To ask lady to stop smoking near my newborn and pregnant friend?

[pinktrufflechoc]

Out for coffee and a friend went in to get them and a woman is smoking. Friend is pregnant and I have a newborn.

I asked her to stop and she was being rude to me and said she'd smoke outside if she wanted!

Do you think I was unreasonable? I think it's horrible ...

I couldn't exactly tell Mr 'I may not have bathed this week', to move out of the queue could?

Sigh. If only.

If only, indeed

However, there ARE times we can ask favours of others to minimise our discomfort. When I was expecting Dc1 there was a plug in air freshener in the office that made me feel very unwell and I asked (very politely) if anyone would mind if I moved it - they didn't and I had lots of concerned asking how I was and suggestions for things that might not make me sick! Very sweet colleagues.

Now obviously a cigarette isn't a plug in Air Wick and had she been mid cig or had there been other options I would have been absolutely rude to ask her not to light up but as she'd just finished one and as we had to sit there, and I really was extremely polite to her, I thought it was reasonable to request that she waited.

Happy to go with the majority view I was not but I don't want the post being twisted into me stomping into a deserted outdoor area and demanding that the smoker out her cig out because of me, my baby and friend.

Personally I think it inconsiderate of smokers to smoke outside in a public area such as the outdoor part of a cafe where people are close to each other.
No smokers like to sit outside too you know and we like to enjoy the fresh not smokey air.

I think that it is inevitable (and right) that smoking will eventually be banned in all public places, outside or in.

Until then, we are going to continue to get lots of threads like this as it an issue that genuinely concerns people, especially those who are pregnant or with young children.

Why is it inevitable? Cigarette sale contributes to much of the economy, so banning it completely will leave a large tax-gap. The health issue can be applied to many things, junk food, alcohol, caffeine intake. The smoke vs environment issue also doesn't wash, due to other every day objects causing equal or worse damage to people and/or the eco system. You ban smoking, you have to ban a lot of other things to avoid being very hypocritical.

I think that it is inevitable (and right) that smoking will eventually be banned in all public places, outside or in.

Nonsense.

You should have gone to 'spoons instead, OP. I was at the one in Greenwich the other week and they have a separate smokefree outside seating area ... right on the pavement of one of the most polluted roads in the country, if not the whole of Europe. How we laughed at the smug gits sitting there eating their lunch with a huge side-order of lorry fumes

There's not really any evidence of harm from indoor SHS - just some small statistical changes for DC who live full time with indoor smokers (something the smokefree laws don't address at all ). There's completely no evidence of harm to bystanders from outdoor SHS.

It does 'concern' people but that concern has been manufactured. It's part of what is called 'denormalisation' and is a deliberate strategy to nudge smokers into quitting by pretending that not only are they harming themselves but that they are harming others as well. It worked for a bit but has largely stopped working now. All it achieves these days is to make people unnecessarily frightened and to increase the level of animosity directed towards smokers.

People have been persuaded that there's something magically super-toxic about cigarette smoke but there isn't. It's just smoke, no different from smoke from a barbecue or bonfire. Inhaling any sort of smoke frequently for a number of years is really bad for you. The odd wisp on the breeze, not so much.

Some people think smoking should be banned in outdoor public places just because they find it unpleasant. I'm sure we all have quite long lists of those things. Do we really want to go down the road of banning things just because some people don't like them? Personally I think that's a dangerous precedent to set and I would strongly resist it.

One nasty unintended consequence of a wider public ban could be more smokers smoking inside their own homes - around their DC - the one situation where there is (some) evidence of harm from SHS.

This is still the best, most comprehensive data we have on the harms from environmental tobacco smoke. Over 118,000 non-smoking participants were followed for almost 4 decades. The study looked for differences between those who lived with smokers and those who didn't.

Conclusions: The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality, although they do not rule out a small effect. The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed.

Still staying - I prefaced my remark by saying I think. That is my opinion and people are entitled to disagree on these threads. It is not nonsense to think something. It is actually a perfectly reasonable prediction as it would just be a logical extension of what is already the case. People used to believe that indoor smoking would never be banned and people used exactly the same arguments as on this thread.

It's not nonsense to think something but a lot of what people think is nonsense.

You are correct that it's a reasonable prediction that smoking will be banned in at least some outdoor places in the near future. This is because our politicians are, by and large, scientifically illiterate, and because Tobacco Control have a lot of money, mostly from extreme taxation of mainly poor people who became addicted as children to a legal drug. They also have a lot of influence and are getting such laws passed in other countries, so yes, that's a logical prediction.

I don't think you can have a 'logical extension' to a law that was illogical in the first place though so I think that's nonsense.

I think the idea that such a ban is 'right' is probably nonsense. What would be the aims of such a ban and would it be justified? Every argument I've heard for an outdoor smoking ban has failed to convince me on one or the other of these points, usually both.

I don't think that just because you put 'I think' in front of your opinions that makes them immune to criticism.

I think your opinion is nonsense.

I'm not a smoker, neither are my dh or my older ds's.

I would be upset if any of them started smoking, it's unhealthy and expensive.

However that doesn't make a smoker a second class citizen.

Making pariahs out of smokers and forcing them out of everyday activities yet taking the monetary benefits from them is appalling.

Every public health measure that has ever been passed in this country has, at some point, been dismissed as "nonsense" by a significant and vociferous section of the population. This opposition generally dies down after the benefits of the policy bear fruit in terms of a healthier population. It is the transition that is difficult and controversial.

Public health policy encompasses action to prevent harm to the individual, harm to those around them and prevention of an unhealthy example being shown to children. All of these are relevant in extending the ban on smoking to all public places. Smokers are still free to smoke in their own homes - as long, of course, as their partner doesn't object.

People will, of course, argue the rights and wrongs of this - and I would never dismiss someone else's genuinely felt opinion as "nonsense".

I am a smoker, considerate to others but absolutely fed up with the anti brigade trying to take over outdoors as well as inside!
You've driven us out of pubs, they are now infested by ill behaved brats and their sanctimonious parents. Now they expect us to move because they, and their precious bump, arrive in the garden.
Where do I start, go inside, get a life, and realise it's not fucking mustard gas, this generation would not exist if it was that bad. When you are all moaning about cigarettes just think about traffic fumes!

I'm not a smoker but am still amazed at this. You sit next to someone smoking then think she should move or stop to accommodate you? Ludicrous!