India knight on smoking in times

[FluffyMummy123]

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agree with southeastastra.

katieS was jumped on savagely and responded pretty moderately. the odd cig after the kids have gone to bed doesn't make her evil.

i smoke, again the odd one, never with kids or people who don't smoke. actually, I do smoke with people who don't smoke but i always make sure my smoke doesn't go near them (no, really, it doesn't, it is possible).

i may sometimes smell of smoke. i apologize. i may give up smoking within sight of non-smokers now, having heard how upsetting this is for them!

no problem with the ban though, I actually agree it's made restaurants/pubs etc nicer places to go. I can still remember smoking on planes and that was wrong

I don't like being made to feel bad for my habit though which I now have to tuck away out of sight of the morality police.

for margoandjerry:

"Being with a smoker is like being with a small child. Every five minutes you have to stop what you're doing while they have their fag break or faff around trying to cadge one off someone."

If I ever went out with you for an evening say, 8pm til 12pm, in that time I would be off outside for a cigarette, a silk cut that I had bought myself, 3 times max. Probably twice. It would not be "every 5 minutes".

Yet I am a hard-core smoker (in that I smoke every day). I am also a good person and have plenty of friends and no shortage of social invites from non-smokers and smokers alike.

Huffffffff.

I have no views on smokers, other than it's boring to hang around for them while they scuttle off for another fag.

My only view on the matter is that IK is delusional.

The whole nanny state argument is hilarious. Here's the deal - do whatever the hell you like with your body but don't harm anyone else in the process. So don't smoke in public places.

That's pretty obvious, I would have thought. If you need a nanny to tell you to behave appropriately then so be it.

i think i'm the last of my generation that still smokes, i have to do something with my hands

i can understand the hate towards smokers but i smoked in 1988 when it was still acceptble, the generaion today is very odd and square i find

the argument with KS was NOT about her smoking per se. It was about her offensive attitude and glibness about cancer, hospice treatment etc. She REALLY rubbed people up the wrong way.

Like we've said, she can do what she likes, as can you all. But the delusion that it is just an individual free choice that affects no-one else is actually a big problem.

eekamoose - that experience was drawn from a friend of mine who insisted on us going into the smoking pen at Heathrow when we landed after a seven hour flight before we could go and get on the tube home. I stood around for 15 minutes before she was done.

All I'm saying is, it's boring. I didn't say you weren't a good person and you didn't have any friends

In fact, I think this is the basis of Allen Carr's programme - as one smoker to another he suggests it's boring and irritating for smokers too to be beholden to this habit and his argument is that it's actually liberating to give it up.

I am absolutely thrilled that I can go out for an evening and not have to come home and shower, wash my hair and put all my clothes in the wash. Smoking is anti social. I would go further and ban it from doorways. It is pathetic that a smoker can't wait until they get home. I found her whole attitude annoying and selfish.

I usually love India Knight's column but have really lost faith in her today. How the hell can someone who can lose 5 stone be so pathetic that they can't put down the fags?

My stepfather was diagnosed with lung cancer in December after smoking around 5 cigarettes a day for 40 years. For the last 30 years, my mum has begged him to stop. The minute he was diagnosed, he stopped smoking immediately and his life's regret now is that he ever smoked. I never felt sympathy for smokers previously but now my heart is breaking at how serious things are. He will probably not make it until the summer. I visited recently and hearing someone coughing up blood every morning and living in fear of contracting the slightest cold or infection is terrifying.

Good luck to all of you who smoke (especially those who heart cigarettes ) because you may well need it.

my daughter has cystic fibrosis and will probably die younger than her contemporaries through lung damage. I feel resentful when we walk together past a gaggle of smokers choosing to put their own lungs at such unneccesary risk.

southeastra-I think a lot of teenagers still smoke,so you're not alone

Well this has moved on, but Martianbishop you misunderstood my car racing example. I was pointing out that several posters feel that it's ok to revile people who risk their own lives through smoking yet would not say the same to someone who risked their life car racing or any of a dozen other ways.

The inconsistency is striking and demonstrates that it's actually quite irrational - a prejudice of sorts.

I don't know where the hostility comes from, but those posters should feel free to whine as much as they like as long as they don't expect us to take them seriously.

If you're not careful we WILL all stop smoking and then YOUR health service will collapse. We are shoring it up by paying in much more than we use. By the governments own figures I might add though they don't like to draw attention to it.

FirePile I was refering to the original WHO study. way back in the past now so I don't expect you to recall it.

greyriverside - "your health service will collapse" - lol, thank you SO MUCH for keeping the country going.

Crackinggoodegg. That's ok. I don't mind really, but most people are so ungrateful.

ok, there have been some messages on here (I think, haven't read every post) about the rightness of smokers getting nhs treatment.

i know this argument has been done before - but where do you draw the line with this approach?

no treatment for drug addicts?
no treatment for the overweight (and myriad associated health risks, even for the marginally so)?
no treatment for those who have failed to vaccinate themselves?

come on.

a humane society is one that helps its members get better (if that is possible). not one that only agrees to treat those who have led an exemplary life.

she never said she wasn't, lapin.

it's her choice at the end of the day. lots of parents on here drink themselves silly every night, increasing their risks of MANY diseases, but let's just target the smokers.

FFS.

what a thread.

i would love to believe that women journalists were still glued to fags

no one is saying not to treat them. Just that to claim smoking is no burden on public health or ones own family is delusional.

but it seems smokers are particularly targeted for being this kind of 'burden'

i find it incredibly hypocritcal how much sympathy there is here for people with other substance addictions on this board, even more understanding for fucking paedophiliacs.

but when it comes to smoking, well, hey, it's fair game.

wtf is that all about?

listen to yourselves.

never mind.

only because they're so bleeding arsey when people point out the health risks

Nicotine withdrawal perhaps?

she never said she wasn't going to get cancer from her habit, lapin.

some of us have any number of habits which could lead to cancers or other diseases, and we know it, most often, food and alcohol.

but for some reason, smoking's the worst of all of them.

it's an addiction, MB! it's a substance pretty close to heroin in its addictive properties.

but if someone came on here and talked about being a junky, i can tell you right now what kind of reaction they'd get from most people on here.