Smoking ban in public places

[Bungle]

.... Shuffles feet......

Guess I'll be smoking outside then lol

[donnaf]

I kinda agree with the ban. Its wrong to smoke round children n people who don't smoke, if it bothers em. Theres a bus shelter thing at my work on the edge of our carpark that the smokers are allowed to congretate in, and I see no harm in that.
Without opening a can of worms, alcohol has hurt me badly, and not thru my own drinking (I dont drink anymore btw) but thru the way others have treated me whilst drunk.
Each to their own I say, as long as you dont go round damaging others in the process.

[robyn]

I agree with it too. especially around kids

Oddly before it was banned I never minded much, smokey bars didnt bother me, even if i was eating, but now if someone is standing beside me at the bus stop smoking it really pisses me off.

I think Iv become more over sensitive to sensory input since being on ritilin though.

[Shadwell]

I agree, that they might have decided to ban inside pubs etc, which means that there will be load of people smoking outside, which then affects everyone including kids.

when they do ban it in the rest of the country, they should reduce pub opening times, as there are a lot of smokers, ok so I am one,

but remembering back to the 80's, a majority of alcoholics, were smokers.

so you will have drunken smokers on the kerbside smoking around kids, and I don't think that is right at all

[Greg]

Mostly people will travel as short a distance as possible to smoke. This means that doorways tend to be clustered with them. Damned inconvenient. I liked Italys approach of stopping smoking within a radius of buildings as well :P

[Shadwell]

well wales has got the public smoking ban in place, but what I do see is people standing in the doorway of pubs, and sparking up a fag, so the new customers get a face full of smoke, and also all the smoke goes into the pub when the door is opened, so don't think that is a good idea!

as for myself then I am surprised I have been out twice and I haven't been that bothered in smoking yet while being in a pub, but there again, I haven't knocked back a 2nd or 3rd alcoholic drink yet, which I find is the time I tend to need a fag in one hand, and a fag in the other at all times!

how is everyone else coping with it if they are smokers?

[Meg]

I completely qgree with the ban as I can't stand it when I go into pubs and people are smoking around me. Banning smoking in public places is also good especailly for the asmathtics as they will be able to go into a place and enjoy being htere rather then worry about if they're going to end up next to someone who is smoking.

Luv Meg
Xxxx

[FREEFALL]

i'm a smoker but i've never delibratly smoked around non smokers (clubbing not with standing) and i'm upset at the fact that i've been penilised for smoking. i like a smoke i like to smoke with friends, yet i'm being treated like a barbarain figure of hate. we smokers should revolt!

[square peg]

well wales has got the public smoking ban in place, but what I do see is people standing in the doorway of pubs, and sparking up a fag, so the new customers get a face full of smoke, and also all the smoke goes into the pub when the door is opened, so don't think that is a good idea!

That happens at my college too! If we want to avoid breathing it in we have to take and hold a massive breath when we walk into and out of the refectory, library or classroom blocks. Being asthmatic I can't hold my breath long enough to avoid it all. I also close my eyes sometimes because it stings.

Everytime you inhale cigarette smoke, alveoli in your lungs are destroyed and they never grow back! No one has the right to poison other people like that, however familiar and socially accepted it's been in the past. Plenty of social ills have been accepted through familiarity and later realised to be illogical. I'm not even sure I would have survived the time my asthma was really bad if my family had smoked around me or when my mum was pregnant with me. My great grandmother died of an asthma attack but they didn't know that the pipe smoke did damage then.

I don't judge smokers, but I am looking forward to being able to go anywhere I want without being punished with a seven-day chest infection afterwards.

[Lithium_joe]

I've been slowly growing into the opinion, that smokers are not rational people (apologies to the smokers here - I'll explain promise!)

Smoking is a behaviour that services an addiction. It is nothing more or less than that. Smoking is not a pleasure or a leisure or a right or liberty or any other such vagaries that are applied to it: it is solely an addiction to a chemical alone.

Viewed in that light, I think how smoking affects people's choices and behaviours can be characterised as making them not rational and furthermore it's continued persistence as a social phenomenon is, in my opinion, unjustifiable when allied to the known risks to health.

And let me clarify, when I say 'not rational' I don't think smokers are to be judged (I'm trying to say this neutrally as I can) and I don't mean that black suddenly becomes white for them, down is the new up; but that we should change our attitude towards them and understand that their behaviour is driven by an addiction.

Now it can be objected and indeed it has been, that plenty of people are addicted to plenty of things without loosing the ability to assess things rationally: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, drugs - anything really that leaves you chemically craving the next hit because your pleasure centres in your brain are attuned to it's presence or absence.

Specifically what I mean is that most smokers do not assess the dangers of smoking as meaningful to them (enough to stop at any rate), nor heed the warnings.
This would seem to be a rational argument: "this will harm you", "oh I'd better stop it then." but the addict feels the need to the addiciton more than their connection to their own health and welfare. This is I think irrational.

Humans have an integral social nature from birth, but addiction generally , changes how we behave it makes us irritable and driven by short-term goals, reduces long term planning and care. And that can affect how we as people act, and therefore affects concurrently the people around us.

I think a rational assessment of a good society would eliminate the unnecessary things that divide and harm it. The need of the addicted to service their addiction often overrides other sensible considerations such as good manners or love/relationships, - which I feel a strictly rational assessment would not - and it is possibly worth emphasising the later of the two ensures the survival of our genes and ultimately the society in which we breed.

I see smoking as a parasite on those things.

Two quick examples (a small survey I realise):

Last week, despite the large and numerous stickers all over the train I had to stand behind someone on a train as we came to the platform, who *simply couldn't wait* to light up until the train stopped and she could get out onto the platform.

I will always remember the guy I knew at university who dumped a girl he was seeing because she asked him to stop smoking not because she was irritating or he didn't like her but *because* she'd asked him to stop.

Maybe it was an imposition too far, and maybe it would have been disastrous anyway (he was a git, and maybe she was irritating, I've no idea), but I always look back on that and think he loved his cigarettes more than he loved her and how back-to-front that seemed to me then as now.

Now perhaps the first person was just rude, and the guy at university was as I said, a git, and people are not perfect rational beings or even nice and considerate to one and other but I frequently find myself coming back to the thought that the behaviour amongst smokers is being driven by something else, and that they are in a strange way blameless, and miss understood as rude and rational, or cruel and rational, but not as addicts and irrational.

The sooner smoking is banished, the happier I'll be. This will be a good first step.

Meanwhile I'm sit here and drink my tea with one sugar and think highly hypocritical thoughts about exactly who is addicted to what.