India knight on smoking in times

[FluffyMummy123]

Message withdrawn

Glad you can be so off hand and flippant about the hospice. My dh has just come out of one.

Little, why can't you accept that this is truly how I feel? I'm not looking for an argument, just trying to explain how I feel about smoking. I'm sorry if my stance seems somehow abhorrent or inconceivable to you, but it's the truth.

People may not avoid you because you smell, but your attitude sure stinks

Easy to be 'brave' before the fact

Actually Littlelapin the reason I used the skydiving example is because it is something that you don't need to do (unlike driving) and it could kill you and no one would dream of saying that you are risking depriving your family etc by doing it.

You can actually give someone a skydiving trip as a gift it's so acceptable.

But it's ok to tell smokers they have no right to risk their own lives for pleasure.

KS is a wind up merchant, surely?

Once again, I'm sorry that you have suffered watching loved ones die. How awful for you and the DC's. But with respect, it has no bearing whatsoever on my decision to smoke cigarettes. I'm not dismissing your experiences, truly, however they are not my experiences.

And for the record, when was I being flippant about other people dying in a hospice? I was talking about me.

Martian, why are you so threatened by the point of view of a stranger? I'm not threatened by your opinion, why are you so het up about mine?

I think that if people want to smoke that's their business. I think that if they expect other people to inhale their smoke that's selfish and unacceptable.

The hating the smell thing is a reaction to my smoking for 8 years I think- I've become hyper sensitive to it. My sister always told me I stank and I thought she was exaggerating. I do actually gag at the smell now, and find that I can detect even the faintest trace.

You don't threaten me in the slightest.

I just think it will be a huge shame tif you have to tell your kids that you are dying because you loved smoking so much.

Trust me is isn't an easy thing to look your kids in te eye an tell them that dady isn't going to get better than that he is going to die.

But you may not want to accept that and that probably has a lot to do whith why you can continue to smoke. Because you can kid yourself that it isn't going to happen to you, or if it does you wil swan off to Switaerlan with no regrets and a fab in your hamn.

sorry but that is bollocks.

Martian. If a moment of weakness comes across me in the next few days, I will think about what you have to go through. Thanks. Life is so bloody unfair.

fag in your hand....stiff neck making typing worse than ever

maybe because your views are idiotic KS?

You won't be running to the NHS when you develop lung disease...?

Utter utter bollocks.

Little, you don't see things from my perspective, that's fine and totally understandable but there is no need to attack me personally simply because I don't have the same opinion as you.

Which incidentally goes right back to my original argument. Why is it OK to publically berate smokers when they are harming only themselves? I still can't see it, other than it has become socially acceptable to insult smokers because they must deserve it, they smoke!!!!

but you're not harming only yourself KS.

What right do you have to describe my personally held views as idiotic? You know absolutely nothing about me. I would never dream of calling your views bollocks because your beliefs are different from mine. And monkey also, you have no right whatsoever to describe my views as idiotic. They are not idiotic to me, who, after all, is the only person they directly concern.

Less of the insults please.

Actually KS my attitude was like yours. I loved smoking, but gave up because I wanted to have children. I thought I'd restart once I stopped BF.

It was my BIL who changed my mind, not that he was trying to! He was talking about his mother and how she died of lung cancer. Like you, I accepted that I might get it and didn't care.

He talked about how she didn't stop smoking even after she was diagnosed- understandable for a smoker like me, because once the worst has happened why would you?

What changed my mind was that he didn't understand. He carries so much anger and bitterness towards her for how she died that it taints his good memories of her. I decided not to smoke again.

Monkey, we have already established that yes, I am only harming myself. I have to go out now, so must say cheerio.

I wish you all a very happy Sunday regardless.

KS
x

I am perfectly entitled to call your views idiotic and bollocks if that's what I think, and that's what I think. report me if you like.

But you are dreaming if you think your smoking related illnesses will be no drain on the NHS unless you have a private policy that also pays to train its own doctors, and if the impact of a smokers early demise on their children is minimal.

So, if for the sake of argument you get cancer next year, you will not try to live long enough to see you child/rens next birthday ten? Or Christmas? You will not Seka treatment to have a last family holiday? You will not attempt to see you kids move up to the next class in school, see the next nativity play?

Because I know from personal experience that when you know you are dying this is what you want to do for your children. You want to live to give them more memories, to try to help them along just that little bit more in life, to make that little bit more effort to make them happier people.

What are we supposed to think when you glibly trot out 'I'll just go and commit suicide with a fag in my hand'? Are we supposed to think, 'Gosh how brave'? 'Gosh how committed she is to such an important life choice?'

Because I'm sorry that isn't how it 'reads' to me.

You are not bravely laying down your life for an important reason, you are doing it for the benefit of the tobacco company.

Replace 'Heroin' for fags and see how it all reads, I heart heroin, if I die then my kids will know that I did so happy with a needle in my arm, heroin is great.

and yes, you are quite right Heroin is different. You don't get 360 odd people dying evey day in the UK of a heroin overdose

COngratulations Girl. I did not smoke at all during TTC, pregnancy or the six months I breast fed both my children.

So sorry your BIL is hurting and I'm happy for you that you have found a way of stopping, because you wanted to. That's my thing, I don't want to stop. I can and do frequently (holidays, etc) so I don't upset others or involve them in passive smoking but I simply don't want to stop completely at the moment.

I'm sorry if my honest opinion has hurt anyone. Truly it was never my intention.

Martian, I can see I'm just upsetting you now, so I'll go.

You have, however managed to extend your argument to such an extent that I am no longer a considerate, private, non-smelly smoker of maybe 3 cigarettes a day. I am now a horrible person, a neglectful, insensitive and glib parent and likened to a heroin addict to boot.

All because I admit I like to smoke cigarettes. And refuse to placate you or anyone else over this choice of mine.

Great post MB

Katie, you've taken a kicking on here and I've no particular wish to add to it, but my mother is dying from lung cancer at the moment, having smoked for 45 years. Her attitude used to be quite similar to yours; she was very bolshy indeed about her right to smoke, right up until the moment she was diagnosed. Believe me, at that moment, if there was one thing she could have changed, it would have been the fact that she smoked.

Greyriverside: actually the link between passive smoking and lung cancer (and heart disease) has been proved.

The WHO International Agency for research on Cancer (IARC) is the global authority on carcinogens.

IARC's most recent review of the scientific evidence on tobacco smoke runs to 1500 pages - 200+ on passive smoking. This is a systematic review - looking at and reviewing the quality of all the individual studies on tobacco smoke. It was published in full in 2004.

Their Conclusion: "Involuntary smoking (exposure to secondhand or "environmental tobacco smoke) is carcinogenic to humans, (Group 1)"

Group 1 are classified as those substances known to cause cancer in humans.

Link to summary of the review here.

And yes IARC's view does matter - that's why Philip Morris spent millions of dollars on secretly infiltrating IARC in the 1990s to undermine IARC's work in this area. See the abstract of the Lancet article on what happenedhere.

The US Surgeon General's systematic Review on the health risks of secondhand smoke was published in 2006 and can be seen in full here

There is no debate about the science. The only controversy on this issue comes from the tobacco companies and its apologists.

By the 1990s, studies funded by the tobacco industry-funded were 90 times more likley to conclude that secondhand smoke does not harm health than independent research. Abstract here

(Tobacco company documents, incidentally, show that internal research by tobacco cos was showing that secondhand smoke was harmful as far back as the 1970s. They simply didn't publish it.)