Smoking ban - brilliant news!! 👏

[JessLou80]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/smoking-ban-uk-tobacco-vapes-bill-b2961734.html

Fabulous news about smoking ban for people born after 2008! Hopefully a complete ban for everyone one day - and get rid of those vile vapes!

Its true

However, 2 points...

Firstly, if we're saying that, then just ban tobacco full stop, not just for certain adults

Secondly, it was long accepted that smokers theoretically were paying in far far more than their 'due' in tax than even their higher risk of ill health would cost. I heard it say by medics and economists that they were essentially paying enough tax for a gold plated NHS

I wonder how many people would suddenly be crying into their chardonnay and shiraz if they did this with alcohol?

My OH and I went for lunch somewhere the other week and a bloke at the next table, youngish (by which I mean in his 40s or so), was smoking a PIPE!

Repulsive. We had to move tables.

Medical evidence disagrees with you.

Do you think that technically the smokers paying the tax for their poor health but the money gained from this is not funnelled back into nhs but instead used elsewhere?

I am closer to agreeing with you for smoking (though an outright ban is still a step too far for me). But banning vaping feels arbitrary.

If you truly believe that vaping and smoking are equally harmful then I can see why you might want to ban, but I think the evidence is just not there. Vaping has nicotine but no tar, no carbon monoxide, far fewer other harmful substances.

I’m not a doctor but believing that vaping is maybe 20x as harmful as doctors say feels quite anti-science. If they lie to us on something like this then maybe they are lying about vaccines and all sorts of other things too.

The 5% figure has mostly been dropped now but the latest formulation is “a small fraction of the risk of smoking”.

Unfortunately that’s not an option. We can’t ban smokers, drinkers and fatties from using nhs

Everyone's tax of any description seems just to be pouring into a bottomless hole from what I can judge.

Reported. That comment is unnecessarily offensive.

What?? To people who drink who smoke or get fat???

All of our taxes are used all over the place, thats not the point I was making. To say the 'tax payer' pays for the ill health of the smoker is true, and the biggest tax payers in terms of 'recompense tax' are often smokers simply by virtue of the tax take on that one product

So Ive paid extra tax on products Ive eaten this evening due to the sugar tax, but its nothing in comparison to the tax on fags proportionally.

You really think saying its unfortunate we can't stop "fatties" getting NHS treatment is ok? The part about drinkers and smokers, yes, ok, if you like. But "fatties...?" Its just an unnecessarily offensive term.

Fatties is short for fat people isnt it?

Like druggies

Perhaps not clinical language, but this is a chat forum

What about 'those with high adipose tissue. As a doctor once referred to me!!!

What’s the difference between people who get ill health from choosing to drink, who get ill health from choosing to smoke and who get ill health from choosing to eat badly? It’s all a choice that person has made to decline their own health.
Why are you deciding to be offended by the fact that fat people have chosen to get fat and are statically likely to be a burden on nhs in the same way smokers and drinkers and drug takers are??

Are you fat and happen to believe it’s an accident so you’re fine with the comment about smokers and drinkers being a choice but fat is not something someone has contributed to…??

My DD (19) was quite shocked when she saw her 30 year old cousin vaping because she thought vaping was mainly for year 9s! Both DC have said that kids even vape in the classrooms at school.

I don’t understand how it will be policed?

So we are moving towards a total ban in about 70 years time. That seems a very long time away and I wonder if anyone will even still smoke by then. I turned 16 the year the age of purchase moved to 18. By the time I was 18 I was already a full time smoker so if people want to do it then they will just do it. If it tasted like sweets I probably would’ve started younger so I would probably support tighter regulations on vape packaging and flavours, when you can get a gummy bear vape that looks like a toy I’m not surprised it’s attractive to teens and tweens

I thought I read that people are staring to smoke again, younger adults anyway

What a nasty comment.

where do we draw the line? Should we treat amateur footballers who injure themselves trying to be messi at Sunday league? Cyclists who cycle without helmets?

Smokers draw less pension as well. Another gain for the treasury.

yes I think thats in the vein of what I heard that economist saying years ago, its a win win for governments when people smoke, high tax take, higher than they cost and then they die early

My dad smoked from age 13 up to age 60. The draw on the NHS now from his heart condition, AAA and COPD far outweighs the tax receipts.

banning smoking and vaping will never happen/been seen in practice.

according to signs on nhs sites, smoking and vaping are already banned but just outside every entrance/exit there's a 'corridor' of smokers and vapers - clearly still on site, leaving behind their filthy evidence - obviously littering rules also don't apply to them.

It's outrageous that my DGD who needs two weeks in hospital every 12 weeks for IV antibiotics on a respiratory ward has to be exposed to these tunnels of smoke which she is forced to inhale. She is not exposed to these irritants at home - she should not be exposed to these irritants at hospital - how can that be acceptable? A ban of these adult pacifiers, it would appear, cannot be enforced.

I quit 30 years ago. Every now and again, I find out how much cigs cost. I was a 20 a day smoker. I liked Rothman's. They are now almost 20 quid a packet. That's 600 quid a month. Half my pension. If I got one thing right in my life, it was quitting the fags. It was really, really hard, but it is something I am still very proud of.

I couldnt disagree with this more.

For two reasons.

Firstly because an age related ban is never going to end well in this litigious age, and of course there is the policing of it. Anyone who seriously thinks that in ten years someone of 27 is going to get ID'd in the corner shop is deluded.

Secondly, history has shown that prohibition has never worked. Didnt work with booze in 1920's US. Didnt work anywhere in the world with drugs. Drugs have been illegal in the UK since the 1920's. Wont work with this. People who want them will find them and people who want to make money will find a way to sell them.

Its pointless, divisive and a complete waste of time. All this will do is appease credulous fools such as those on this thread.