If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Options
Take a look around and enjoy reading the discussions. If you'd like to join in, it's really easy to register and then you'll be able to post. If you'd like to learn what this place is all about, head here.
Comments
Bollocks.
I think you’ll find that when you eat in a restaurant that isn’t acting in accordance with food hygiene standards you’ll only find out the next day when you’ve got a stomach ache and feel sick. You won’t find out before you get in – so you can’t choose to make a decision.
Meanwhile enter a smoky environment and it’s pretty obviously – hence you can make a choice. Also, could someone in favour of this outrageous outright ban explain what is wrong with two separate rooms? Two separated rooms?
And also why can’t the members of private clubs democratically decide whether to go for a ban or not? I mean surely that wouldn’t be a problem since the militant non-smokers are claiming everybody supports an outright ban?
I agree, I think there could have been a compromise, for example 'smoking rooms' or something, and perhaps the employers have to pay an extra 'health insurance tax' for the workers if they have one or something like that? I dunno, it just seems too much like a tyrannical dictatorship to me.
Oh and to whoever mentioned it: banning smoking would only give criminal cartels a huge source of income. Why any sane person would want to give up so much tax revenue and give it to someone else I dont know.
The dangers of passive smoking have been highly exaggerated for a start. And an outright ban can hardly be purely for the purpose of ‘health and safety’ when separate rooms would have done the same job.
And what about health and safety measures protecting children? Despite the fantasies of anti-smoking busybodies you can’t ban smoking in the home. Yet with banning smoking in pubs and bingo halls plenty of people who enjoy a cigarette on a night out will just smoke more at home. (And lets also remember in some pubs and clubs and in most bingo halls most of the customers smoke).
From the BBC
At the same time, whilst I like a cigar, maybe it'll be nice to sit in a smoke free pub.
they are facts stated as 'opinion' ie someone is stating them so you consider them that persons opinion.
Maybe you read the wrong site? I can teach you to improve your reading skills if you'd like to see the proper thing?
Take out all the senteces with the words "can" "could" "estimated" and "possibly" and theres not a lot left.
... NOTHING is certain (except time i suppose) so we can only go on strong evidence, so words like these have to be used.
Getting hit by a truck COULD kill you, but taht's just opinion right... Maybe go stand in front of a truck and gather some statistics?
Add in gravity, light, heat etc., you know, the rest of the real world.
I can stand in front of a truck all day long and never get hurt, everyone can.
a moving truck smartarse :P
heat and gravity are not universally constant, light is apparent in different forms and dependant on how it is perceived... E.g. it is ESTIMATED that holding your hand in a flame for 5 second COULD burn you.. (this may depend on the heat of the flame, if ure wearing fireproof gloves, if you have a wooden hand...annything).. But would you not still take the idea that fire burns as a given?
You started it
No no. Light's a constant, just the observer perception changes.
Because holding your hand over a flame WILL burn you, i's just a matter of when. As you know some people can smoke loads and nothing happens to them. The cancer that we all carry all the time doesn't bloom in them.
Yeah, sure. What the hell has this to do with the smoking link you posted? It's about as far removed from that kind of reasoning as you can get. If anything you'd look at the facts and say "smoking is not the sole or even primary cause of cancer, what have we missed out?"
.. I didn't think there was any doubt that smoking will shorten your life? People can smoke loads but it's just a matter of time, just like the burning thing... maybe theyll get flattened by a road sweeper before or something... but maybe someone would get their hand chopped off before the flame burnt.
This all has nothing directly to do with the link i posted, its questioning what you said about the words 'estimated / can' etc.. Everything has to be based on compelling evidence to be fact, but i'd just be going over whats already been said if i continued...
You were just being awkward tbh... if you don't want to accept them as facts then thats fine by me... passive smoking is entirely safe, happy?
hi :cool:
You thought wrong
Don't be silly. We think there's a link. How you get from thinking theres a link (for only some people mind you) to using the coercive power of the state to bully people into stopping I am not quite sure.
Some people think that using violence to control another man's place of business on spurious health grounds for people who don't fucking even go there in the first place is ok. Not me though, I'm sane.
Let people vote with their wallets.
Carry on searching and the cancer mortality rate among men per 100,000 for lung cancer is 72.3 in the US, 21.8 in China and 58.3 in Japan.
http://www.truehealth.org/acompar1.html
Am I the only one that finds it odd that the US has a lower smoking rate than Japan and China yet a higher lung cancer mortality rate?
I don’t suppose Japan having a higher life expectancy than the US and UK yet a higher rate of smokers could be anything to do with the Japanese diet being considerably healthier than a Western diet? Maybe it’s the green tea that the Japanese and Chinese drink?
While smoking is almost certainly unhealthy I can’t help but feel that the dangers are sometimes exaggerated at the expense of other factors important for a healthy lifestyle like a decent diet and exercise. I think it is scare tactics that smoking will automatically, without a doubt lead to dying young; while I don’t doubt that it will increase the risk of all sorts of nasty things the perception that it’s guaranteed to really does seem like scare tactics. And some distinction really is needed between a obese chain smoker that goes to a greasy spoon a couple of times a week, never exercises and gets drunk most nights and the occasional smoker who other than enjoying the odd cigarette lives a healthy lifestyle.
I think it’s got to be more than that. Even if America had an NHS that wouldn’t change the fact that a lot of Americans eat absolute junk. Britain has an NHS and pretty good healthcare, a lower rate of smoking than Japan and China – and yet a higher cancer mortality rate than both. And I wasn’t aware that China had a particularly good healthcare system?
You might have a point if we were a communist country with no internet or external sources and EVERYTHING censored..
Scare tactics could help justify large taxes on cigarettes... however, we're not communist (though some think we are) and there are plenty of external objective sources of information that can show the damages of smoking...
I think the Japanese life expectancy is mainly diet..
Also, is it really true that smoking in the house of lords hasn't been banned?
I might have a point if? No, I do have a point.
Japan has a higher life expectancy and far lower cancer mortality rate than dozens of other countries with lower proportions of smokers.
Forgetting China which has a lower cancer mortality rate (although also a lower life expectancy than Western nations) my point still stands as displayed by the differences between the West and Japan. Unless I’m missing something the general message from the anti-smoking lobby seems to be that smokers are guaranteed to develop all kinds of nasty illnesses and assured to die young. I don’t doubt smoking increases the chances of cancer and such but it’s not the only factor – as you mention the explanation for high Japanese life expectancy is probably diet.
Also, interestingly the smoking ban is largely the result of intense lobbying by pharmaceutical companies – a major player in this lobbying effort being Pfizer. And guess what Pfizer make? Nicorette. Hence by making life uncomfortable for smokers and making more want to give up Nicorette sales increase and Pfizer make fatter profits.