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Comments
Whatever way you look at it, it's an seriously harmful drug that people find incredibly difficult to give up.
Smoking is responsible or involved in 85% of all new cases of lung cancer. That's a pretty serious figure.
It's hardly hypocrital if I'm a smoker too is it?
Most smokers are in denial about how damaging their habit is, that or they would rather not think about it. I'm one of them and as a smoker I don't think we can complain about these pictures. It may help me one day kick the habit for good.
And I think I can put up with a few horrid pictures if it helps in anyway to stop young smokers starting.
Go back a week, there's a thread with ten pages of smokers demanding the right to give people in pubs asthma attacks.
I think alcohol will be attacked next, but fat people are already "on the hitlist", far more than smokers ever are. Because, although I know smokers don't see it like this, being asked to stand outside for 30 seconds isn't up there with the Pogroms.
I think pictures would be going a bit OTT, but at the same time, the BHF's latest two campaigns (one against smokers, one against fatties) were very successful.
I don't think that was quite the argument (at least its not mine). I think that there is enough room in the market for smoking pubs and non-smoking pubs.
*6 days without a cigarrette*
I think there's enough room in the market to have separate smoking rooms in pubs, but that was the "rantings" of an "anti-smoking Nazi":)
If you're vilifying smokers and not the obese, believing that they need to be treated like infants, then it means you're suffering from cognitive dissonance. If you're not, then no.
Disagree. I'd say most smokers know that smoking can lead to cancer, death, heart disease, low birth weigh etc. etc. etc. Hell, they're told every time they buy a pack.
Do you think that McDonalds, BK, Ginster’s Pasties et al should have fatties on the side? Maybe a clogged artery perhaps?
If you don’t mind been treated like a child then fine, you have no beef with this topic.
An addiction is 'a habit that has become impossible to break' and a habit a regular practice.
When I go to the pub I like to smoke with a drink. At a party I'll often have a few cigarettes with drinks. If I go out for a meal with some friends I like a cigarette after. Since I haven't been to the pub, went out for a meal or been to a party for a few days I've only smoked a couple of cigarettes (not packets, cigarettes). I know lots of 'social smokers' or 'casual smokers' and I know lots who would like me, say that they are not addicted. But, I know lots like of people like myself who out of habit smoke in certain situations.
Sure, smoking is addictive for a lot of people - but most people if they really want to, can cut down significantly or quit. Quitting isn't easy for a lot of smokers but it's possible. It's very true to say that lots of smokers think they should quit, and keep meaning to quit (but put it off) but that's very different to smokers hating cigarettes and being absolutely desperate to quit and unable to. And I believe the latter applies to few people and the former to very many - and the reason those people keep smoking is because bizarrely enough they like it.
Probably because there are more smokers than morbidly obese people and alcoholics.
For non smokers who go into pubs, maybe it will. The site does say that doctors believe passive smoking to be a cause of lung cancer (along with diet ect).
"Intolerence"? It probably does have something to do with people making money, everything does... But nobody here has said to stop smoking, that would be "intolerent" to your habit.
No, it's just irrelevent to this debate.
That's like going to an Amnesty International supporter and saying "So... are you saying that palm oil plantations making orangutangs extinct AREN'T important?"
You may as well say the same thing about crack. :rolleyes:
So? Really? Why are you rolling your eyes? :rolleyes:
As opposed to the non-fatal kind, I guess? THAT is what annoys me more than anything on fag packets.
I keep my smokes in a tin anyway.
Because you're talking bollocks. To say that people could give up "if they wanted" and its not an addiction, misses what "addiction" (a crap term btw, dependence is better) is. Its the psychological habit that is the hardest thing to break with any dependence. The physical detox is the easy bit - its staying off that is really hard.
Yeah, they were.
You were all arguing for the "right" to smoke inside a semi-public building regardless of the consequences for others. It ain't rocket science.
I think this debate immediately causes tensions. People purport (myself included) more extreme views than they actually hold because they feel like they’re being attacked by the opposite camp. Hyperbole and exaggeration then become rife, and very quickly people stop listening to each other.
As a non-smoker I honestly find people smoking in pubs, at worst, a mild inconvenience. I do notice my clothes smell when I get home, but they’re going in the washing machine anyway so I don’t see it as a big deal. I don’t suffer from asthma, and I if I did then I expect I’d find smoky pubs a bit more exasperating. I think all staunch pro-smokers know that they are being selfish if they believe they should be able to smoke wherever they please, and are baulking at having a freedom they previously enjoyed taken away from them - something which is compounded by the government’s polarised law passing, completely bypassing the reasonable middle-ground.
As an ex-smoker what frustrates me more than anything though is the self-righteousness often exhibited by militant anti-smokers. I can usually put up with it, but with the current governmental spotlight being shone on the issue, it’s like they feel they’ve been given carte-blanche on aggressive moralising. The smugness is almost tangible.
But when you get people denigrating BHF and CRUK research whilst using Forest's website to prove that smoking isn't bad for you, well, it's getting a bit silly.
Very.
On a serious note how about a mandatory warning,( say pictures of venereal diseases on a (fe)male`s outer body surface) to warn of potential dangers that could follow if one was to indulge in activities of a sexual nature.
How about pictures of dead/tortured people on the outside of buildings that involve worship such as churches,cathedrals,mosques and polling booths ?
:thumb:
Does that sentiment have to be restricted to smoking ?
As far as labelling is concerned, it seems like a petty arguement. Smokers should know what they're doing to their body, why should they care if there are pictures on their cigarette packets? Why does that make them such victims?
Drug education in school never stopped a lot of people (including myself) from using drugs, smoking and drinking, even if we know the effects.
It is the whole "woe is me" attitude which is annoying, displayed when a health warning is going to be put on a packet of cigarettes or when somebody is asked to step outside for a cigarette because somebody's child, or asthmatic wife is around. The whole denial that passive smoking causes harm is irritating too... I mean to anyody who believes that, would you/do you smoke around children? Would you spark up in a nursery?
Personally I have no issues with smokers, but the attitudes of some smokers. I wouldn't mind smoking and non smoking pubs (non smking would be nice and I could go to the smoking ones with my friends who smoke) because it gives non smokers the choice to breath clean air.
I don't think smokers will stop without more education, in the form of when they're young forming a strong opinion that it's antisocial and undesirable.