbid smokers go to where they're legally allowed to smoke after the smoking ban.

No-one suggests smokers be prevented from smoking anywhere at all. They merely suggest that they should act with ordinary human consideration and, in the event that they can't bear to wait before lighting up, they take themselves away for a short time from the vicinity of people who are eating. What is so wrong with that?

There is this weird attitude on MN that so long as something is legal it doesn't matter how inconsiderate it is. It's legal to park across someone's driveway and prevent them getting access to their homes, but would you insist on doing when you can park just as easily somewhere else?

I don't think it is legal to park over someone's driveway is it?

DressedUpJustLikeEdie - I really wish threads like this wouldn't always go off on tangents about passive smoking and the alleged health risks and barbecues and bonfire and the like.

Those are not tangents. The topic of this thread is whether it would be a good idea to BAN smoking in outdoor seating areas. In order to decide that you need to look at the possible justifications for a ban and see whether they stand up.

I've already written about the various justifications earlier in this thread if you're interested.

You appear to favour a ban on the simple basis that you don't like it. I have rather a long list of those things

(I'm another ex-smoker who would not like to be included in your 'we')

No, not legal to park over a drive because it's a dropped curb (sp?)

Ici - eat inside if you're unable to find a free table outside that's far enough away from a smoker for your liking. Smokers are banished to your new dining area for the rest of the year...it has become their smoking area. Can't be reclaimed by non smokers when the weather is nice.

What I don't understand is why people feel this needs a ban.

What's wrong with the idea of asking businesses to provide smoke-free seating if that's what you want? Lots of places do already. Spend your money there and tell your friends. Non-smokers outnumber smokers by about 4 to 1 and you have far more spending power because a) you're not spending a sizeable chunk of your income on cigarettes and b) you are on average on a higher income than smokers to start with, so if enough of you care about this you should be able to exert some consumer pressure.

This leaves businesses with the choice of going totally smoke-free (and bothering to enforce it), providing separate seating for smokers if they have the space or deciding that actually they would prefer to continue catering to their smoking customers and don't care much if you go down the road to another cafe instead.

The suggestion of a ban when there is a perfectly good solution in your own hands, if you could be bothered, comes across as spiteful and nasty.

The suggestion that it's no big deal for smokers to simply move away to have their fag is born of ignorance - you simply don't understand smoking. For a smoker, relaxing outdoors with a coffee/wine/beer involves a fag. The nearest non-smoking equivalent I can think of is if you bought a biscuit to have with your coffee but had to leave the premises to eat the biscuit.

Today I ventured into my local Costa; I opted to have my drink indoors despite the beautiful weather because the outdoor seating was occupied by Tabbers. I walked through the blue fug of cigarette smoke to take my seat indoors.
Fine, I have a choice and I used it. What is NOT FINE is that despite sitting inside, the smell of people's cigarette smoke permeated the 'smoke free' area offered by Costa.
Now, I really don't give a toss if people want to smoke themselves into an early grave. Go ahead, be my guest. What I object to is having to contend with cigarette smoke WHILST I'M EATING OR DRINKING.

I for one would really like to see smoke free outdoor areas at food establishments. It's not rocket science, some non-smokers prefer to eat without breathing someone else's smoke whilst also eating outside.

Now, I really don't give a toss if people want to smoke themselves into an early grave. Go ahead, be my guest. What I object to is having to contend with cigarette smoke WHILST I'M EATING OR DRINKING.

Why the fuck should anyone care about your mild discomfort when you don't give a toss about 100,000 premature deaths per year? How selfish are you?

You have handily put your finger on exactly what pisses me off about these interminable threads.

• 2/3 of smokers started as children
• half of regular smokers will die prematurely, losing on average a decade of life
• nobody around a smoker bears anything like those risks - not even a newborn baby or an unborn foetus
• the vast majority of quit attempts end in failure
• 'denormalisation' - AKA making smokers feel even more shit - has ceased to work since all the naice 'social smokers' have quit and smoking has become concentrated amongst those who are more addicted, poorer and/or have MH issues.

Every time there is one of these threads, lots of smokers who are reading end up feeling even more shit about themselves and reach for the fags. Why the hell should they care about their health? Nobody else does.

I for one would really like to see smoke free outdoor areas at food establishments.

Well ask the establishments to provide it then and stop whinging on the internet.

People are so square these days.

Then it's your own fault, you could see that smokers were sitting outside.

Yep. Go sit on the roof. Should be safe up there .. unless you fall off, of course.

POPG, there has never been as much help to give up smoking as there is these days. I see it as a choice tbh. I grew up in a smoking household, my father smoked and it probably killed him (dead at 52 - cardiac arrest).
I could have smoked; it would have been easy to start, but I made a conscious decision not to.

These days so much is known about the damage caused by smoking that anyone who chooses to start knows full well what could happen. Why should people 'give a toss about 100,000 premature deaths a year' when the majority if not all of them had a choice?

People know the risks, they smoke and they take their chances.

Quite right, Horse. Whatever your poison, or no poison at all, you ain't going to get out of this alive.

Look after yourself all you like. I hope you live to be a hundred. Live and let live, because eventually we'll all die. It all amounts to an extra ten years in a care home.

Bully for you.

I was 12. I started smoking because I was very young, a bit troubled and it helped stop people beating me up. My story is more or less the norm. It took me over three decades to finally manage to quit.

There is more help available than there used to be but it still usually ends in failure.

Well I hope I don't live to be 100 quite frankly, but that's a whole new thread!

All non-smokers.
Reclaim the pubs and their gardens.
Complain to the landlords/ladies about smokers.
Fill them every day, spend money there.
Stop paying money for Costas coffee etc.
Let your dc's run around in a pub garden on a sunny afternoon. Can you do that at a Costas?
Meet your neighbours and save your local pub.

Until Winter, then the pubs that had smokers in the summer, keep them in the Winter & make more money....

Have a look at the money & effort many pubs spend on their smokers enclosures - look at the expensive covers, look at the halogen lighting - they want to keep smokers because then know that if smokers can't have a fag with a drink at a pub they'll stay at home & do it.....