and you thought the anti smoking lobby were having a laugh

[Mabs]

well you aint seen nothing yet

BBC NEWS | Health | Warning over 'third hand smoke'

 

[RandomBastard]

Smoking (not smokers) is an evil habit.
I would be ok with uk gov banning it in totality.
I've never understood why people do it (I used to get pressured into smoking when in pubs but it did absolutely nothing for me) and am definitely glad it's banned in pubs'n'clubs. But that article is a bit ridiculous, I'm sure there are plenty more toxins around than those left by cigarette smoke residue. Unless these people are setting fire to the furniture and breathing in the fumes how danger can there be?

 

[DaGaffer]

Fuck's sake.

 

[Trem]

I would be ok with uk gov banning it in totality.

Thats my argument, if its so evil and so very bad why don't the government just ban it......they make too much money from it thats why. I would be 100% behind a complete ban but it will never happen.

(I smoke btw).

 

[ECA]

The party that bans smoking would be out of office for 20 years.
Kinda like the democrats and civil rights legislation in the US.

 

[chipper]

Thats my argument, if its so evil and so very bad why don't the government just ban it......they make too much money from it thats why. I would be 100% behind a complete ban but it will never happen.

(I smoke btw).

hit the nail on the head trem its worth far to much in tax

 

[old.Tohtori]

Ban it all you want, lose the income since people who want to smoke, will smoke.

Look at weed.

If you want to smoke weed, you can, but the government gets sh*t all from it.

Which do you prefer?

What's next though? Fourth hand smoke? You smoking 'causes your sperm to become smoke-infected and creates new supermutant smoking(literally) babies? *gets shotgun* Bloody mutants...

 

[Bodhi]

Oh for FUCKS SAKE. Let's get a few facts straight here. Smoking does not cause cancer, it simply increases the risk of getting it. Now every morning I increase the risk of having a car accident by going to work, what am I supposed to do in that case? Stay home and have a wank.

To be honest, every bullshit article I read like this convinces me that smoking is the way forwards.

*me pops out for a roll up*

 

[ECA]

What I like about the morons who smoke is that they are generally cocktards and are just killing themselves faster.

It's win win for me boys, go light up.

 

[old.Tohtori]

What I like about the morons who smoke is that they are generally cocktards and are just killing themselves faster.

It's win win for me boys, go light up.

What i like about facts is that one is more likely to get killed by a ton of other things other then smoking

 

[ECA]

That's another thing, smokers are delusional.

 

[old.Tohtori]

That's another thing, smokers are delusional.

Well, rather delusional, then an annoying insulting butt-in.

Not to mention, delusional might go in the territory of you taking last comment personally

 

[Overdriven]

*BLINK* Just... O_O (*Just noticed he'll have been using this forum for 5 years in about 2 weeks*)

 

[Wolfeeh]

Hello Darlings. Tis I.

x Wolfy x

 

[Bugz]

Oh for FUCKS SAKE. Let's get a few facts straight here. Smoking does not cause cancer, it simply increases the risk of getting it. Now every morning I increase the risk of having a car accident by going to work, what am I supposed to do in that case? Stay home and have a wank.

To be honest, every bullshit article I read like this convinces me that smoking is the way forwards.

*me pops out for a roll up*

Smoking is a cause of cancer.

You can thus say it causes cancer; just as you can say excessive calories cause people to be fat.

Risk is simply attributed to probability as a way to denote people who are most at risk etc.

 

[mr.Blacky]

flying increases the chance of cancer, living next to a coal plant and now apparently working the night shift increases the chance of getting cancer aswell...

 

[Bugz]

flying increases the chance of cancer, living next to a coal plant and now apparently working the night shift increases the chance of getting cancer aswell...

Which is why we have probability/risk - to denote which is more likely to transform from cause to effect.

 

[Bodhi]

Smoking is a cause of cancer.

You can thus say it causes cancer; just as you can say excessive calories cause people to be fat.

Risk is simply attributed to probability as a way to denote people who are most at risk etc.

I think you'll find you're talking a load of old hairy horse cock.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Which is why we have probability/risk - to denote which is more likely to transform from cause to effect.

Your posts 'cause anger, please stop posting

Hey, it's only a fact

 

[Bugz]

You smokers can be so ignorant sometimes lmao.

Like I care anyway - carry on smoking your cancers as long as you don't do it near me or people I know ^^.

 

[Sharma]

You smokers can be so ignorant sometimes lmao.

Pot.

Kettle.

Black.

That is all.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Don't take the following as an attack, it's how i see things, to avoid an argument about it:

You smokers can be so ignorant sometimes lmao.

Like I care anyway - carry on smoking your cancers as long as you don't do it near me or people I know ^^.

As long as the non-smokers don't walk half a mile to say "that's bad!", will do.

I ALWAYS smoke outside, away from busstops in the rain even, do my best to avoid people getting in the smoke. I've got common courtesy, the anti-smokers not so much.

If you would take up statistics on who are more insulting, disrespectful, and yes, arrogant and ignorant too, i think you'd find the anti-smokers would win that. Smokers know full well the risks, what could happen etc. But we're not sticking cigarettes in peoples mouths. We're not taking peoples carkeys away. We're not even telling weedsmokers that "do something with your life" or anything like that.

Not calling all, but statistically, i'd say more anti-smokers are insulting and arrogant.

Same with any health nuts. Vegetarian meals are a MUST, yet meat is not. Excersize is a-ok, not doing so is judgable. Not drinking gives you a be-a-cock-right, drinking makes you a fight searching a-hole.

All i'm saying is; practise what you preach or shuuuuuuut the fock up.

 

[DaGaffer]

I remember some bitch giving me a hard time about smoking when I was in Canada snowboarding. I was outdoors, up a mountain, on my own. She must have ski'd a good 500M over to me to complain (seriously, I must have been a smoking dot on the horizon when she saw me). I of course gave her some of my finest anglo-saxon. I don't smoke anymore but I detest anti-smoking zealots.

 

[ford prefect]

This whole Anti-Smoking thing has gone way too far already. It is a complete and crushing disregard for ordinary personal liberty to outlaw public smoking even if it is harmful to others, as the others could avoid it.

Where does it end? We already have a government that has opted out of the EU legislation that guarantees personal liberty thanks to President Blair, and now the government has so much power that they can pretty much do as they please.

 

[Chilly]

hold on tho prefect - why should I have to go out of my way to avoid a harmful thing that has no justification except its nice to smoke ?

You talk about personal liberty to smoke, I talk about personal liberty to not be exposed to easily avoidable risks. Who has the better case? I dont know, thats down to the statisticians tbh I dont know enough. the point is that you can and should think about both ends of the liberty argument.

In 2002, 78% of deaths* in this country were attributable to respiratory, circulatory, stroke or cancer. Accidental and violent deaths accounted for around 3%. Smoking DOES cause an increased risk to develop various heart diseases, lung diseases and various types of mouth, throat and lung cancer over and above the environmental baseline average. A group of smokers will have more of these diseases than non smokers. I do not have the figures for the probabilities of this risk increase so cannot really comment on the stupidity of smoking in terms of health.

What I do know is that you cannot really compare driving to work in the morning to having a fag. Both increase risk of death by one way or another, but one is nessesary and one is not. If you are trying to reduce your risk of death then you cut out the things that un-nessesarily increase your risk, or have a poor risk-reward balance (ie flying to work in a jetpack vs driving to work in a volvo).

The whole argument comes down to quality of data and personal freedoms for both smokers and non smokers. All you on both sides who are putting your fingers in your ears, singing LA LA LA and ignoring the other sides point of view are WRONG and should shut the fuck up before spouting anti- or pro- propaganda you do not understand.

That is all.


/edit - forgot my reference data: * http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache...+UK&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=uk&client=firefox-a thats a HTML rendering of a PDF from the office of national statistics, obtained by googline for "causes of death in the UK".

 

[Jupitus]

But outlawing public smoking in its totality is wrong. Give pub landlords or restauranteurs the option to declare their premises smoke free, yes. That way some places can opt in to the scheme giving the non-smokers the choice to go to a pub or restaurant (or similar) which is smoke free if they choose to.

 

[DaGaffer]

What I do know is that you cannot really compare driving to work in the morning to having a fag. Both increase risk of death by one way or another, but one is nessesary and one is not. If you are trying to reduce your risk of death then you cut out the things that un-nessesarily increase your risk, or have a poor risk-reward balance (ie flying to work in a jetpack vs driving to work in a volvo).

Which would be fine if the debate ended there, but you know it won't. Arguing about the "necessity" of risk is an extremely slippery slope, because the zealots can and will move on to all the other dangerous and unnecessary things that make life pleasurable. Everything you've said about smoking can be applied to booze. Then its not much of a stretch to mop up all the minor flies in their puritan utopia; motoring for pleasure, leisure travel, "dangerous" sports, hey, throw in casual sex while you're at it.

The whole thing, in my mind, doesn't rest on the necessity of risk at all, it rests on the freedom to take risks in the first place. The smoking lobby always struggled against this logic until the godsend of secondary smoking fell into their laps. Once they saw how successful this could be, the whole puritan lobby changed tack; these debates are no longer couched in terms of individual freedom, but in terms of how your behaviour affects others (particularly "the children", natch), no matter how spurious the logic.

Knowingly endangering someone else is obviously a bad thing, but there's a line between safety and oppression that I think we crossed and ground into the dirt over the last 10 years. In another 10 that line will be so far behind us we'll have forgotten it ever existed (and this is where I would say "think of the children" - the poor little bastards will think this is natural).

 

[Bodhi]

Cancer is perfectly natural however - its simply the body trying to make new cells and getting it a bit wrong. If you live a healthy life, don't smoke or drink, do loads of excercise you know what will get you in the end? Cancer. It's also genetic - ie those who are more predisposed to cancer who don't smoke are more likely to get the big C than those who aren't predisposed and do smoke. Imo far more research needs to be done into this genetic side of things, rather than the irrelevant thrid hand smoke bollocks they're talking about now.

Or even more left field, they could pump all this money they're spending researching the effects of double passive smoking on goldfish they could maybe just give the money to Cancer Research and help us find a cure?

Oh and to the people moaning about passive smoking harming them, it doesn't. This still hasn't been proved (Roy Castle doesn't count), and I think you'll find most cases of non smokers getting the C stem from the genetics point I mentioned above.

No links to prove this, just a few conversations with a friendly GP. Who also happens to be my sister and wants me to quit, but also wants to put across a balanced viewpoint.

 

[ford prefect]

In 2002, 78% of deaths* in this country were attributable to respiratory, circulatory, stroke or cancer. Accidental and violent deaths accounted for around 3%. Smoking DOES cause an increased risk to develop various heart diseases, lung diseases and various types of mouth, throat and lung cancer over and above the environmental baseline average. A group of smokers will have more of these diseases than non smokers. I do not have the figures for the probabilities of this risk increase so cannot really comment on the stupidity of smoking in terms of health.

I freely admit that smokers do have more health issues. However none of those conditions (with the possible exception of lung cancer) are exclusive to smokers. Binge drinking for example is far more harmful in the long term than smoking, not to mention diet, lack of excercise and genetic considerations. Smokers are the backbone of the NHS, and pay far more in tax (1.7billion cost 7billion tax in the year you mention), and I can only imagine the uproar if that tax had to come from elsewhere, such as national insurance.

I don't see personal liberty as an arguement, If someone asks me not to smoke in their presence, I won't, but I don't see that the government has the right to tell me where or when I can smoke.

 

[Chilly]

Cancer is perfectly natural however - its simply the body trying to make new cells and getting it a bit wrong. If you live a healthy life, don't smoke or drink, do loads of excercise you know what will get you in the end? Cancer. It's also genetic - ie those who are more predisposed to cancer who don't smoke are more likely to get the big C than those who aren't predisposed and do smoke. Imo far more research needs to be done into this genetic side of things, rather than the irrelevant thrid hand smoke bollocks they're talking about now.

Or even more left field, they could pump all this money they're spending researching the effects of double passive smoking on goldfish they could maybe just give the money to Cancer Research and help us find a cure?

Oh and to the people moaning about passive smoking harming them, it doesn't. This still hasn't been proved (Roy Castle doesn't count), and I think you'll find most cases of non smokers getting the C stem from the genetics point I mentioned above.

No links to prove this, just a few conversations with a friendly GP. Who also happens to be my sister and wants me to quit, but also wants to put across a balanced viewpoint.

You shouldnt say things like "and I think you'll find most cases of non smokers getting the C stem from the genetics point I mentioned above." because its meaningless unless its backed up. Its precisely the kind of thing someone else will quote and accept as truth. This kind of sloppy writing putting opinion and guesses over as fact is exactly what gets us into a lot of these messes in the first place.

As for the actual argument at hand here, I didnt express an opinion either way. I do agree with gaffer about the slipperly slope of unnessesary risks and would find living pretty dull without all the fun ways to kill oneself (after all, we all have to die at some point anyway).

However, unless someone can present a solid study into the affects of passive smoking the pub thing is mostly political. I dont know if such a study exists or not, although im sure lots of people have done exactly what you did, bod, and say "oh it must be true, its obvious" and then had that taken as fact by some moron claiming to be a journalist.

imagine a doctor saying "yeah I could imagine second hand smoke causes a higher risk over baseline, but it needs further study" gets quoted as "[..]second hand smoke causes a higher risk over baseline[..]" by some journo with an agenda.

My main quabble is with the press tbh. If all these things were done scientifically then fair enough. If, say, second hand smoke was 50% as dangerous as first hand (this is probably not true, although I have no idea) then I think it would be an EXTRMELY good idea to have done what lab did with the pub laws. However, if its something like 1% then who REALLY cares?

NEED HARD DATA!!!