190 replies to this topic

[Dr DX]

i wasnt even in the air core lol i was royal irish, infantry and that was my choice to join that

[jamesb99_1999]

all we want as smokers is to have the choice as to if we smoke or not, in the same way that you want the choice as to if you enter a smokey atmosphere.

Banning us entirely in public places, personally i didnt think that the uk was a country that supported prohibition, are we really wanting to become a nanny state.

So we need a compromise, I think someone mentioned previously about pubs applying for seperate licenses. Maybe they should apply for a smoking license as they do a liqour license.

That way we can have non smoking and smoking pubs, you have your choice, we have ours.

his is a big one isn't it emotive on both sides, and I can certainly see the point of the smoker. However being medically seriously affected by this I can comment that there is proof second hand smoke is harmful - I nearly die from it - I have been in hospital 3 times because of it on breathing equipment. One thing I would say though is we do not have a choice. I go in to a pub and someone smokes next to me am I supposed to leave???

The legal point being and the reason for the new legislation is due to the fact that people have to work in places where smoking is. If I could only get bar jobs because that was where my skillset was should i never be able to get a job?? Should people who have to work in a bar or club have no choice? Or do they not deserve the same protection in the law as an office worker??

Like I said I can understand - my mom has been giving up for 30 years. I understand also that a lot of people enjoy smoking, however most of the people that I have spoken to about this have said if I could wave a magic wand away and make them give it up they would..

I don't personally see the problem with having smoking boothes like they do in offices. I mean after all it works there, and people have the choice to go in, but you would have to hermetically seal them to protect the workers, and employ cleaners that didn't have asthma.

Asthma is severely affected by smoke.. And you are right adydb my car pumps out a lot of environmentally harmful chemicals as do power stations, aerosol etc. I would say on that point though I can personally stand next to a car pumping out crap without nearly dying.. Also a car has unfortunately been turned in to a necessity rather than a habbit or for purely fun purposes....

[Jimmy_mac]

As previously said i do sypmathise with anyone effected by the issues surrounding smoking.


However the comment made about second hand smoke was not that it catagorically does not effect people. It was that the medical community cannot reach and agreement that ETS is doing the damage that people are stating. It is the sidestream smoke that is shown to be giving the increases in lung cancer and such which involves a close proximity to the smoker.

[fistandantilus]

i wasnt even in the air core lol i was royal irish, infantry and that was my choice to join that

my final three choices after dismissing Sandhurst were aircraft tech, linguist and armourer. I got my first choice from 4 sheets of availble careers

the REME motto for those who can't read latin means "By Skill and by Fighting"

[mrgspot]

f*** ive enjoyed reading all this, well done boys, it seems the discussion of smoking really pulls people out of there prams...

As for the guy in the army. I admire your time spent in reserching everything, you obviously feel strongly about people smoking...

I will continue to smoke and continue to enjoy a fag, sorry to all you who dont and have to breath in our toxic, dangerous, life threatening fumes. but hey thats life and we all gotta live with it. Same as we all gotta live with a queue of 400 cars every monday morning on the B1040, stationary, blowing out fumes till we are red in the face, but i suppose thats different......

Anyway chaps, im off to pollute the air...

Chow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Mein

G xx

[jamesb99_1999]

I guess I agree with the sentiment, I do have opinions on it.. But guess I've lived this long either way and there are far more serious issues in the world.. Like someone told me that the chick in the crying game was a guy.. No way!!!

j/k

[Gazeyre1966]

I will continue to smoke and continue to enjoy a fag, sorry to all you who dont and have to breath in our toxic, dangerous, life threatening fumes. but hey thats life and we all gotta live with it. Same as we all gotta live with a queue of 400 cars every monday morning on the B1040, stationary, blowing out fumes till we are red in the face, but i suppose thats different......

...and that is it in a nutshell. Let's call for cars to be banned shall we? I live in the town centre and when I open my window for more than a couple of hours I have to clean up all the crap that comes through from the endless stream of traffic flooding past. I DO NOT have a choice in this matter.Some people say it's essential for them to have a car. Maybe in some cases. A member of staff at work put that case forward to me and then promptly jumped in her car to go to the cafe approximately 2 minutes walk away.

Ben, sorry, it wasn't a personal attack on your gambling but I do read your posts and you do seem to have played a lot of current machines. If you've stopped then good on ya. Again, it's your choice.

For all the people who've lost a loved one because of a smoking related disease then I'm sorry. I happen to think that's a generic thing. Some people are prone and some aren't. Smoking will just bring it on quicker.

I just think that bringing up smoking related family deaths isn't the way forward in this debate. You will find that we live in a blame culture these days and it's always someone else's fault. If a family lose a child knocked down by a car they call for the speed limit to be reduced. If a family lose someone in a train crash there has to be a public enquiry. If a family lose someone at war they ask why they should be out there in the first place. If this is what people truly believed then why weren't they out there campaigning BEFORE their bereavement. It's a load of cobblers and these people should be made to foot the bill.

Finally to my last point. They are banning smoking in pubs. Well I suggest that drinking more than 3 pints is bad for your health and therefore people should be limited to 3 pints a night. Yeah right, drinking is my choice as is smoking. And before some smart arse comes on to say that drinking vast quantities doesn't affect anyone else then I suggest that they look at the effects of drinking vast amounts and check the statistics of assaults, car crashes, even murders, robberies and general misuse of alcohol before posting.

I just want freedom to do what we choose to do. George Orwell had it spot on.

Oh...and I've had this sig for over a year.

[kensplace2]

Smoke does contain a lot of toxic chemicals, but what about the following list, can anyone guess what contains these?

Cyanide
Mercury
Sodium Nitrite
Potassium Bromate
Sulfites (many types Potassium Bisulfite, Potassium Metabisulfite. etc)
Butylated Hydroxyanisole
Butylated Hydroxytoluene
Tartrazine

The list goes on, there are hundreds more, many of which are banned from use in some countries, but not in many others.

They are found in types of food additives, food colouring, and preservatives.

Studies have found many of them have direct links to serious illnesses, but
we end up having to eat them anyway. We dont have much of a choice, as they are not clearly labelled, and usually they are given another marketing name.

Government wants to regulate what goes into food.... As everyone eats food.

Asthma, cancer, high blood pressure, thyroid problems, and many other ilnesses are linked to the crap that goes in food, its well documented on many sites. Just search google......

Smoking in restaurants maybe a cause of cancer, but you can get a similar risk just from eating the food.........

I remember writing some software once for a firm that did food additives, and when I looked at their database of chemicals that went into the food, I was mortified.... But its so common, and you need to eat, so there is no real way of avoiding it.

Many other chemicals have been (thankfully) banned, but they *were* in food for many, many years, so the damage will have been done to many people before they banned them.

Funny how chemicals in smoke get so much publicity, but chemicals in items eaten/drank by everyone tends to get brushed under the carpet.

As for cars, a quick look on google reveals

Carbon Monoxide
Nitrogen dioxide
Sulphur dioxide
Suspended particles including PM-10, particles less than 10 microns in size.
Benzene
Formaldehyde
Polycyclic hydrocarbons

found in car exhaust fumes, and probably many more others, all highly bad for us humans, and the planet....

[frankie4fingers]

Got fond memories of tartrazine lol!

[kensplace2]

Also found this, interesting statistic, from the bbc

http://news.bbc.co.u...otes/336738.stm

Around 24 Thousand premature deaths per year in the UK caused by car exhaust fumes. Contrast that to deaths from passive smoking, which causes around 2,700 deaths in people aged 20-64 and a further 8,000 deaths a year among people aged 65 years or older (taken from a anti-smoking website, ash, http://www.ash.org.u...tml/fact08.html)

Clearly, fumes from cars are a far bigger killer than fumes from smoking. But the spotlight is on the lesser of the two evils? Odd isnt it.

[Gazeyre1966]

Nice one Ken...but we smokers have known these facts for years and years...yet, we are chosen to be ignored by the uneducated.

Maybe if we had a bigger forum then our voices would be heard and the moaning minnies would be silenced.

[Nudgeman]

Stop writing replies! I wanted to reply to this on page one and now we're nearly on page eight. How can I reply if people keep talking?? Ssssh. Quiet please.

I am a non smoker. I have only taken one draw on a cigarette for novelty value. It was like inhaling lots of hot smoky little tiny snippets of paper. Non smoking gamblers, we're a rare breed aren't we? For something as stressful as gambling, you need a bit of nicotine to calm yourself down.

I did contemplate starting up on the 2mg Nicorette gum, moving up to the 4mg and then combining it with patches before smoking real cigarettes, but I really wasn't feeling any ill effects through not smoking anything and decided not to bother in the end.

I personally think that banning smoking in pubs is too excessive. A pub is a place for gentlemen to indulge in their chosen vices and feel all the more worse for it in the morning. Smoking, alcohol, gambling, it's all part of the package. If you don't like it, go to the library instead!
If I had to attack one of the three vices listed above, alcohol is definitely first in the firing line. It's surely far more anti-social than smoking.

There have been many interesting points raised in this thread. Unfortunately as it's expanding almost as fast as the Universe, as fast as I remember one thing to reply to, I forget another thing and then something I totally forgot about is answered in the next posting anyway.

There seem to be two main bugbears within this thread though.
Number one is the cost of all these terrible smelly pooey stinky smokers on our economy vs the amount they pay in taxes. Do they pay for themselves and more? Or are they a selfish burden on society? I will attempt to answer this in a moment.
Number two is the scathing attack on the internal combustion engine. A vile contraption used by those looniest of loony people - non smoking politically correct airbrains casting hypocritical aspersions as far afield as their CO and sulpher derivative addled brains will allow (sorry that's the person behind on a bicycle).

Let's start with number two. I am a keen cyclist. I now also work *almost* full time in a job that requires me to wear a suit and tie and look smart. I also drive a car.
It's a lovely sunny day. My journey to work (my work place varies) is typically 10 miles through a combination of urban roads and a bit of country. It takes me about 25 minutes in a car. About 45 minutes cycling well within my limits on a racing bicycle. There are a couple of hills along the way.
What I detest the most is when Mr. Landrover Subaru 4*4 Landcruiser Sport whacks his boot to the floor to make the most of his economical 10mpg vehicle fuel consumption in a bid to overtake me. The loony Government introduced these wonderful things called catalytic convertors to stop co2 emissions and instead produce a host of other toxic gases.
This means that as my body is increasing its cardiac output (I'm cycling up a steep hill) I'm forced to inhale a smell of rotten eggs and the sight of a posermobile disappearing out of sight smugly polluting the air with it's hollow death stick of doom.
It's raining. Not just raining, but things that don't normally leak are leaking. There's a force 9 gale blowing and it's not that toasty either outside. I could put my suit in the rucksack and get changed at work, but it's be soaked through by the time I got there. What's this? A car? Air con, warm air. I can get to car park and remain totally dry. Yes guilty. A fair weather cyclist. If I overtake some poor bastard cycling up the hill, I do at least have the decency to let off the accelerator pedal somewhat until I am well past him/her.
Yes agree, cars are dirty smelly things. Catalytic convertors only reduce some of the 'greenhouse gas' emissions. we still have 'poisonous' emissions, more so than before.

The only time I get annoyed with smokers is when I'm playing a fruit machine next to a heavy super duper splifta mega flava rizzler smoker and they've got the 'thing' on my side. Whack it over to your other hand bud, the arcade air con isn't sweeping away your fug fast enough. Why did I play a machine next to a smoker? I didn't know he was a smoker until he lit up his mega rizzler splifta and this machine's about to streak ok?

Now. I lied. There is another time I get annoyed with smokers. This brings us to point number one. I work within an NHS Primary Care Trust. Someone mentioned that the amount a smoker spends on cigarettes in their lifetime outweighs the cost to the NHS. How much *extra* tax do smokers pay on a pack of cigarettes? what is the current rate of duty. VAT at 17.5% is standard on *luxury* goods such as chocolate, crisps e.t.c
I think there is extra duty on top of that isn't there? So how much EXTRA tax does buying a pck of cigarettes generate for the economy. Someone tell me because then I can weight it accordingly against the average cost of a monthly prescription for someone who suffers from a smoking induced chronic disease. It'll be complicated. There are smokers out there who are not ill due to smoking and never will be. We can do a little calculation and work this out once and for all. Perhaps I'm being a tight wad.
Now in this age of enlightenment we know the risks of long term smoking, how many long term smokers would be happy to get cheaper cigarettes exempt from the extra duty they pay but have to PAY for their own healthcare should they fall foul of something like COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)?
I suspect - smokers cost the economy money. Let's crunch some figures and come to some conclusions.
Also someone said something about private healthcare. Many people pay into private healthcare schemes and recieve free treatment privately. A vast % of these people are registered with a local NHS GP who will issue them with an NHS prescription. Chances are they don't pay for this. They may be over 60, on benefits e.t.c (ah yes, a lot of cigarettes are bought with BENEFITS money aren't they?) Even if they do pay for prescription charges, it's only a levy charge and bears no relation to the cost of the medication.

I'll dig out some facts and figures if anyone cares that much.
Banning smoking in pubs altogether is ludicrous, light up, lighten up. His Tonyness is as barking as usual. However I have my serious doubts that smoking helps the economy. Smoke if you like, but don't try to make out you're doing me a favour you smoky gits!

[kingkallum82]

I enjoy these debates...

Dont ban smokin u c***s!!! lol

My views right there

Kallum

[Gazeyre1966]

pmsl @ Nudgeman once again...You should write a book of anecdotes mate...lol

As for your point about VAT...17.5% is the going rate but that's on TOP of over £2 a packet TAX that we pay too. A standard packet of 20 costs £4.50...so that's around £2.50 we pay per packet of 20. if you smoke 20 a day then it works out at £912.50 per annum. A lot of people smoke more than that. Of course, we workers pay our National Insurance as well.

[kensplace2]

Duty on a packet of cigerettes, from what I found on google..

Duty on cigarettes - 22% of the retail price + 9.68 pence per cigarette - a total of £2.93 for a packet of 20 cigarettes at an average retail price of £4.25 per pack which means that the duty is 69% of the price.

from http://www.bized.ac....y/subsidies.htm

69 percent... Thats a high percentage. Well over half the cost of a packet of fags is tax......

[fistandantilus]

Around 24 Thousand premature deaths per year in the UK caused by car exhaust fumes. Contrast that to deaths from passive smoking, which causes around 2,700 deaths in people aged 20-64 and a further 8,000 deaths a year among people aged 65 years or older

Clearly, fumes from cars are a far bigger killer than fumes from smoking. But the spotlight is on the lesser of the two evils? Odd isnt it.

10,700 might not sound a big figure until perhaps when your girlfriend, or parent, brother or sister, or perhaps just a close family friend happens to be one of the statistics? Take solace in the fact that it wasn't car fumes. Death by psychopath is even rarer too but is it any less acceptable?

The stats just mentions deaths. What about people who's health has been damaged. People with asthma, people with cancer, people with clogged arteries. People who's health has disabilitaed them so much they can't even leave the house. How many people do you think are on permenant disability benefit due to smoke? A lot more than ten thousand I bet.

I heard heard all the arguments for the right to smoke where people want and they are all bollocks because they miss the glaring obvious point. Smoke over a long period of time is hazardous to people’s health whether passive or non-passive. The simple fact is my right for you not to damage my health should outweigh the inconvenience of you having to go outside to smoke. Stop been so f*****g selfish

As for car emissions, something should be done about them too and saying something’s worse does not excuse the original argument. . 0-2 miles I walk, 2-15 miles I cycle and anything further I take a train or a bus if there is no train route there. I concede that motor vehicle are a necessity for a lot of things but if people made more of an effort to not use the car maybe emissions would be lower.

Saying something’s worse does not excuse the original argument.

[fistandantilus]

I trained my ex to a scary standard of fitness and yes she is still a twat what is your point?

alth

i might be a twat, i might be all the other immature names you wish to call me but does it have any relevence. I was simply answering someones question of how a twat like me could ever get into the army.

Yes in the absence of an crediabilty to a debate simply throw childish insults.

The fact is you would rather endanger someones health rather than get off your backside and step outside to smoke. I think under the definition of a twat you qualify more than me fella and personally your attitude enlightens me to why she is your ex

[Gazeyre1966]

Saying something’s worse does not excuse the original argument.

I totally agree...Where in this debate do you see a smoker arguing against that?

I argue that there are things that are far worse that kill people..but because it "suits" them for the moment....then no-one will argue against them...If you were killed tomorrow by a speeding bike...the bleeding hearts brigade would be up in arms to ban motorcycling. FACT!!!! No point in arguing the matter. That's FACT too!!!

Like I've said before....Whining and whinging only occurs when people lose someone close. Do you feel so strongly that you are a member of ASH Fistandantilus??? Do you feel so strongly about it that you participate in anti-smoking demonstrations? I think not.

If an underage girl is drinking and is raped by a boy of similar age..you can be guaranteed that the family will be out demanding why it was allowed to happen, blaming everyone but themselves and their daughter. No-one asks the family what the f*** they were doing to keep an eye on the girl....I am sick of whining, whinging, do-gooders who can't see beyond their own eye-line. That's my say anyway.

[gary]

You and Bencrest will be the healthiest corpses in the cemetery ..by the way you will be buried and not cremated wont you ? ..cos if you get cremated i dont want your smoking in my lungs as i am enjoying my fag...he he