Amie KeeleyTHE new public smoking ban has met fierce resistance, as one politician compared the victimisation of smokers as being akin to the Holocaust.
Mayor Francisco Leon de la Riva insisted that encouraging people to report on those breaking the ban was how ‘terrible things in the history of mankind have always begun”.
The leader of Valladolid council continued: “It invites people to report one another… First they started with the Jews, now here we are reporting smokers.”
It came as over 1000 complaints were made about those breaking the ban in the first two days since it was introduced on January 2.
In total the country has employed thousands of inspectors, with 900 alone in Andalucia.
In particular, there has also been widespread hostility to the ban in parks and outside hospitals.
One patient in the Basque Country was arrested when he threatened a nurse who reminded him of the new law.
A man from Extremadura meanwhile assaulted four men when he was told to put his cigarette out by the bar owner, who was then attacked receiving 16 stitches in his head.
Two other clients ended up with arm injuries and another with a black eye following the violent outburst.
Finally, a Marbella restaurant has defied the smoking ban and is telling clients they can smoke inside their establishment.
Asador Guadalina has put a sign up saying ‘As a private business, we will uphold what we believe is our right, and not apply this law within our establishment’, which has been applauded by some.
The ban came into force on January 2 when Spain finally joined the rest of western Europe in banning smoking in bars and restaurants.
But the new law is particularly strict and extends to parks and outside health centres.
It’s in sharp contrast to the half-hearted attempt at stamping out smoking in public places back in 2006 which offered so many loopholes nothing changed.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this smoking ban is NOT what the Spanish want. Trustworthy polls and surveys show that over 90% or the Spanish hospitality trade do not want this smoke ban law forced upon them. It is a joint campaign by the EUSSR and the WHO, using coercion and monetary blackmail at this time of financial instability. It is the first of what you can expect to be many intrusions into national sovereignty to consolidate centralised power at EU level.
The majority of Spanish Politicians do NOT want this but have no option but to bow down and comply with their diktats or lose out financially. This can be salvaged by the PEOPLE with bar and restaurant owners leading, but only if they act in unison.
I am sure that politicians and the Police will be secretly hoping that there will be widespread non-compliance. If this happens, this law will be unworkable – democracy in action. They will have done what they were told and cannot be blamed, but failure will be welcomed.
If you let one or two bar owners shoulder the burden and wait to see what happens then make no mistake, they will be made an example of – the authorities will be forced to act and [b]YOUR BUSINESS WILL SUFFER[/b] with a very high risk of it folding altogether. The longer you Delay the fightback, the stronger THEY become and the weaker YOU become as a collective force for good!
Remember, do not believe a word from anti-tobacco. Using all sorts of deceptions, they will try to convince the Spanish that the smoke ban will be a force for good – IT WILL NOT as has been proved in the UK.
Collective action will work – The Greeks have fought their ban by collective action and won – The Spanish can too.
Don’t tip off the police about people breaking the law. Sums up Spain to a T (unless of course you’re feeling spiteful and want to do a denuncia on your neighbour’s illegal build to get him back for the denuncia he did on yours to get you back for your dog conveniently “eating” that rooster of his which kept waking you up at 4am).
Would tipping the police off re a murderer also be the way ‘terrible things in the history of mankind have always begun”, if not, where do you draw the line?
The Nazi style ban Must go, choice is the only way forward, choice for all,smoker and non smoker alike,the business owners should be the only ones to decide what happens in their premises.
With so many laws today we are all capable of committing a ‘crime’ with out knowing it. Anybody thinking of reporting somebody for a trivial offence should think again in case they are reported for something trivial.
They have created a fear that is based on nothing’’
World-renowned pulmonologist, president of the prestigious Research Institute Necker for the last decade, Professor Philippe Even, now retired, tells us that he’s convinced of the absence of harm from passive smoking. A shocking interview.
What do the studies on passive smoking tell us?
PHILIPPE EVEN. There are about a hundred studies on the issue. First surprise: 40% of them claim a total absence of harmful effects of passive smoking on health. The remaining 60% estimate that the cancer risk is multiplied by 0.02 for the most optimistic and by 0.15 for the more pessimistic … compared to a risk multiplied by 10 or 20 for active smoking! It is therefore negligible. Clearly, the harm is either nonexistent, or it is extremely low.
It is an indisputable scientific fact. Anti-tobacco associations report 3 000-6 000 deaths per year in France …
I am curious to know their sources. No study has ever produced such a result.
Many experts argue that passive smoking is also responsible for cardiovascular disease and other asthma attacks. Not you?
They don’t base it on any solid scientific evidence. Take the case of cardiovascular diseases: the four main causes are obesity, high cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes. To determine whether passive smoking is an aggravating factor, there should be a study on people who have none of these four symptoms. But this was never done. Regarding chronic bronchitis, although the role of active smoking is undeniable, that of passive smoking is yet to be proven. For asthma, it is indeed a contributing factor … but not greater than pollen!
The purpose of the ban on smoking in public places, however, was to protect non-smokers. It was thus based on nothing?
Absolutely nothing! The psychosis began with the publication of a report by the IARC, International Agency for Research on Cancer, which depends on the WHO (Editor’s note: World Health Organization). The report released in 2002 says it is now proven that passive smoking carries serious health risks, but without showing the evidence. Where are the data? What was the methodology? It’s everything but a scientific approach. It was creating fear that is not based on anything.
Why would anti-tobacco organizations wave a threat that does not exist?
The anti-smoking campaigns and higher cigarette prices having failed, they had to find a new way to lower the number of smokers. By waving the threat of passive smoking, they found a tool that really works: social pressure. In good faith, non-smokers felt in danger and started to stand up against smokers. As a result, passive smoking has become a public health problem, paving the way for the Evin Law and the decree banning smoking in public places. The cause may be good, but I do not think it is good to legislate on a lie. And the worst part is that it does not work: since the entry into force of the decree, cigarette sales are rising again.
Why not speak up earlier?
As a civil servant, dean of the largest medical faculty in France, I was held to confidentiality. If I had deviated from official positions, I would have had to pay the consequences. Today, I am a free man.
Le Parisien
Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)…It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded.” -Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec’y, OSHA
Giuriziano there is a big difference between murder and something as unimportant as smoking or not wearing a safety-belt.
90% of the hospitality trade don’t want the ban, but what about their customers vellocatus? Any reliable polls of their opinions?
How exactly do politicians lose out if they don’t comply with diktats? And how exactly would they lose out financially?
I think this law is as a result of the 2006 laws being unworkable so I’m not sure I buy what you think the police are hoping for.
Don’t believe a word from anti-tobacco? And that’s in spite of the evidence that tobacco smoke causes disease being overwhelming?
Fortunately this isn’t Greece.
Nazi style ban Tug? More like Nazi smokers who give two fingers to anyone who is affected by their noxious carcinogenic fumes. Two fingers at anyone who complains because it interferes with their “freedoms and rights”. What about the rights of the rest to breathe smoke-free air when having a pint, a meal or a dance in a club? And at the end of the day smoking has not been banned, you can still step outside for another coffin-nail if you want…
Scientific Evidence Shows Secondhand Smoke Is No Danger
Written By: Jerome Arnett, Jr., M.D.
Published In: Environment & Climate News
Publication Date: July 1, 2008
Publisher:
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/23399/Scientific_Evidence_Shows_Secondhand_Smoke_Is_No_Danger.html
myth-of-second-hand-smoke
http://yourdoctorsorders.com/2009/01/the-myth-of-second-hand-smoke
BS Alert: The ‘third-hand smoke’ hoax
http://www.examiner.com/public-policy-in-louisville/bs-alert-the-third-hand-smoke-hoax?render=print
The thirdhand smoke scam
http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2010/02/thirdhand-smoke-scam.html
Heart attacks Frauds and Myths..
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7451/
From my experience of the law in France, anti bans actions have to move fast for any chance of success.
5 or 6 bars publicly opposed the law in France but that was not enough and faded away, now some “non public resistance” here and there but really not that much.
And actions must be on the ground not on the net ! You can get the impression the voicing on the net is important but in fact not that much.
Key aspect is the business owners, if they are apathic or more or less “for the law” nothing will happen, but one thing they should be sure of : their business will be hit and badly, most small bars/bistrots are dying in France
Giuriziano?? The customers can vote with their feet and choose to go to a nonsmoking bar should they wish to.
Tell me exactly how was the 2006 law unworkable- seemed to work ok with a CHOICE of smoking and nonsmoking venues from what I noticed?? Or like most antismokers could you not stand the thought of people enjoying themselves in a smoking environment??
Anyway they implemented it because of extra grants from the World Bank and the EU in the form of loans.
Guirizano
Would tipping the police off re a murderer also be the way ‘terrible things in the history of mankind have always begun”, if not, where do you draw the line?
Don’t be glib & obtuse. We are not talking about murder here but a LEGAL, yes LEGAL activity to which smokers pay a high price for, both in taxes & liberty. The politican was exactly right, propaganda & lies led to relations/friends informing on relations/friends. That’s without the enemies or the people that didn’t like jews.
Perhaps a timely reminder of what went before of what the politican was alluding to that led up to the holocaust.
No Juden in bars/cafes/restuarants
No Juden in public spaces
No Juden in parks
No Juden on the beaches
No Juden within 50ft of non-jews
Above is what’s happening to smokers NOW
No Juden in employment
No Juden in Housing
No Juden for medical treatment
No Juden in Unversities
The above is happening NOW to smokers in America & Canada, a Canadian woman of 88yrs old has been evicted from her sheltered accommodation because she smoked, this was cheered by anti-smokers like yourself.
Smokers & EX-smokers, even though they don’t smoke a work, have been refused employment at 2 Florida hospitals, and other hospitals all over the US.
In Boston & California smokers have been given a time limit to quit smoking or get evicted.
Therefore when smokers have been driven from empoyment, their homes & refused medical treatment, and they will because once one country starts the anti-smoking lobby move in on the next country, where will smokers go, what will they do? Oh I expect you’ll say they deserve all they get, that’s fine, but what about when they start on the next section of society, a part that includes something you do that others take exception to, that propagandise with lies & false science that you’re a bad person, what will you do.
Maybe to save time the anti-brigade should just ask the Germans to take their old cattle trucks out of mothballs & re-open the camp routes, after all there’s not going to be any places left smokers is there. A quick shower should sort them out.
Smoking/non-smoking venues was and is the answer, but of course that doesn’t suit zealots. When I read what people like you advocate I really despair of humanity, you put me in mind of those during the nazi era that would have informed on anyone as long as your creature comforts was not disturbed.
If there were a dozen non-smoking bars and 1 smoking bar you’d want to go in the smoking one just so you could say it’s my human right to go in and everyone should refrain from smoking because I don’t like seeing people with a cigarette in their hand and I don’t like the smell, that’s without the washing.
The UK was never a fascist state, it’s fast becoming one, Spain was a fascist one and denounced it, now your socialist government are taking you right back to fascism.
i have been surprised at how the new smoking law has been followed in Andalucia. As a bar owner i was worried that i would follow the law myself and be the victim as everyone else would break it at very little risk. However the law has been enforced and several bars in my town have been fined including one with a lot of connections. Of course there is still a few grey areas with the new law which many bars are having problems with, with the main one being outside covered terreces, I.E what is a wall or roof?
@Mark
This law will work, because is it very easy to understand : you cross the door of a bar: you don’t smoke, so the line is very clear, so clear that it would seem honest !!
that’s why quick reaction is very important here, like in Holland
@Arthur
It is not quite that simple (although i wish it was), as many bars and restaurants have outside terreces. Now these Terraces are normally covered with a “TOLDO” and this is where the law gets grey because:
1. it says you are allowed 2 walls and roof to allow smoking but it doesnt clarify what is a wall or a roof. Does a sheet of canvas or plastic count as a wall, how about a wall of iron bars or margarita blocks?
2. When the toldo is open, how far open does it have to be to be called open? Half way up, all the way or just a fraction up?
3. What a bout a terrace with a large frontage? now say this is in 4 sections are they allowed to shut one which means 75% of that side is still open? or does that classify as closed?
i have a private terrace that i have seperated from the inside with doors that shut automaticly. My terrace which has a roof is big and has the whole of the front open and one side which i feel is right. The toldo is raised above 50% but as soon as i have to shut it due to wind or rain i will stop customers smoking.
To give you an example of how grey this area is i have police who drink in my bar and when i asked them to explain the law they didnt know.
Arthur75 Do it quick, huh? Just wait until they come for something you enjoy. Is there anyone in your family that is overweight or has a disability? The Nazis murdered disabled children. A decree of 18 August 1939 instructed all newborns and children under the age of 3 with disabilities to be reported. Babies and toddlers were killed by lethal injection or just excessive doses of ordinary medication.
Please think again about how “quick” you want new laws passed. Do some research of your own, follow the money to see who is behind all of this 2nd hand smoke propaganda. It’s out there if you care to spend some time.
Rocky,
I think Arthur is saying move quick in relation to bar owners protesting the ban, and to stick together like they have in Holland.
But I suspect on reading Mark’s, post he will adhere to the ban and not stand together with other owners who are disgusted at the blanket ban.
It should be about choice pure & simple, up to Mark & other owners to choose if they want to be smoking/non-smoking. Unfortunately that isn’t on the anti-smoking lobby’s agenda.
I do agree with your post, what’s happening, smokers first, can be put down to the eugenists, social engineering, their aim for a perfect, healthy race of people. No matter how much people want to say that once you’ve mentioned the nazi the argument is lost, they are doing now what they did then, what they’re doing now is a bloodless, but it’s not victimless.
And as you say once the smoker ‘problem’ is well and truly settled, in whatever way, they’ll go after others because they found the support for ostracising/demonising smokers so very easy with their propaganda & lies. Those that don’t like the smell use the SHS claim like a crutch, oh them bad smokers are going to kill me in 30 seconds with the deadly SHS, plus there’s many gullible memebrs of the public that take what politicans & the healthists say as gospel. Like in the nazi era, these people are a God send, without them those that want to control every aspect of our lives wouldn’t see the light of day. Useful idiots I believe Stalin called them.
I know Guitizano & his like will mark me down as a paranoid nut, that’s his/her perogative, but in time I and others like yourself Rocky, WILL be proved right, the truth will out.
Whether the antis will allow smokers to live to see the end result is another matter:) Don’t forget that third hand-smoke is doing the rounds, the THS that’s toxic and will contaminate and kill non-smokers just by walking past them, how or where can smokers live if they can’t be in contact with non-smokers? No one can/will answer this question.
You should be aware of what you’re supporting Mark, because before long you’ll not be allowed to entertain smokers or even ex-smokers because of THS. Don’t believe me, do some research. In the US a company will NOT allow anyone that smokes, has smoked or been in contact with smokers over their threshold. Fact. And now Spain has given in to the anti-lobby & health mafia the policies concerning smokers & ex-smokers too, are coming thick & fast. Mind you I don’ have much sympathy for many ex-smokers, not all, but many, because they think now they’re smoke-free they’re a superior breed to those that won’t quit. Their collaboration with the antis is coming back to bite them on the backside, they’re turning on them now, as well as those that use electronic cigarettes, smokeless.
Good luck Mark, going by the number of pubs in Ireland, Scotland & England that have closed you’re going to need it.
I’d like to say, if you agree with the ban all well and good, but please stick with your fellow bar owners for them to have choice whether to be smoking/non-smoking. You can stay non-snoking.
Erm, Lily and Carlos. I asked where people drew the line. I didn’t put murder and smoking where one shouldn’t on an equal footing…
“The customers can vote with their feet and choose to go to a nonsmoking bar should they wish to.”
Carlos, yes, in theory that was the case before this latest law but in practice there were no non smoking bars. Now everyone can enjoy a drink and if anyone wants to smoke they can still light up outside. Is that so unreasonable?
@LILY
The law is the Law and when standing up against it means getting a huge fine i will play it safe. A large fine and Police shutting me down would do more harm than the loss of trade through the ban. I am a non-smoker and think smoking is a horrible habit which both pollutes the air as well as adds litter to the streets, however i am aware of peoples rights and IMO the smoking ban is too hard. The goverment make huge money out of tabaco so to enforce this during these hard times is very silly. They are now hurting no only themselves but bars and restaurants who will lose trade which will lead to less tax paid and loss of jobs.
I wouldnt say i agree with the ban but in my own case my bar appears better for it. The inside area is now completly seperated from outside and appears cleaning, smells of coffee rather than tabaco and is more popular. I have been surprised by my customers reaction to the ban with it not really being problem and at the moment not affecting my trade which has been up on last year so far this year.
@guirizano
Reasonable or not, truth is that a big part of bars will die, that is what will happen
More hysteria! The law bans smoking in bars and other public spaces. It has no comparison to the Nazis! Grow up and read a history book that doesn’t have colouring in pages. I stopped smoking twenty a day eight days ago because its bad for me, bad for those who happen to be around me and increasingly expensive. I wasn’t hard, so far, give it a try too. I’m very pleased about the ban in bars for selfish reasons, it’s now easier for me to give up and still have a beer. But stop your whinging, you sound like spoilt brats who have been told no for the first time.
@Lily
I just want to add, why would i stand with the other bar owners? it is difficult enough to run a business here with all the “enchufe” a lot of bar owners get. I refuse to play that game chosing to keep myself to myself and always find myself suffering at the hands of those who break the law but our connected. The biggest problem in Andalucia is the faliure to enforce the law and i really thought the smoking ban wouldnt work as most things down here dont but it seems, for the moment to have been enforced.
@OLIVE PRESS
i dont think a story comparing the Holocaust to a smoking ban is in good taste and although i know it was made by some fool Mayor it detracts from a very serious subject.
“Reasonable or not, truth is that a big part of bars will die, that is what will happen”
Where do you get your crystal ball from Arthur75, and can I have one which predicts winning Euromillions lottery numbers?
Oh the juden comments are exactly to the point and here is why…………..
Hitler was a Leftist
Hitler’s Anti-Tobacco Campaign
In Nazi Germany, for instance, abstinence from tobacco was a “national socialist duty” (Hitler gave a gold watch to associates who quit the habit, though this didn’t stop them lighting up in the Berlin bunker once they heard the Fuhrer had committed suicide). Armed with such senior sanction — loyally, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler banned SS men from smoking, though not shooting, on duty, and Propaganda Minister Joseph Gobbels was obliged to hide his ciggie whenever he was filmed — anti-tobacco activists succeeded in banning smoking from government offices, civic transport, university campuses, rest homes, post offices, many restaurants and bars, hospital grounds and workplaces. Tobacco taxes were raised, unsupervised cigarette vending machines were banned, and there were calls for a ban on smoking while driving.
Thanks to the Ministry of Science and Education, and the Reich Health Office, posters were produced depicting smoking as the typically despicable habit of Jews, jazz musicians, Gypsies, Indians, homosexuals, blacks, communists, capitalists, cripples, intellectuals and harlots. Zealous lobbyists descended into the schools, terrifying children with tales of impotence and racial impurity.
One particularly vile individual, Karl Astel — upstanding president of Jena University, poisonous anti-Semite, euthanasia fanatic, SS officer, war criminal and tobacco-free Germany enthusiast — liked to walk up to smokers and tear cigarettes from their unsuspecting mouths. (He committed suicide when the war ended, more through disappointment than fear of hanging.) It comes as little surprise to discover that the phrase “passive smoking” (Passivrauchen) was coined not by contemporary American admen, but by Fritz Lickint, the author of the magisterial 1100-page Tabak und Organismus (“Tobacco and the Organism”), which was produced in collaboration with the German AntiTobacco League.
If some of these measures appear familiar today, then consider the rules laid down in 1941 regarding tobacco advertising. “Images that create the impression that smoking is a sign of masculinity are barred, as are images depicting men engaged in activities attractive to youthful males (athletes or pilots, for example),” and “may not be directed at sportsmen or automobile drivers,” while “advocates of tobacco abstinence or temperance must not be mocked.” Advertisements were banned from films, billboards, posters and “the text sections of journals and newspapers.” Nevertheless, even the Nazis couldn’t equal the recent ban on smoking on death row, meaning prisoners about to undergo massive electric shocks are forbidden from indulging in “one last drag” — talk about cruel and unusual punishment.
This great crusade, propagated through a remarkable network of lectures, re-education programs and congresses, was backed up by the medical and health establishment for the sake of “science.” Or at least a certain type of junk science, one in which objective research and the scientific method was subordinated to, and bastardized for the sake of, a greater political program. Thus, it was commonly touted by scientists and racial hygienists that smoking caused “spontaneous abortions”: a clearly demonstrable fallacy, but one requiring official promotion in order to ensure a high birth rate for Aryan women. (Source: Anti-tobacco Gestapo: past and present)
http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/id1.html
The only “Nazis” in this are the pathetic smokers who spread the myth of businesses dying because they will not go in them if they cannot smoke.
If they really mean what they say then good, smoke yourselves to death at home and leave the sizeable majority of non-smokers to enjoy the clean air bars and restaurants.
The average arguments from smokers (apart from the new Nazi theme) are that it infringes their human rights….. No it doesn’t…you can smoke to your heart’s content just not in enclosed public spaces…and that secondary smoke doesn’t kill…well ask Roy Castle’s family and thousands of stroke victims around the world…it does.
If smokers really want to protest, then stop smoking so that the Government doesn’t get your taxes and then hey, you can join the rest of the human race in smoke-free bars and restaurants.
spain has far far bigger problems than this new law. they should concentrate on employment=becoming competitive! their lack of competition on all fronts is destroying them now and will ruin them in the future, not the new anti-smoking law!
Ah Roy Castle. He must have developed lung cancer from passive smoking. After all, when he wasn’t playing trumpet in smoky jazz clubs he existed inside a little oxygenated bubble, which protected him from all worldly pollutants.
Having said that, my argument against smoking bans is based on economics i.e. if to go non-smoking was actually as big a money-spinner as supporters and politicians say it will be, wouldn’t the bar owners (who are, after all, all businessmen/women who largely know their clientelle and their industry) have moved their businesses in that direction without the need for Government intervention? Anyone who claims that it will have no effect on business is just pompous and arrogant.
@DaveK
Get the bare numbers from the industry in the UK or France, and you will see that it is indeed a fact that businesses have been very seriously hit by the bans. Not to mention the law creating in a single day a complete distortion between the bars having a terrasse and the ones that do not.
The official propaganda reagrding these laws is based on two disgusting lies :
1) the passive smoking one, the study OFFICIAL results didn’t show anything
2) The fact that in previous countries the businesses haven’t been affected, another complete lie
Add to this the other fact that smoking is INCREASING since the bans in several countries (Ireland, France), and especially amonst youg people, and you get the clear picture of this totally disgusting Disney “cool” type fascism, it is exactly that, and the terrible regression it represents regarding self responsibility as well as scientific honesty.
I did put a message on one subject a few months ago regarding a bar that a Spanish neighbour said was good. I had to leave as my sons Asthma was playing up with the smoke in the bar and every time you leave a bar you stink and your house stinks as well when you return with all that smoke on your clothes.
I will probably go to bars a bit more now if it is enforced. I thought the Spanish would put up a fight but I will find out soon as I am over there soon.
I think what is killing the bars in the UK is the price of everything. Over £3.00 a pint. Spain is catching up with prices and where I have an apartment the local bars charge €5.00 for a Spanish brandy and mixer. With all that ice in it there is not that much brandy and it only costs about 6 or 7 euros for a litre anyway. Take the Michael with charges and people don’t bother. One other thing is that Taxi’s are not always easy to get hold of out in the small villages so you end up having one or two drinks and then calling it a night. Many do drink and drive but that is not for me. Most proper inland Spanish bars are not very comfortable either, their chairs etc. On the coast it is better.
I see the message, you have a choice, but actually I don’t as I have not been in a bar where there is a no smoking zone. My choice in the past has been not to bother in the first place. I also notice it a lot more now after the smoking ban in the UK.
DaveK
If smokers really want to protest, then stop smoking so that the Government doesn’t get your taxes and then hey, you can join the rest of the human race in smoke-free bars and restaurants
As a smoker I totally agree, starve the bast**ds, both government and the anti-smoking lobby, of tobacco taxes. And even better to see nasty, spiteful non-smokers having to make up the losses, which they will, make no mistake, they’ll haveto come from somewhere.
As for joining what you call the rest of the human race ‘non-smokers’ like yourself, no thanks, I’ll stay with normal, decent human beings, smokers. Because make no mistake smoking will still exist, it’ll end up like the prohibition era all over again, undeground, away from people like yourself, thank God.
One other thing, I look forward with pleasure to the day, and I’m sure it won’t be far off, when something you enjoy is banned or regulated. So I just hope you’re not a lard ar*sed drinker.
Mark:
Were you non-smoking before 2nd January, if not how can you honestly say you notice the difference in the smell & cleaning in one day.
I’ve no problem whatsoever with you wanting to be non-smoking but in the same vein you should have no problem if the bar across the street wants to be smoking. But I bet £10 to a euro you’d complain if the smoking bar got more custom then you, in fact you’d probably complain of it being a smoking bar at all. Level playing field and all that, but level playing field in my book equals market forces, not enforced compliance.
I’ve been going to Spain for years, I will be again in a few weeks time, if I find the ban is like the UK I will not be going back. Why pay hundreds of £sss to be slung outside when I can get the same treatment for nothing in the UK.
You mock the Mayor unjustly, people just don’t like to hear the truth when it’s presented. In fact Mark, look it up for yourself, all that’s taking place with smokers is what’s gone before, albeit without the cattle trucks being paraded, but without a shadow of a doubt the events leading to the trucks is on a par with what’s being done to smokers now, denormalisation tactics, demonisation, bad people etc.
You can dismiss it as smokers disgruntlement, makes no odds to me.
But I wish you well in your non-smoking bar, and hope you don’t go out of business, and I mean this sincerely.
How sad and illogical and selfish these smokers are! It is not a total ban, just makes you smoke where you do not offend or prejudice the health of others, (End of!)
I smoked for 25 years and looking back I cringe at how selfish I was, thank goodness I quit quite easily 18yrs ago.
Give it a try at quitting your adiction now you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about :-)
Every bar and restaurant I’ve seen so far has implemented the law at last :-)
We’ve waited a long time for this, so one final message to all smokers kicking off against this new law for freedom of the individual is this :-_
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha we’ve wone at last :-)
Brad
All seems to be peace and light in the bars of my town. All the ones I walked passed today were doing a roaring trade. And I nearly fell over when I saw the tabanco around the corner packed, Before one was lucky if one saw more than 4 old men at the bar – all chuffing away on cigarillos. I bet the owner is delighted with his extra takings. Early days, but I bet Arthur75’s crystal ball is not so good at prediction afterall…
@lily
I dont really get where you are coming from? The law is the law and if you dont like it then dont come here. If you choose to visit Spain should have the respect to follow the law and not complain if you dont like it. Just for the record there is a huge difference in my bar with the “smell & cleaning” not only in one day but in a matter of hours. Now the law is over a week old i can tell you it hasnt effected my business one bit in fact i would say it has improved it. My outside terrace works as a smoking area when the sides are up and inside is smoke free which makes the bar more comfortable.
For the record if a bar openned across the street from me that allowed smoking in areas the law says no i would have a problem as they are benefiting from breaking the law. “But I bet £10 to a euro ” that they would be shut down and if they would i would phone the please to make sure they were.
I wish you well in your smoking life, and hope you don’t suffer to much from it, and I mean this sincerely
Mark,
I wish you well in your smoking life, and hope you don’t suffer to much from it, and I mean this sincerely
Ah Mark, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, I actually meant what I said about hoping your business doesn’t suffer sadly you chose to interpret it different. Just goes to show no matter what smokers say or do they’re denigrated.
As to replying politely, or replying at all to Brad & Guirizano, a complete waste of time.
I hope they both feel proud of their bigotry & spitefulness.
Mark, that’s the spirit, tell on your neighbor, Hitler would love you. China teaches their preschool children that to tell on someone is loving & kind. I bet you fall for that one too. I hate alcohol and many people think it should be banned. It was once here in the U.S. don’t be so sure it can’t happen again. You know the health craze going on now against fat people, it won’t be long until they take something you enjoy. They tax candy & soda at a higher rate in many states now.
@Lily
Sorry for the sarcasm but i thought your previous post was in the same vein and if i am wrong, sorry.
@Rocky
Sorry mate but if my business is suffering at the hands of one of my neighbours who is benifiting from breaking the law i will call the police. Their is a big difference in telling on a neighbour and losing my business or not being able to pay my mortgage or feed my kids. Following the law is something i suffer from in Spain as i believe as i foreigner it’s not my country to cheat while all around me cheat their taxes, the employment laws etc which effects me but not by much. However if a bar took away my trade and was busier than me due to allowing illegal smoking i would call the police as i would if they were playing loud music or karoke.
I feel for the smokers but they need to see both sides of the coin as to be a non-smoker in a smoky enviroment is not pleasent
Mark- that is your opinion that smoking is unpleasant. What i do have a problem is the fact you would snitch- so you are admitting there are financial benefits with allowing smoking right??
@CARLOS
If it is the difference between losing my business and snitching it’s a simple choice. One of the main problems here in the south is that many people benfit from breaking the law at very risk. Many people dont want to say anything as to make a denuncia they have to leave their details so are scared. I wish Spain would do a “Rat on Rat” type thing as in the UK when you can phone a hotline anonymous to stop this. I wish someone would give me a job as a tax inspector or work contract inspector and pay me on commission as i would be very rich. More people in Spain need to stand up to those who break the law as it is a huge problem here from bars playing live music without licences to tax dodgers to those who cheat their unemployment benefits.
As for the financial benefits from allowing smoking at the moment it hasnt made a difference and in fact my business is up on last year by 10% over the first 9 days of the year. Of course this may be because of the better weather or a turn in the crisis so i wont be able to judge that for at least a couple of months. One thing i have noticed is the sales in the cigerette machine are down by 50%. Yes i have a fag machine as it is a service and remember i am one of the lucky bars that has an outside terrace so has a smoking area. Personally i am happy there is a smoking ban but when i put my business hat on i’m not sure and will remain that way until a decent amount of time has passed allowing me to see how the new Law has played out.
Well if everyone abided by the laws of this country there’d be no reason to snitch Carlos…
We all know what happens to snitches,narks,rats and traitors!
Surely what we have regarding the smoking ban is a simple change of enforcement. Up until now non-smokers in restaurants and bars were forced to breath the foul chemicals emitted by cigarettes, or leave. Now the tables are hopefully turned. Smokers must go elsewhere to smoke, as in the past non-smokers had to go elswhere to eat or drink to avoid the fumes.
As to reporting individuals or owners for non-compliance with this new law, leave that to the authorities, as a civilised society we cannot go down that path. It stinks as much as cigarettes do!!
@harleyrider1978
let me guess, you’re a smoker? and please tell me what happens to “snitches,narks,rats and traitors” i would love to know.
It seems you are intelligent so maybe you can find a soluion to what a business should do if it is losing trade to another that is benfiting from breaking the law?
Just for the record i havent snitched on anyone because the Police for once seem to be doing their job.
Tony:
Surely what we have regarding the smoking ban is a simple change of enforcement. Up until now non-smokers in restaurants and bars were forced to breath the foul chemicals emitted by cigarettes, or leave. Now the tables are hopefully turned. Smokers must go elsewhere to smoke, as in the past non-smokers had to go elswhere to eat or drink to avoid the fumes.
As to reporting individuals or owners for non-compliance with this new law, leave that to the authorities, as a civilised society we cannot go down that path. It stinks as much as cigarettes do!!
I fully understand where you’re coming from but what I can’t get my head around is why anti-smokers, not non-smokers, most non-smokers are quite agreeable people, have a problem with smoking/non-smoking establishments. I know that those like yourself feel it’s pay back time for smokers, but I can’t comprehend the spite, vindictiveness & bile that spews from anti-smokers mouths. I find it a sad indictment of otherwise decent, normal human beings, it doesn’t bode well for the future when a section of society are treated like animals & lepers, not only because of the lies & propaganda but of the spitefulness in wanting their own back, where will it end, certainly not with smokers, unfortunately yourself and others that think like you do can’t see this. Sad, very sad.
How long before you’re complaining about having to walk past smokers that have been slung outside. It’s just never going to be enough for you people that’s why I, as a smoker, think they should make tobacco illegal immediately and stop this persecution. It’s not right that the governments take our money for a legal product and then ban the use of that product almost everywhere, it’s nothing but legalised fraud.
If there is to be no compromise of smoking/non-smoking then banning tobacco is the only way to go in my opinion. Personally I won’t give a toss I’ll still get my cigrettes but will have the pleasure of not paying the extortionate taxes and paying towards anti-smokers NHS treatment, and what I find most objectionable is paying for the anti-smoking crusaders to remain in employment.
BTW: I do agree with you regarding informing on others, that is a very slippery slope, not only that it smacks of envy.
Mark,
Sorry for the sarcasm but i thought your previous post was in the same vein and if i am wrong, sorry.
No problem, you get used to the sarcasm, comes with being a smoker, at least it’s one up on the bile heaped on us:)
Smokers just need to get a new, healthier, addiction. Every time you fancy a cigarette, just eat a banana instead. Much better, and cheaper.
Judging by the Pro-Smoke comments – smoking not just slows oxygen and blood supply because of poor circulation to the lower male extremities making them quiet useless but it seems also to the brain ……
What is so difficult in understanding that smoke is unhealthy and bothersome to non-smokers including children and people suffering from respiratory illnesses ?
Because of bad education and lowlife a-social behavior of a lot of smoker’s a law to protect the non smoking majority of the population is evidently needed !
Mark, “I wish Spain would do a “Rat on Rat” type thing as in the UK when you can phone a hotline anonymous to stop this”.
That is so sad that you can’t even be a honerable person and stand for what you believe, No, YOU want to be anonymous when you rat on people. And oh the people don’t want to leave their information? Wow, sounds like the U.S. where our freedom’s are being taken away from us and where Big Brother is getting bigger.
Annie, Newsweek, last week just ran a story that nicotine makes a person smarter, go look it up. As for low life smokers, I wonder about you and what makes you so great? People who don’t smoke are getting lung cancer at a much higher rate now, humm I wonder what that’s from? They don’t really know why but it could be car exhaust or maybe it’s just the people who think they are better than the other guy.
Erm Rocky, so if nicotine makes you smarter, why not just buy nicotine patches or chew nicotine gum instead of bothering the majority of people, who are non-smokers, with noxious and carcinogenic fumes?
Rocky, you should keep smoking, really, the obvious smartness it seems to add to your already considered intelligence is evident.
@ROCKY
i understand where you coming from but things arent always so black and white. i have always been a fan of the “rat on a rat” idea because not only does it work it acts as a deterrent. Where i live in Spain it is bandit country and people break the law at very risk or fear and one of the problems is reporting a crime. If you want to make a denuncia you have to give over your personal details which makes people scared of retaliation and personal attacks. Certain crimes need addressing such as unemployment fraud, drug dealing and child abuse which a sceme like “rat on a rat” could deal with. Personally i would address 90% of problems face to face before resorting to calling the police but then i’m still young, fit and am 6″3 18 stone so it is easier for me than most. Saying this my area is famous for retaliation and no matter how big you are you cant do much if someone burns down your business or sets light to your car.
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2011/01/effect-of-new-jersey-smoking-ban-4.html
31% revenue losses since smoking ban enacted
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2007/01/100-bars-and-restaurants-put-out-of.html
400+ Mpls / St. Paul bars & restaurants closed after smoking bans were enacted
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2009/02/in-uk-during-past-two-years-3382-pubs.html
3,382 UK pubs closed after nationwide smoking ban
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2010/12/south-dakotas-smoking-ban-1-month-old.html
http://www.smokersclub.com/banloss3.htm
Mark
January 10th, 2011 7:48 pm
@harleyrider1978
let me guess, you’re a smoker? and please tell me what happens to “snitches,narks,rats and traitors” i would love to know.
It seems you are intelligent so maybe you can find a soluion to what a business should do if it is losing trade to another that is benfiting from breaking the law?
Just for the record i havent snitched on anyone because the Police for once seem to be doing their job.
Tis good your momma taught you snitching isnt healthy….and neither are laws based upon JUNK SCIENCE!
I do hope you continue to not snitch for your own safety!
@Harleyrider 1978
was that a threat to Mark ?
Who are you ? The only Harley Rider 1978 I found is here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXnxmi8wOew
@harleyrider1978
We can all trawl the internet and find a blog which “proves” our point of view.
How about some independent, peer-reviewed, and published research.
Oh, and by the way, perhaps you could let us know how many pubs closed before the smoking ban?
The UK Beer and Pub association seems to think the acceleration in pub closures has something to do with duty/tax.
http://www.beerandpub.com/documents/publications/industry/Beer%20Briefing.pdf
Interesting how that acceleration in closures coincides with a spike upwards in duty/tax – oh and funny how the trends of reducing beer consumption, especially in pubs, and pub closures have both been around long before the smoking ban.
I think Annie Howe might have a point about smoking slowing oxygen to the brain…
http://www.bmj.com/content/326/7398/1057.full
BMJ 2003; 326 : 1057 doi: 10.1136/bmj.326.7398.1057 (Published 15 May 2003)
Paper
Environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality in a prospective study of Californians, 1960-98
James E Enstrom, researcher ([email protected])1, Geoffrey C Kabat, associate professor2, Davey Smith, Editorial
+ Author Affiliations
1 School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1772, USA,
2 Department of Preventive Medicine, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794-8036, USA
Correspondence to: J E Enstrom
Accepted 7 March 2003
Next Section
Abstract
Objective To measure the relation between environmental tobacco smoke, as estimated by smoking in spouses, and long term mortality from tobacco related disease.
Design Prospective cohort study covering 39 years.
Setting Adult population of California, United States.
Participants 118 094 adults enrolled in late 1959 in the American Cancer Society cancer prevention study (CPS I), who were followed until 1998. Particular focus is on the 35 561 never smokers who had a spouse in the study with known smoking habits.
Main outcome measures Relative risks and 95% confidence intervals for deaths from coronary heart disease, lung cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease related to smoking in spouses and active cigarette smoking.
Results For participants followed from 1960 until 1998 the age adjusted relative risk (95% confidence interval) for never smokers married to ever smokers compared with never smokers married to never smokers was 0.94 (0.85 to 1.05) for coronary heart disease, 0.75 (0.42 to 1.35) for lung cancer, and 1.27 (0.78 to 2.08) for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease among 9619 men, and 1.01 (0.94 to 1.08), 0.99 (0.72 to 1.37), and 1.13 (0.80 to 1.58), respectively, among 25 942 women. No significant associations were found for current or former exposure to environmental tobacco smoke before or after adjusting for seven confounders and before or after excluding participants with pre-existing disease. No significant associations were found during the shorter follow up periods of 1960-5, 1966-72, 1973-85, and 1973-98.
Conclusions The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality, although they do not rule out a small effect. The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed.
Sharon A. Burger
January 12th, 2011 5:07 pm
@Harleyrider 1978
was that a threat to Mark ?
Who are you ? The only Harley Rider 1978 I found is here
Yes it was a threat to mark,in the same context that tattle tales gets his azz beat on the playground after the other kids find out…….or dont you zealots understand basic human nature when it comes to such things!
@HARLEYRIDER
Of all the years using the internet i have never come across something so pathetic as your threat. I dont believe in physical violence and i am man enough to deal with my problems face to face without raising a hand in anger. As someone who has run and owned bars nearly all his life i have come across quite a few so called hardmen, plastic gangsters and wannabe hells angels but nothing is as sad as an internet warrior, grow up.
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2011/01/effect-of-new-jersey-smoking-ban-4.html
Effect of New Jersey smoking ban 4 years later? Casino and gaming revenue down 31%
Associated Press (link)
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — In just four years, the nation’s second-largest gambling market has lost nearly a third of its business.
Year-end figures released Monday show Atlantic City’s casinos took in $3.6 billion in 2010, down from $5.2 billion in 2006, a decline of nearly 31 percent. The yearly decline was 9.6 percent, marking the fourth year in a row that New Jersey’s casinos took in less than the year before.
What happened 4 years ago which preceded the rapid revenue decline? New Jersey enacted their smoking ban…..4 years ago …
Color us shocked. Everywhere enacted, smoking bans have decimated businesses and jobs, even though Nicoderm funded liars, er um, lobbyists like the American Lung Association, Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, American Cancer Society, etc. told lawmakers and the public that “smoking bans are good for business”.
Incidentally, a Minnesota Auditor’s Office report found that the MN state smoking ban decreased revenue 31.9% in the hospitality / entertainment industry…….coincidence? ……we think not.
Mark Wernimont
Watertown, MN. 55388
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2011/01/effect-of-new-jersey-smoking-ban-4.html
>Effect of New Jersey smoking ban 4 years later?
>Casino and gaming revenue down 31%
Good, lets ban smoking and gambling. Both addiction of weak minded people like ‘HarleyRider’
To all the brilliant smoking folks out there such as the HarleySmoker ….
the earth is a disc !
if you run against a wall you will be rich !
drinking 1 liter of Whiskey is very good for you !
and before I forget smoking is very beneficial for your health ……
Do Smoke but please do it somewhere where you don’t bother someone else !
Thank you so much in advance.
@harleyrider1978
Well done. I see your single paper and raise you a meta analysis:
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/36/5/1048.abstract
And that’s just for cancer…
Oh and funny how if you search “environmental tobacco smoke” on the BMJ website the vast majority of relevant papers show a link between environmental tobacco smoke and a range of diseases.
Why don’t you just chew nicotine gum and stop annoying everyone else with your noxious fumes?
Since 1981 there have been 148 reported studies on ETS, involving spouses, children and workplace exposure. 124 of these studies showed no significant causal relationship between second hand smoke and lung cancer. Of the 24 which showed some risk, only two had a Relative Risk Factor over 3.0 and none higher. What does this mean. To put it in perspective, Robert Temple, director of drug evaluation at the Food and Drug Administration said “My basic rule is if the relative risk isn’t at least 3 or 4, forget it.” The National Cancer Institute states “Relative risks of less than 2 are considered small and are usually difficult to interpret. Such increases may be due to mere chance, statistical bias, or the effect of confounding factors that are sometimes not evident.” Dr. Kabat, IAQC epidemiologist states “An association is generally considered weak if the relative risk is under 3.0 and particularly when it is under 2.0, as is the case in the relationship of ETS and lung cancer. Therefore, you can see any concern of second hand smoke causing lung cancer is highly questionable.” Note that the Relative Risk (RR) of lung cancer for persons drinking whole milk is 2.14 and all cancers from chlorinated water ranked at 1.25. These are higher risks than the average ETS risk. If we believe second hand smoke to be a danger for lung cancer then we should also never drink milk or chlorinated water.
Radon Gas No. 1 cause of lung cancer in non-smokers
http://www.indianasnewscenter.com/home/No-1-Cause-Of-Lung-Cancer-In-Non-Smokers-Many-Unaware-105130059.html
Lung cancer in smokers may be different from lung cancer in nonsmokers: Vancouver study
By PAMELA FAYERMAN, Vancouver Sun
Although doctors and scientists have suspected for some time that there were different biological mechanisms underlying lung cancers in smokers and non-smokers, the B.C. study is said to be the first to find whole regions of mutations.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Lung+cancer+smokers+different+from+lung+cancer+nonsmokers
About 90% of secondary smoke is composed of water vapor and ordinary air with a minor amount of carbon dioxide. The volume of water vapor of second hand smoke becomes even larger as it qickly disperses into the air,depending upon the humidity factors within a set location indoors or outdoors. Exhaled smoke from a smoker will provide 20% more water vapor to the smoke as it exists the smokers mouth.
4 % is carbon monoxide.
6 % is those supposed 4,000 chemicals to be found in tobacco smoke. Unfortunatley for the smoke free advocates these supposed chemicals are more theorized than actually found.What is found is so small to even call them threats to humans is beyond belief.Nanograms,picograms and femptograms……
(1989 Report of the Surgeon General p. 80).
Surgeon General’s Office Again Misrepresents and Distorts the Science in Report Press Release; Why the Need to Lie to the American Public?
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2010_12_01_archive.html
And for your information, Regina Benjamin is on the Board of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, J&J’s “philanthropic arm”. She received a $500,000.00 grant from the MacArthur Foundation 08, which I guess she has not returned! The Justice Department should be looking at her involvement and her pushing nicotine replacement for J&J! How she could have been named Surgeon General should be investigated as criminal!
B.S. Study: 600,000 People Die Worldwide From Secondhand Smoke Every Year
http://grendelreport.posterous.com/bs-study-600000-people-die-worldwide-from-sec
Green Hell Blog
How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them
http://greenhellblog.com/2010/12/12/surgeon-general-jumps-the-shark/
Well done. I see your single paper and raise you a meta analysis
You don’t mean like The SG report. After all on page 21 they admit using questionable methodology simply because they deemed it useful … from page 21
Recognizing that there is still an active discussion
around the use of meta-analysis to pool data
from observational studies (versus clinical trials),
the authors of this Surgeon General’s report used
this methodology to summarize the available data
when deemed appropriate and useful, even while
recognizing that the uncertainty around the metaanalytic
estimates may exceed the uncertainty indicated
by conventional statistical indices, because of
biases either within the observational studies or produced
by the manner of their selection.
Meta studies,trash science to prove a myth!
If you’re afraid of second-hand smoke, you should also avoid cars, restaurants…and don’t even think of barbecuing.
here are just some of the chemicals present in tobacco smoke and what else contains them:
Arsenic, Benzine, Formaldehyde.
Arsenic- 8 glasses of water = 200 cigarettes worth of arsenic
Benzine- Grilling of one burger = 250 cigarettes
Formaldehyde – cooking a vegetarian meal = 100 cigarettes
And so on. You can stay at home all day long if you don’t want all those “deadly” chemicals around you, but in fact, those alleged 4000 chemicals in cigarettes are present in many foods, paints etc. in much larger quantities. And as they are present in cigarettes in very small doses, they are harmless. Sorry, no matter how much you like the notion of harmful ETS, it’s a myth.
Do you have pure ivory between the ears HarleyRider1978?
The evidence for ETS causing disease is overwhelming. You can pick and choose as many blog posts as you like it’s not going to change that fact.
It’s not about being afraid of second-hand smoke. It’s just that I don’t like it very much, in fact I hate it. It gets in my eyes, it gives me a headache and it makes my clothes stink, like I’ve been fighting a bush fire all evening. When I get home my wardrobe stinks of stale tobacco smoke.
If I choose to go into a bar, restaurant or club which is open to the general public then why should a nicotine addict like you have more rights than me to over the air inside that place? Apart from the FACT that ETS is known to be dangerous to health, why should your “enjoyment” be at the expense of mine?
Why can’t you get it into your thick head that we can both enjoy that drink, meal or dance in a club without your smoke and yet, at the same time you are perfectly entitled to nip outside and get your nicotine fix.
“You don’t mean like The SG report”
No, I meant the meta-study linked in my comment.
“trash science to prove a myth”
You’re doing a fine job of that yourself. Way better than I could ever do. The common theme to just about every one of your links is the word “blog”. Nuf said.
The evidence for ETS causing disease is overwhelming……..
There is no evidence……there isnt even evidence where direct smoking causes disease……….No study has ever proved by connecting the end points that smoking causes any disease.Toxicology is what proves disease causation,epidemiology has never proved anything!
Correlation is NOT CAUSATION!
They have even went as far as to breed rats and mice to genetically develop cancer on purpose and then force tobacco smoke at levels 100s of times more than what anybody would ever recieve in a venue.What they found was that the genetically altered rats exposed to tobacco smoke outlived the non-tobacco exposed rats!!!!!
The only evidence you speak of is mass produced meta studies and questionaires to further tobacco controls bogus science of second hand smoke………
These studies are all to often created by big pharma and put out with some tobacco control doctors or doctors signatures on them…….
A growing body of evidence suggests that doctors at some of the nation’s top medical schools have been attaching their names and lending their reputations to scientific papers that were drafted by ghostwriters working for drug companies — articles that were carefully calibrated to help the manufacturers sell more products.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/health/rese…
Johnson and Johnson, the makers of Chantix and Nicoderm, fund the bans through their Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-RWJohnsnF.html
Many tax exempt political action committees (charities?) received millions to lobby for smoking bans from the RWJ Foundation. These bans are nothing but clever marketing strategy, with lots of highly publicized “sky is falling” hype, similar to gun control tactics;
“Gun ownership disease”
http://www.nrapublications.org/SG/index_jan10.asp
Tobacco control funding sources for “social change” to handle the “tobacco problem”
http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?ia=143&id=14912
And what the 99 million dollars was going to. Note on page seven the “inside -out”, provision going for patios later, AFTER business owners spend thousands of dollars to build them to accommodate their smoking customers. Their many coalitions travel the country spreading bans, changing their names for each community.
http://www.no-smoke.org/pdf/CIA_Fundamentals.pdf
Since current bans didn’t help businesses, now they are being given grants to enforce their bans, admitting that bans don’t help business.
http://www.rwjf.org/applications/solicited/cfp.jsp?ID=21181
After closing many bars, temperance is their next goal.
HarleyRider, the ban is here. Now go away, fool.
Your ban is only as good as the EU is able to pay for spains economic woes or dont you get that yet!
The EU is broke,the IMF is broke,the WORLD BANK IS BROKE!
The WHO world anti-tobacco treaty blackmaled countries to sign on or lose world bank loans……
If not for china,obama and japan bailing out the EU there would be no ban……
The EU is bankrupt and their union will fall apart as germany cant foot the bill nor can the rest of the world who are printing money just to keep their own economies viable…….you are in a world economic depression and without govmnts running the printing presses the whole ponzi scheme collapses…..get ready the smoking ban is nothing compared to whats fixing to happen world wide when they finally print to much money!
@harleyrider1978
Apart from the fact that the vast majority of scientists in the field accept the causality, can’t you get it into that ivory between your ears that most people simply find ETS annoying???? We don’t want to breath your disgusting and stinking fumes when we’re trying to enjoy a meal or a drink.
Buy some nicotine gum you idiot!
And stop throwing in red herrings about the world bank being broke. It doesn’t advance your “cause” one bit…
guirizano
January 9th, 2011 5:36 pm
All seems to be peace and light in the bars of my town. All the ones I walked passed today were doing a roaring trade. And I nearly fell over when I saw the tabanco around the corner packed, Before one was lucky if one saw more than 4 old men at the bar – all chuffing away on cigarillos. I bet the owner is delighted with his extra takings. Early days, but I bet Arthur75?s crystal ball is not so good at prediction afterall…
How do they manage that then ? It’s banned their as well !
Erm, sorry gus, but I don’t get your point?
Smokers, just go and ask your doctor if you should stop smoking on health grounds, and post back the results here. Then stop posting stupid comments about how smoking isn’t harmful.
guirizano
January 13th, 2011 7:09 pm
Do you have pure ivory between the ears HarleyRider1978?
The evidence for ETS causing disease is overwhelming. You can pick and choose as many blog posts as you like it’s not going to change that fact.
I’m afraid you’re wrong Guirizano, not that 100% evidence will convince you otherwise.
During the 40/50/60’s almost every other person smoked, fact, research it, yet those self same people produced children and have lived to a ripe old age, please don’t say otherwise the evidence of aging populations is there for all to see, it doesn’t need a statistics researcher to tell us. Asthma was also rare, whereas now asthma is, well according to ASH rife, as to what causes it I don’t have a clue but it’s certainly not SHS, (oh it might irritated some with asthma but by no means all that I know from experience) because as stated above everyone and his dog would have suffered during the eras I mentioned. Now I know without even waiting to see a reply you’re going to shoot this down in flames, it’s par for the course with anti-smokers, and let’s not confuse that with non-smokers, who the majority are not at all like antis.
I know you hate smoking, and that’s fair dos, your choice, but please don’t use the SHS garbage as your crutch for supporting the smoking ban, the long and short of it is you don’t like smoking, seeing people smoke, and you don’t like the smell, so be totally honest about it and don’t dance around the SHS claim. It’s what I can’t stand about the anti-smoking lobby, the lies, propaganda and divisive tactics they use to scaremonger, though I believe that many are coming to see them for what they are.
Mark,
Of all the years using the internet i have never come across something so pathetic as your threat. I dont believe in physical violence and i am man enough to deal with my problems face to face without raising a hand in anger.
Although I totally agree with Harley in that I don’t believe in informing, especially for this crusade, and it’s not because I’m a smoker that I find it abhorrant, but because it’s a very slippery slope and those that inform without leaving their details are nothing more than cowards, cowards of the worst sort I might add, these are the sort of people that would’ve enjoyed informing on those during WW2 because it was all ‘in a good cause’ and earned them brownie points, and I honestly believe that, it’s not just a throwaway remark.
But I do agree with you about threats over the internet, I can say the same about this as I say about informing on smokers & businesses. Totally and utterly wrong, uncivilised. Though I imagine that Harley, is somewhat aggravated with the constant lies being promoted by the antis and he just lost it because I’ve seen Harley on other sites and he’s never issued a threat or anything like a threat to anyone. But I think you’ll probably see more of it because of this informing on people for using a LEGAL product, and the antis, politicans and vested interest parties shouldn’t lose sight of this, it’s LEGAL.
Personally as a smoker I’d rather they made tobacco illegal immediately, tomorrow, and be done with it, because I’m sick of subsidising the anti-lobby to demonise me like I’m some sort of leper. Either ban it right away or leave smokers alone. I’d sooner see taxes rise heavily, won’t make no difference to me I’ll notice no difference, but I want to see the antis and the non-smokers that complain put their money where their mouth is.
Your contention on informing on bandits etc., is a different matter entirely and should not be confused with a deliberate crusade to mark people out as bad, dirty no marks and all the other vitriol aimed at smokers.
There was post on another site from a non-smoker where it was pointed out they disliked smoking & the smell, but the poster also said why can’t there be a solution that suits us all. And that solution is smoking/non-smoking venues, what can non-smokers, even anti-smokers find wrong with this, smokers would not be ‘so-called’ harming non-smokers, and the anti-smokers don’t have to see them which should satisfy them, but it doesn’t, WHY. Forget the level playing field nonsense and someone please explain why smoking/non-smoking venues isn’t a viable option.
Simple answer post a SIGN and teach the radical anti-smokers to read!
Lily,
I’m afraid you’re starting to make things up as you go along. Can you show I some evidence that people who smoked in the 40s, 50s and 60s all lived to a “ripe old age”. I doubt it. Stop sucking nonsense out of your thumb!
Yes, I don’t like smoking. Most people don’t like smoking. I think someone smoking in an enclosed space when there are others about, especially children, is antisocial in the extreme. On a par with dropping your pants and taking a dump of the floor or pissing under the table. And that is aside from the vast MOUNTAIN of evidence that smoking (including ETS) causes a range of diseases – so not only is it antisocial it is downright irresponsible. You can spout on as much as you like about the anti-smoking lobby, and I could spout on as long as I like about “big tobacco” but at the end of the day you only have evidence and I’m afraid that is not on your side.
Guirizano
I’m afraid you’re starting to make things up as you go along. Can you show I some evidence that people who smoked in the 40s, 50s and 60s all lived to a “ripe old age”. I doubt it. Stop sucking nonsense out of your thumb!
However do you think that there’s an ageing population if most people from those eras are dead.
I know many anti-smokers are ignorant, but you’re not just ignorant you’re just plain stupid, and where you’re concerned that’s a polite term.
That doesn’t look like proof of anything Lily.
How do you know people might not have been living even longer still had they given up smoking in the 40s, 50s, and 60s? The fact is you don’t know either way. Carry on Lily! That way we can let everyone else who reads these comments decide who the stupid one is…
And that is aside from the vast MOUNTAIN of evidence that smoking (including ETS) causes a range of diseases
Lily there are no studies that prove second hand smoke causes any disieases much less any that prove direct smoking causes any diseases………..
JOINT STATEMENT ON THE RE-ASSESSMENT OF THE TOXICOLOGICAL TESTING OF TOBACCO PRODUCTS”
7 October, the COT meeting on 26 October and the COC meeting on 18
November 2004.
http://cot.food.gov.uk/pdfs/cotstatementtobacco0409
“5. The Committees commented that tobacco smoke was a highly complex chemical mixture and that the causative agents for smoke induced diseases (such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, effects on reproduction and on offspring) was unknown. The mechanisms by which tobacco induced adverse effects were not established. The best information related to tobacco smoke – induced lung cancer, but even in this instance a detailed mechanism was not available. The Committees therefore agreed that on the basis of current knowledge it would be very difficult to identify a toxicological testing strategy or a biomonitoring approach for use in volunteer studies with smokers where the end-points determined or biomarkers measured were predictive of the overall burden of tobacco-induced adverse disease.”
In other words … our first hand smoke theory is so lame we can’t even design a bogus lab experiment to prove it. In fact … we don’t even know how tobacco does all of the magical things we claim it does.
The greatest threat to the second hand theory is the weakness of the first hand theory.
Guirizano
How do you know people might not have been living even longer still had they given up smoking in the 40s, 50s, and 60s? The fact is you don’t know either way. Carry on Lily! That way we can let everyone else who reads these comments decide who the stupid one is…
You don’t even warrant a decent reply anymore. Think I’ll just descend to your level.
Just start goosestepping outside bars that have the temerity to defy the anti-smoking orders. You can have a placard with you.
GUIRIZANO HAS DECREED, YOU WILL OBEY.
Don’t reply, can’t be bothered reading your pathetic, mandatory anti-smoking responses.
Harley:
Lily there are no studies that prove second hand smoke causes any disieases much less any that prove direct smoking causes any diseases………..
I know, but without the repeated mantra of SHS killing non-smokers with 30 seconds of exposure the crusaders would be dead in the water. They found a propaganda/scaremonger niche that jelled with non-smokers, though I have to say of all the non-smokers I know, and there’s plenty, not ONE believes the SHS garbage. It’s just a crutch used by the Guirizano’s of this world. Pathetic really, and sad. Thank God countries weren’t reliant on them during war time. They don’t seem to comprehend that they wouldn’t be here now abusing the self same freedoms that men & women fought & died to uphold.
And I reiterate, the only way to put a stop to this is to cut off the lucrative taxpayer funding/grants for these organisations, cut off the lucrative tax revenue to governments, that’s why I advocate they make tobacco ILLEGAL NOW because these parasites will not stop unitl they’ve eroded every freedom & choice smokers have (not that they have any now), why they’ll keep this on a drip, drip basis, keep coming out with more and more ludicrous claims for years to come, it’s why the goal is to be smoke-free within 20/30 years, it keeps them gainflly employed.
Money & Control is their God. It’s all they understand, without the money they have no control. MAKE IT ILLEGAL NOW.
@Lily Harley et al.
“though I have to say of all the non-smokers I know, and there’s plenty, not ONE believes the SHS garbage”
There will be no “smoking” bars because people have to work in them, people who work in bar jobs do so because they have to not because, in the majority of cases, they like serving drunk smoke stacks on the other side of the bar. If one person is desperate enough to work “voluntarily” in a “smoke” bar that undermines the whole thing. Now no one has to.
I’m an ex-smoker Lily (17 days) I don’t feel any better (yet)but I am 78€ better off, and I absolutely believe that the smoke someone else lines their lungs with is going to do my lungs no good whatsoever when they blow it into my face. Have you never looked at a filter after you have put out a cigarette? Don’t you think about what got through the filter that has so stained your teeth and tongue? Have you never smoked a roll-up and stubbed it out then wiped tar off you fingers? Don’t you wonder why they go yellow? I have. Do you have any idea what goes into a cigarette apart from tobacco? Are you so completely smoked addled that you think it does you no harm? Are you insane, stupid or being obtuse? Well…. I think stupid because anyone who repeatedly infers this smoking ban has anything whatsoever do do with the nazis is simply…stupid. The nazis ate with forks. Using your logic that means anyone who uses a fork is a nazi? You want to smoke at home you can. Go for it. No-one is going to kick down your door and cart you off in the night. You want to smoke in a bar and expose others to a laundry list of proven carginogens you are a selfish spoilt ignorant egotist, but you can’t. Tough. The ban is here in spain. I’m not sure you are.
Ben,
An ex-smoker of 17 days writing the extensive garbage you have above, purleeeze, don’t insult my intelligence, oops forgot smokers are not attributed with intelligence nowadays, not that there’s any intelligence in your post, well not that I could see, all I see is a childlike scribble from a disgruntled, time for payback anti-smoker.
I have read ex-smokers diatribes, how they now believe they’re superior beings to smokers, and I think these kind of people are as bad, if not worse than the zealots. At least you know the enemy in the zealots, but ex-smokers are a breed apart. I think ex-smokers should be neutered for their own good, and what to say about their halos. By no means not all though.
Still if nothing else your post gave me a good laugh, something very, very rare from non-smokers. And I have to say I’m surprised, as an ex-smoker (of 17 days still stinking, yellow fingers & teeth falling out, sigh) with your selfish, spoilt ignorant egotism when a smoker (17 days ago, sigh) that you haven’t slit your wrists with a razor blade to atone.
Grow up, stop making a fool of yourself, because that’s what you’re doing.
Oh almost forget the laundry list, if I was you I’d see to your own laundry first, under pants spring to mind, as going by your comments I’d say you messed yourself with sheer delight at the thought of getting the smokers.
Try pampers, you can throw them away.
@ Lily
Regarding the scribble I think it’s times new roman. I’m not sure if you aimed that invective at me or yourself. Either way I don’t care. You can’t now legally smoke in a bar or many other public spaces in spain. We, the people who don’t want to smoke, win. Whatever you have to say, absolutely anything at all, that fact won’t change. Yes you’re not happy about, we get it, but I’m guessing you’re not happy about a lot of things. But you still can’t smoke in a bar.
Sunday night I was in my local Spanish bar, it was more crowded than I’ve ever seen it before, olive pickers just finished their hard days slog, half a rugby team and many other locals. Smokers went outside for their smoke, good for them, then rejoined the happy gathering, smokers and non-smokers alike. No emnity, it was as if the smokers were waiting to be made to stop sharing their fumes with others, happy in this crisis to save the money otherwise spent.
As an ex of 22 years, as is my wife, living in Spain would have been beyond us had we continued. One huge benefit.
Do I think smoking is harmful? Thats why we gave up totally, difficult as it was, and our health on all counts is far better. No-one can seriously argue the point, if they do it must be for the joy of arguing. My brother-in-law, same age, has chain-smoked for 45 years, his lung capacity is down to 40%, cannot walk more than a few steps, spends most of his life asleep, exhausted, but still puffs away like an idiot. Entirely caused by smoking, his lungs are incurably tarred up say his doctors.
My own strapping son, in his early 40’s, has a job keeping up with me when we all go mountain walking. There’s no need to refer to survey data, just look and listen to the smokers coughing their guts and health away!
It is an irony that tobacco companies are in the market selling aids to help stop smoking, but better make money that way than selling cigarettes.
It seems that there is widespread non-compliance in Spain, as there should be with ANY BAD LAW. Apart from a few nutters and fanatics, no one wants this law that has effectively been imposed by EU zealots. However, not enough are openly declaring their non-compliance. If a large number of bars get together and openly resist there is nothing that the law can do about it. The Greeks, Dutch some US states amongst others have done just that and have caused a popular change in smoke ban law. The Spanish need to do the same.
It is also clear that anti-smoker fanatics are aware of this sea change in public opinion and are desperate to turn it around, hence the anti-smoker PAID astroturfing commentators that are beginning to swamp comments sections such as this one. Ben is obviously one of them.
If Ben is a recent ex-smoker then I am will eat hay with a donkey. However, in the extremely unlikely possibility that I am wrong he should read this AS SHOULD EVERY SMOKER WHO IS BEING COERCED INTO BECOMING A ‘QUITTER’!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2007/oct/16/highereducation.research1
Quitting Smoking Kills (amongst other things)!!
“We are struck by the more than casual relationship between the appearance of lung cancer and an abrupt and recent cessation of the smoking habit in many, if not most, cases.”
I was going to post this more comprehensive explanation of the adverse effects of being a ‘quitter’ but it is now a blank page.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/columnists/story.html?id=1ba491d9-70b0-46e8-9ccf-fe5e32ebf788
Funnily the ACS stats that showed over 30% increase in US lung cancer incidence since the start of the the millennium has also ‘disappeared’! Time to start worrying, methinks trust in official organizations is teetering on the brink of collapse.
Tony, Your Spanish bar MAY have been busy now, that was how it started with some bars in the UK. Initially lots will go to the wall, but over the next months and years, that trend will slow, but continue as prices are ratcheted up to make up for lost custom. It’s a downward spiral. Bars are still suffering here after three years. Smoke bans don’t just prohibit smoke in bars – they change the whole culture of social interaction.
I like rambling too, when I am not travelling around the world on holidays, to countries that want my custom of course. I climbed Scafell (highest mountain in England) with my son and grandson a few weeks ago and I have been smoking for probably more than 45 years.
Unfortunately, a good mate of mine, also a keen walker, died about ten years ago of cancer – he was a lifelong non-smoker, but thats the thing about anecdotal facts, they say everything but prove nothing.
Tobacco Listed As Contributing Factor
Denise Korb disputes the death certificate filed on her sister Sue Korb who died suddenly in Texas at the age of 56. A Texas doctor marked yes in the box asking if tobacco was a contributing cause of death.
Denise said, “It’s ironic that somebody who quit so many years ago and was so anti-smoking but they’re contributing her death to smoking. I don’t think so.”
Denise said she contacted the office of the physician in Texas who signed the death certificate. “They told me they had found a medical record from 1976, over 34 years ago, where she had listed herself as a smoker. I was dumbfounded.”
The family has been searching Sue Korb’s personal affects for any indications she had a life insurance policy. Even if one is found, they wonder if the listing of tobacco as a contributing cause on the death will effect any benefits.
A call to the physician in Texas who signed the death certificate has not been returned.
Nebraska death certificates also include a box for whether tobacco contributed to a cause of death.
Mike Lefler with the Nebraska chapter of the American Cancer Society said, “The figures on death due to smoking come from the state registry.” We utilize those numbers when educating the public about the dangers of smoking and to show the direct correlation smoking has to one’s death.”
The Korb family will ask Texas officials to change the death certificate they claim is inaccurate.
Vellocatus,
your just another junkie in denial. all nicotine products should be class A drugs and treated accordingly. You nicotine junkies really are pathetic even smack junkies don’t deny what they are.
The facts are sunshine that you will almost certainly die of lung cancer and it is not a pleasant way to go, when the morphine can’t shut off the pain.
Most hospitals have jars with a smokers lung – it’s one of the ugliest and puke inducing things to see in this life.
It is’nt up for discussion that smoking kills, it is’nt pretty and other people have to pick up the tab when there are better things to spend money on.
It’s also evident from this thread how cowardly and divorced from reality all you nicotine junkies are.
Does that make you an anecdotal fact?
Duh! they use smokers lungs for transplant patients…………..your pathetic and you dont research your rants very well!
Most hospitals have jars with a smokers lung – it’s one of the ugliest and puke inducing things to see in this life.
The Black Pig Lung Hoax
It was an outright bald-faced lie.
“Pankiw described the centerpiece of his anti-smoking display as the diseased lung of a 150-pound man who smoked for 15 years. Actually, it was a pig’s lung shot full of various carcinogens on purpose, but, Pankiw said later, his lesson was made stronger by not passing along that tidbit of truth.”
The Black Pig Lung Hoax
Here is an “oldie but goodie”. This is the article everyone always talks about, but is so difficult to find: April 5, 2001. It was an outright bald-faced lie.
“Pankiw described the centerpiece of his anti-smoking display as the diseased lung of a 150-pound man who smoked for 15 years. Actually, it was a pig’s lung shot full of various carcinogens on purpose, but, Pankiw said later, his lesson was made stronger by not passing along that tidbit of truth.”
Harleyrider,
it must be evident now to all rational people eyeballing this thread that you have serious problems and that in kindness we should just ignore you.
Oh dear dear Stuart – a gullble brain reduced to desperate use of junkie, addiction and the black lung myth! Ha Ha … I Like it – what is the bonus payment for getting those words all published together?
AND trying to pass on the myth that being a ‘quitter’ ensures you never die – in denial that non-smokers are increasingly DYING of lung cancers and many other so called ‘smoke related’ deaths too stu?
but.. but.. but… I dont smoke so how am I going to die?
Vellocatus,
I don’t know about you but as the time has gone on I find the anti-smoking jihadists comments are just regurgitated old tripe, discoloured teeth, black lungs, yellow fingers, SHS killing me, giving me asthma, the list is endless.
I honestly believe that the Ben’s & Guirizano’s are probably sad lonely soles who jump on all the fashionable bandwagons to keep themselves occupied. Strangely, although I shouldn’t due to the names I’ve been called, I actually feel sorry for them.
I know, I know, I’m a softy, can’t help it, someone, even a smoker has to feel for these people.
Lily – another one with problems – you smokers do have yellow teeth – you do have black tar stained lungs and you do have nicotine stained fingers and you do carry a terrible stink wherever you go – denial syndrome once again. Never before have I seen such a bunch of sad addicted clowns in one spot.
PERHAPS YOU SHOULD START IGNORING TOBACCO CONTROL AND THEIR TRASH JUNK STUDIES………..
Anti-Smoking Researchers in California Admit that They Have Reached Pre-Determined Conclusions Prior to Their Research Studies
Acknowledged Purpose of Study is Not to Find Out Effects of Thirdhand Smoke, But to Promote Smoking Bans in the Home
While I have for some time argued that many anti-smoking researchers have reached pre-determined conclusions and that their research consists of cherry-picking findings so that they support these pre-determined conclusions, it is now the case that these researchers are readily admitting that they have no interest in seeing where the results of the research actually take them.
Today, I am revealing that an anti-smoking research group in California has admitted, in its grant application summary itself, that the purpose of the research is to generate data that will support a pre-determined conclusion that thirdhand smoke is toxic to exposed nonsmokers in order to promote smoking bans in private homes.
The application summary states: “Overall, our proposed work will be a critical step in a timely assessment of whether the THS exposure is genetically harmful to exposed nonsmokers, and the ensuing data will serve as the experimental evidence for framing and enforcing policies prohibiting smoking in homes, hotels, and cars in California and elsewhere in order to protect vulnerable people.”
This work, which is being funded by the state of California under its Tobacco Related Disease Research Program, will investigate the potential genotoxic effects of exposure to thirdhand smoke by studying DNA adducts that might be formed in the laboratory from the reaction of secondhand smoke with ozone.
The Rest of the Story
The grant summary makes it clear that the researchers have already reached their conclusion, before having even initiated the “investigation.” They state that the results of their work “will” serve as “the” evidence for “enforcing policies prohibiting smoking in homes.”
In other words, the research itself is not needed. The investigators have come to a pre-determined conclusion and the purpose of the funded work is simply to generate findings which support this pre-determined conclusion so that these findings can be used to promote smoking bans in private homes in California communities.
We have now sunk to a new scientific low in tobacco control. Not only are researchers reaching pre-determined conclusions before actually conducting the research but they are now openly admitting it. Moreover, they are acknowledging this in their grant applications, and still receiving funding!
Why would the state of California want to spend a half million dollars of taxpayers’ money to fund “research” that is unnecessary because the investigators have already reached their conclusions?
After all, the researchers stated that their proposed work “will be a critical step in a timely assessment of whether the THS exposure is genetically harmful to exposed nonsmokers, and the ensuing data will serve as the experimental evidence for framing and enforcing policies prohibiting smoking in homes, hotels, and cars in California and elsewhere in order to protect vulnerable people,” instead of stating that their work will assess whether THS exposure is harmful and the ensuing data will inform the debate over whether to ban smoking in the home, hotels, and cars in order to protect susceptible nonsmokers.
If the researchers already have the answers, then it is a waste of time and money to carry out the proposed research. They might as well save the half a million dollars for the taxpayers of California.
That the state of California would fund research with an acknowledged pre-determined conclusion is as bad as the fact that the investigators submitted such an application.
“regurgitated old tripe” neatly sums up all the “evidence” you’ve provided so far to back your case Lily. Oh and you who is the lonely wrinkled chain-smoking soul (a sole is a type of fish) who can’t stand the fact that you can’t spoil it for everyone else any more.
Perhaps you and HarleyRider can get a group discount with a therapist?
It has been proven by the NCSUUBJ that smokers actually don’t have addiction but an oral complex that results in a dire need to put a long tubular object in their mouth to suckle on it – to prove this scientifically (in close association with the BBSSJS and the GvFds) they took the “cigarette” away for a while and scientifically saw that the now frustrated suckling smoker substituted the tubular object with food items preferably bananas ……
Come on folks stop this thread you are communicating with smoking Fred & Barney Flintstone
It has been proven by the NCSUUBJ that smokers actually don’t have addiction but an oral complex that results in a dire need to put a long tubular object in their mouth to suckle on it – to prove this scientifically (in close association with the BBSSJS and the GvFds) they took the “cigarette” away for a while and scientifically saw that the now frustrated suckling smoker substituted the tubular object with food items preferably bananas ……
Come on folks stop this thread you are communicating with smoking Fred & Barney Flintstone
Hey Wilma,
Tube suckling smokers, I like it, I like it.
Who said anti-smokers have no sense of humour, tube suckling smokers, hahahha, great.
Thanks Wilma, make sure you take good care of Bam Bam now won’t you.
Over and out.
Harley, thanks for all the links you provide but I seriously doubt any of the anti smokers check them, they can’t get beyond their propaganda trained brains. They don’t seem to even care about how crooked these company’s and non profit organizations are and that they are all connected to push their own agenda, follow the money.
I lost my computer a week ago after I posted about the Newsweek story that said nicotine makes the brain smarter. I didn’t say I was smart, the neuroscientists did the study so attack them. The people here would rather attack the messenger rather than the message. Stop being so mean people.
The people here don’t seem to care that they are being lied to by Big pharmacuticals and the American Cancer society where they spend your money on huge salary’s and very little on cancer research.
Lily, I’m with you on making tobacco illegal, but what could replace all that money? No worry’s look at all those fat people out there! More than 30 states have a soda tax even though it doesn’t help any body lose weight so now they say it needs to be taxed at a higher rate to make a difference. They want to tax one can of soda about 30 cents a can. Alcohol won’t escape either, you can count on that. It’s all easy money and they have a great plan, all the need to do is follow the exact same plan as they did on tobacco. The “obesity epidemic” is worth billions to the pharmacutical, diet, weight loss, media and the government.
Freedom, is something your children and grandchildren will never know. My 29 year old son hates smoke but he also see’s the big picture and can see freedom is at stake. Smoking isn’t the end, it’s only the beginning of things to come.
Any time you ban something, you are taking away someones freedom to that thing.
Just where do we draw the line as to when we dictate for ourselves how we live and when Big Brother dictates for us?
https://theolivepress.es/2010/05/10/king-of-spain-recovering-after-lung-operation/
“The King, a life long heavy smoker”
I rest my case. The non smoker have claimed their right to clean air and the Smokers will have to get over it.
Well, at least he is still going after an operation which he has more than paid for with the tax on cigarettes he has incurred over the years. Think everyone is going bananas over the smoking issue, why can´t we have smoking and non-smoking places, so we all have a choice of where to go. Nobody should be allowed to dictate who does what these days, so let´s have a bit of moderation and tolerance. Give everyone the right to choose where they go to do what they want. (Don´t twist my words people – I don´t mean any other nefarious things than smoking in this case).
We have been down that roadf – the law in 2006. This gave choice in theiory, but the reality was it was impossible to find a non smoking restaurant. Some paid lip service to it by installinfg smoking cubicles, and then pinned back the doors to make life easier for the waiters, thus allowing the smoke to permeate right through the restaurant. Having a smoking area in a restaurant is akin to having a ‘pee-ing’ area in a public swimming pool. It was the smokers who made the 2006 law unenforcable, an that is why it was tightened up. Don’t blame the non-smokers. Anyway you still have a choice – you can nip outside for a quick drag.
Non smokers need a choice too, and in the glorious summer we will have to chose to sit inside, so you smokers wilol have your day of smugness then.
Jan: No, in the glorious summer, you’ll whine that the smokers you forced outside are ruining it for you and demand an evern more restrictive law.
Siouxsie: the main reason the Antis don’t want choice is that, at least for drinking establishments, smoking venues would do the most business. French president Sarkozy, at the introduction of that country’s ban, aksed the same question you do (he even cited Spain’s previous arrangement) and was told by the Chief Anti that under such a system “nonsmoking bars would die.”
Rocky: how on earth did you “lose your computer” after posting a nicotine-positive story???
I see from other sources that Spain is now joining the modern dystopian world with an anti-obesity campaign (no more paella!!!) and no, alcohol will not be far behind.
Gusano: Harley fulfills your fetish for citation and then some, but, msyteriously, you have no comeback other than a cheap insult.
To Jan Saunders
Jan thankyou for your comments..
I am a bar owner in Spain and I have no complaints that I spent a good amount of my hard earned life savings on opening a bar in Spain. When I invested in the bar I understood the legal obligations that would be my responsibility as a bar owner but none of these conditions concerned smoking habits. I have little doubt that none of the current power mongers are actually bar owners themselves otherwise I feel confident that their decision making processes would have been much better thought out. I also believe that as you have such strong opinions yourself on what people should and should not be allowed to do in public bars, you might think about investing your hard earned life savings in buying a bar yourself. If the type of bar you propose as an ideal turns out to be successful then I am sure that everyone will follow your business model. Talk is cheap and it is also easy. I imagine that you bought your current home with lots of hard work and with that purchase came a set of conditions relative to laws of ownership and use. I also imagine that if someone official knocked on your door tomorrow and informed you that the conditions that you initially bought your house under had now changed and put your tenure of it at great risk, you would be greatly concerned.
I am a smoker myself but that has not stifled my educational ability as I have a Masters Degree. Since the Smoking ban was introduced I do find that the bar feels, looks and smells cleaner and I am pleased about that. I might also add that I do not agree with anyone smoking near children or anyone who is offended by it. However the current law does not allow enough flexibility to accomodate those who wish to smoke. As an example the law regarding bar terraces is at the very least ridiculous. If I have a 2 locale bar which has a terrace enclosed by 3 walls I am not able to allow smoking. However if I put a wall down the middle of the bar and turn the one bar into two different etablishments then each individual establishment now only has 2 terrace walls each and therefore everyone can smoke away happily on the conjoined terraces which has in no way changed physically. There are many other permetations of this which make it even more ridiculous. As a considerate smoker and bar owner I would much prefer that the local councils work with the bar owners to ceate an environment that suits everyone in such a way that non smokers can drink happily free from any kind of smoke inhalation and smokers can feel comfortable to pursue their habit whilst drinking without having to lurk on the kerb side and creating an unsightly pile of butt ends on the pavement. Like any other business I depend on my clientelle to continue operating but the bottom line is that it is my bar, it is not a public highway and as such I should at least be allowed some say in how it is run.
As for smoking and health issues it is obvious to me that whilst heavy smoking probably does have a considerable effect on people´s health many other factors must be taken into consideration particularly in relation to lifestyles.
As someone who has worked in the hospitality industry most of my life it is not difficult to identify where many of the real health problems lie. I have known many smokers who are very keen to uphold a healthy lifestyle in other aspects of their lives, i.e diet, sports and other interests and it has been my observation that these have been much healthier examples of human beings than some of the none smokers who are still a large part of the beer guzzling, pie eating brigade who seem to be rushing headlong into coronary explosion. So please can we ackowledge that a part of being human is being human. Eductaion and information based on reality is what really counts and I must say that as a fellow human being I am saddened by some of the zealot like comments being made here. I would suggest that all concerned, if the are really concerned, would take the time to read all of the links shown here and to do so with an open mind. If you do not have an open mind then you will not really be able to take in the information being offered to you. It´s as if your own prejudices will be drowning out your potential to absorb the truth. In truth there are many objectionable behaviours in society and it is unfortunate for smokers that theirs is an easy habit to identify and persecute. If we really care about people´s health then let us take all the measures necessary to improve their lot. Let´s ban any car that pollutes our atmosphere. Let´s not allow people to engage in relationships with other people who might raise their stress levels, this includes marrying them. Let´s not allow mothers to buy their children food that is not proven to enhance their ability to perform well, particularly chips and Mcdonalds let´s not allow purists to make us feel bad about ourselves to the degree that we feel inferior to them…..etc etc etc etc the list is endless… Come on people if you really don´t have a grasp on human nature perhaps it is time to educate yourselves on the theme and in doing so you might find a much nicer person underneath, the kind of person who is more accepting of themselves and their own foibles and one who is less likely to look towards the desecration of others in the pursuit of feeling better about themselves.
The world according to George …….
?I understood the legal obligations that would be my responsibility as a bar owner but none of these conditions concerned smoking habits.?
— You probably don’t understand that society and its laws are constantly changing ……..
?I have little doubt that none of the current power mongers are actually bar owners themselves otherwise I feel confident that their decision making processes would have been much better thought out.?
— surely not – do you have any idea of the amount of money tax for tobacco brings and that will be lost in the process ……..
?I also believe that as you have such strong opinions yourself on what people should and should not be allowed to do in public bars,?
–I do and one of them is not to endanger others patrons health …….
?I imagine that you bought your current home with lots of hard work and with that purchase came a set of conditions relative to laws of ownership and use?
– -Any private home is not a public accessible place, I hope you can appreciate the difference …….
?I am a smoker myself but that has not stifled my educational ability as I have a Masters Degree.?
— In Bar owner ship ??? Possibly your educational ability was not but your basic ability to connect the dots (basic intelligence) is or never has been up to par ….
?As a considerate smoker and bar owner I would much prefer that the local councils work with the bar owners to ceate an environment that suits everyone?
— Only in George’s world – people are not considered and responsible, less so today then yesterday , au contraire …..
?As for smoking and health issues it is obvious to me that whilst heavy smoking probably does have a considerable effect on people´s health many other factors must be taken into consideration particularly in relation to lifestyles.?
— Get serious, you are proclaiming that beating up children just a ?little bit? is quiet all right as long as you buy them sweets afterwards ……….
?So please can we acknowledge that a part of being human is being human.?
— and trying to better ourselves in a constant mode is what got us out of the caves, you want humans to be humans doing harm to themeless in spite of knowing better? It will take many generations to Stop smoking but understand that you have to start somewhere ……
?In truth there are many objectionable behaviours in society and it is unfortunate for smokers that theirs is an easy habit to identify and persecute.?
— because it endangers others in public without need ………. you can smoke all you want in your own environment – smoke does dilute and disappear …….
?Let´s ban any car that pollutes our atmosphere.?
— patience George it will come in the not so far future ……..
?Let´s not allow people to engage in relationships with other people who might raise their stress levels, this includes marrying them.?
— as I mentioned before, connect the dots and don’t be ridiculous ……….
?Let´s not allow mothers to buy their children food that is not proven to enhance their ability to perform well, particularly chips and Mcdonalds let´s?
— agreed 100%, best just tax so called junk food to a price of luxury and subsidies carrots, apples and the likes ……..
?not allow purists to make us feel bad about ourselves to the degree that we feel inferior to them.?
— why not ? most likely you only feel bad because you know you are doing something negative to yourself, its called a bad consciences, which is a self preserve instinct that tell you Stop – lets not try to eradicate it, without it the good people that you talk about will smoke, drink and eat themselves into oblivion (we are already seeing it left and right) ………..
?Since the Smoking ban was introduced I do find that the bar feels, looks and smells cleaner and I am pleased about that. I might also add that I do not agree with anyone smoking near children or anyone who is offended by it.?
— so do your customers, even the old hardcore haggaluggies (the smokers that cough up phlegm in the am) ?
hang in there, things will normalize after a while ……..
To Barb E. Dahl
Hi barb and thanks for your comments, by the way love the nickname lol.
Barb my contribution to the discourse on smoking was merely a simplistic overview of the situation as it stands in Spain at this moment from an owners point of view. Yes it is a public accessible venue but at the same time it is the proprietors who have to make the books meet and if they do not meet then eventually the establishments will close. If that is how it must be then so be it only history will tell what will happen. The fact to date is that many of the customers are smokers who have smoked in bars since they began drinking. Believe me I am as interested a bystander to this event as you are.
I really am well aware of the processes of the evolution of our species since the onset of the metachondrial Eve.
As a fan of many sociologists and philanthropists I am also very well aware of the nature of social evolution and the individuals unique phenomenological processes that impinge and impact upon that process.
I do not knowingly wish to endanger anybodies health but this world is full of incidents and activities where I and many others make the choice to contribute to unhealthy environments i.e. carbon footprints, waste, stress, hygiene, sexual activity, socialized conditions of worth and self worth, religion etc etc etc.
Whether somewhere is considered private or not does not exclude us from our responsibility to making those who enter safe. It is my experience that many households I have worked in throughout my life are health risk zones and this is not because the residents were smokers. It is important that those who choose to enter do so from an informed perspective.
Connecting dots is one of my favourite pastimes particularly when it is the healthy little spots on a rubenesque backside, I usually find that pink felt tip looks best lol.
I believe that people are capable of reasoniing and we are seeing that happening through our discourse on here. I also believe, parhaps naively, that humans are basically good and that it is only through unique social moulding that they become less than they can be in terms of being a fully functional, autonomous human being.
Beating up children is not alright, it is a disgusting proposition. Love children and they will become all that they can be.
Human beings will always engage in activities that may well be detrimental to their health or well being as it is a part of human nature to be inquisitive. I am not agreeing with this I am just acknowledging it. I have no doubt that the Beatles would have struggled to have written many of their obscure lyrics if they had not been as high as kites. By the way this does not imply that I am a Beatles fan.
It is well researched and documented that stress is one of the leading killers of our age. It leeches the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system to the point where adrenilines and noradrenalines breakdown our most sensitive organs.
I have done many wrong things to others in my life but I guess that learning to live with guilt is a part of our growth as individuals and an intrinsic part of our journey. However smoking is not one of these things that I feel guilty about. I am always polite about it and do what I can to move to a spot where non smokers will not be affected. I more than anyone wish that they would introduce exclusive non smoking bars so that I would not have to be put in that position. I like smoking, I know it´s bad for me but it´s a habit I enjoy. Many people indulge in habits, acitivites and pastimes that are not good for their or others health. I hate the fact that people enjoy riding motorbikes at ridiculously high speeds. Life is sacred but they do it. We all have our hemlock and many of us pay the price for their choices. I wonder what your ´hemlock is´. smile
Using substances of one form or another has been a part of society for a very long time. Opium root was sold openly in the market in medieval times and many drugs were only labelled distasteful when the British empire decided that opiates were an oriental pastime and should therefore be considered low class. By the way I do not condone the use of any drugs.
As for educational abilities I have been fortunate to have a good and healthy life so far cough, splutter, phlegm lol and being a bar owner is only one of my feathers and strings.
On a side note I am not yet aware of anyone who has died as a result of other people smoking in my bar. However as a bar owner in a busy town in Spain I have witnessed many people who have suffered injuries due to alcohol, either through accidents or arguments. I might add that none of these incidents occurred in my bar.
I believe approximately 28,000 deaths in the United Kingdom last year were attributable to alcohol alone and I would hope that all those who are engaged in this discussion are as active on sensible drinking forums as they are on this forum. It would fill me with pride to know that I am engaging with others who are equally concerned about the health of society from a more collective and inclusive perspective.
I don´t know who you are Barb e dahl but I quite like the cut of you so far and I kind of like the way you scratch hogs. So if you wish to continue please do but without the need to include sarcasm, strikes me you´re too intelligent for that and presumptions are never a good thing in a debate…..nice wishes
George
The truth about 2nd hand smoke, If any of you really want to learn the truth about 2nd hand smoke, go vist these site, it’s a real education.
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/34/10/all_opedsmokinganti_2011_3_4_bk.html?comm=1” target=”_blank”>http://http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/34/10/all_opedsmokinganti_2011_3_4_bk.html?comm=1
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/34/10/all_opedsmokingpro_2011_3_4_bk.html
If you followed a smoker around at one foot downwind for 24 hours you would increase your exposure by 4 mcrogms/m^3. The “Significant Harm” level in the EPA table is FIVE HUNDRED mcrogms/m^3 — not even close!
That table is also informative in another way because it exposes another trick Antismokers like to use to bolster their case. Note the column on the left that enables Repace to talk about 15 mcrgms/m^3 being the “healthy” limit. That’s an ANNUAL average. To hit the upper bound of truly “healthy” exposure to secondary smoke you would have to tie four smokers together in a little clump, tie yourself to them with a one-foot long shoelace and then circle around them to stay directly downwind while they each smoked one cigarette per hour for 24 hours straight for 365 days in a row.
You need to read the comment section for the real story, not the editiorial.
Rocky, neither of those links are to independent peer-reviewed research. They count for absolutely nothing. If you actually read the relevant independent peer-reviewed research, especially the relevant meta-analyses, you’d soon realise that there is no safe level of tobacco smoke, environmental or otherwise.
George, right you are about most things you state.
I do not think society would be having this discussion and many many others about regulating laws and rules ……. if it would be up to considered neighbors and citizens like you. The sad fact is that todays society is not considered but au contraire it seems an egoistic mass who insist on their rights like e. g. “Its legal to smoke here” so I can do it …. the following incident actually happened to me about ten years ago when in a restaurant, after my meal I felt obliged to go outside to have a cigarette after dinner because there was baby present on the next table, the father and mother of this creature smoking away !! I felt obligated and just had to say something – after exchange of arguments the discussion was ended with me being advised that it was legal …. I advised them in return to forget about legal but to get counseling from their family doctor about the dangers for a newborn being exposed to second hand smoke – for the creatures sake I hope they did. This may be a drastic example, but I find that it shows just how ignorant a lot of folks are and that instead of reading between the lines of rules and laws – thus using common sense and their social conscience the majority chose to live by the philosophy “Live and let Die” I believe we live in the era of everyone is a Superstar and thus can do what they deserve …… Ergo – we need those laws to protect the Superstars from themselves ! I am 100% positive the biggest and loudest contestants fighting for their right to smoke – will tomorrow be the biggest and loudest contestants fighting for their right for a smoke free environment, while hopefully sitting in your bar consuming Shirley Temples …… Un saludo
BTW “Rocky Raccoon” was certainly written on a Roll …….
Let people make their own decisions and mind your own business: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGJrlFH_qTg
More & more doctors and scientists are coming out of the closest to say it’s all a hoax, 2nd hand smoke is a joke. If you can get beyond your own propaganda trained brains and do the research with an open mind you will be surprised where it takes you. But most of you won’t because your mind is made up from years & years of brainwashing. You can hate 2nd hand smoke but it does not harm you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGoZ-b1OaW4
guirino: If you did read the comments there were not just 2 studys referenced but many for people to go and check out. That was the whole point, the author telling you where to go and read for yourself how the main “study” was flawed and why it was flawed. Like I just wrote: not many people will go and look but will believe because it’s been told to them for so long. Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes truth.
For anyone who’d like to see the sort of research the NY law is based on, read and enjoy a short and actually fairly accurate satirical description of the “Klepeis Study” at:
‘
http://wispofsmoke.net/satire.txt
‘
Read the study itself too — it’s referenced there — and you’ll find the satire pretty close to the reality.
‘
Finally, anyone who visits New York City in search of “Clean Air” is … well… I don’t think I have to beat the point to death here. Ms Feinberg, I’ll offer you the challenge offered on the other OpEd: There has never been a single scientific study showing any degree of actual real harm to anyone from the concentrations and durations of smoke anyone would normally be exposed to outdoors. Disagree? Fine: go find a couple of studies that you can defend and post them here to show me wrong. NOTE: “Studies” – not generalized reports, fact sheets, opinions, quotes from people, press releases, web sites, etc.
‘
Understand? “Studies” — as in peer reviewed research with the details availabel for critical examination. Hint: you won’t find any: they don’t exist. All that’s out there are studies like Klepeis where they show that the wonders of modern nanoscopic technology can detect molecules of smoke exist.
‘
Michael J. McFadden,
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”
I cannot believe that this argument is still raging five months on!
I smoked for 30 odd years, stopped the last 20. Stale cigarette smoke is FOUL by any standards, trying to eat a meal or enjoy a drink surrounded by it not a pleasant experience. Fumes from a pile of manure would be preferable, and healthier!
Maybe the health risk from second-hand smoke is not high, but would you leave a baby in a smoke-filled bar? If not, why not?
The answer: it’s unhealthy and possibly dangerous to the baby’s development. If anyone disgrees with this, they’re not fit to be a parent.
Smokers, enjoy your habit, I did, but use a modicum of decency when others are nearby. I didn’t!! I didn’t care about second-hand smoke and it’s attributes. My ignorance was profound.
As far as children go:
The inconvenient truth is that the only studies of children of smokers suggest it is PROTECTIVE in contracting atopy in the first place. The New Zealand study says by a staggering factor of 82%.
“Participants with atopic parents were also less likely to have positive SPTs between ages 13 and 32 years if they smoked themselves (OR=0.18), and this reduction in risk remained significant after adjusting for confounders.
The authors write: “We found that children who were exposed to parental smoking and those who took up cigarette smoking themselves had a lower incidence of atopy to a range of common inhaled allergens.
“These associations were found only in those with a parental history of asthma or hay fever.”
They conclude: Our findings suggest that preventing allergic sensitization is not one of them.”
The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
Volume 121, Issue 1 , Pages 38-42.e3, January 2008
http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(07)01954-9/abstract
.
This is a Swedish study.
“Children of mothers who smoked at least 15 cigarettes a day tended to have lower odds for suffering from allergic rhino-conjunctivitis, allergic asthma, atopic eczema and food allergy, compared to children of mothers who had never smoked (ORs 0.6-0.7)
CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates an association between current exposure to tobacco smoke and a low risk for atopic disorders in smokers themselves and a similar tendency in their children.”
Clin Exp Allergy 2001 Jun;31(6):908-14
http://www.data-yard.net/30/asthma.htm
Heres another
In 2008 this paper was produced in America and concludes that nictotine and hence active smoking and passive smoking leads to less asthma. It also gives the aetiology (causation) why nicotine and the biologial process that reduces asthma in recipients.
The results unequivocally show that, even after multiple allergen sensitizations, nicotine dramatically suppresses inflammatory/allergic parameters in the lung including the following: eosinophilic/lymphocytic emigration; mRNA and/or protein expression of the Th2 cytokines/chemokines IL-4, IL-5, IL-13, IL-25, and eotaxin; leukotriene C4; and total as well as allergen-specific IgE. unequivocally show that, even after multiple allergen sensitizations, nicotine dramatically suppresses inflammatory/allergic parameters in the lung including the following: eosinophilic/lymphocytic emigration; mRNA and/or protein expression of the Th2 cytokines/chemokines IL-4, IL-5, IL-13, IL-25, and eotaxin; leukotriene C4; and total as well as allergen-specific IgE. ”
http://www.jimmunol.org/cgi/content/abstract/180/11/7655
Tony: your question is a red herring. Of course no one’s going to “leave” a baby anywhere!
But I will tell you that I and many, many others of my generation grew up in smoky homes and are as healthy as anyone else. Who died and made you an authority on who is and isn’t fit to be a parent, anyway?
The law does not exist to provide what you consider to be a pleasant atmosphere. But since you bring it up, lots of people eat and drink while others are smoking but I’ve yet to hear of anyone willingly dining in the presence of manure. Perhaps your tsstes are a bit odd, Tony?
HarleyRider, or the tobacco industry’s main online lobbyist (if you want his full title) must surely be a prime candidate for the ‘moron of the century award’: Smoking actually aids existing breathing illness conditions and smoking is good for children. This person has done more for the online anti-smoking movement than anyone lol.
Chris, do you really want to be associated with such numskulls? And are you really saying smoking around children is good parenting? Your standards continue to slip big time.
Btw, in Spain, campo dining is frequently done with the aroma of dung present. Dung has no side effects btw.
Abide by the law and get over it.
Thank you freddy……a warm welcome from an adversary!
Since you have no substance to your post in this debate I assume you surrender and just live with what you have left your hatred of smokers…….BTW most kids were raised in housholds that smoked during the 20s,30s,40s,50s,60s,70s and into the mid 80s……….yet we are all just fine and omg ALIVE!
Chris, the red herring is your own creation, and parental fitness decided by the action of that parent ‘leaving’ the baby in the bar, it’s not my decision. The smoker would also be there, contributing to the well-being of the baby with extra second-hand tobacco smoke. I didn’t suggest that the smoker would be that unfit as a parent to leave the baby unattended.
It seems to me that lovers of second-hand tobacco smoke have never actually frequented old pubs, with the orange yellow staining from floor to ceiling – that is the deposit of years of smoking. And that would also be deposited in the lungs of anyone inhaling tobacco smoke, second hand or not. Why argue? It’s fact. And to argue that these tarry deposits are not harmful to health is unbelievably stupid.
For many years I worked in a computer environment with vast racks of vital electronic communications equipment. Smoking was suddenly prohibited, but not as we thought out of consideration for employees health, but because of tobacco deposits on delicate contacts and circuit boards, etc., in this equipment.
I’m sorry, you’re wrong Harleyetc, almost all cancerous deaths I have known over the last 20 odd years, if not from old age, have been made up of smokers. Obviously some exceptions, which no doubt you will make the most of.
All we non-smokers want is to allow smokers to kill themselves if they want to but don’t kill us at the same time. In other words, consideration for others.
To Barbie
smile
Hi Barb thanks your comments, I knew you were a nice person lol. Smoking and children ouch hot topic. I wouldnt leave my kids near a smoking barbecue or downwind of a forest fire so I certainly wouldn´t want them in a room full of smokers….
It seems to me that many non smokers and ex smokers and even many smokers just do not enjoy the smell of smoke and that is obviously understandable. Even though I am a smoker myself I hate the way that copius amounts of smoke make your eyes sting and the stale smell is awful and therefore leads to an undesirable environment. So if it is true that passive smoking is not as harmful as has been claimed then what we are all looking for is a path towards everyone being able to enjoy their desired environemnt. If this is the case then it would be more helpful for the anti smoking supporters to establish the honest grounds for their cause ( a more pleasant environment ). In this way the smokers might be more inclined to listen to their needs and be more sympathetic ( I do hope so ) and I for one would understand that this would need to be legislated. What is happening at present is that smokers are being accused of being latent mass murderers through unjustifiable data and therefore it is understandable their sheckles are raised in defence. Innocent until proven guilty is always a good thing…….
From what I have read so far on this and other forums it appears that the not guilty verdict is winning although I look forward to other evidence being presented.
On a side note I do always smile at how smokers on television soaps are subliminally used as a motif for failure and weakness. Watch anyone on a television soap filmed nowadays and the only characters allowed to smoke in a scene are those who are deemed to be unhealthy or suffering from some type of psychological stress and menial coping mechanisms with the implication being that they are in some way less of a person.
Next time you´re watching a big hollywood movie take note of the placement of products in the background during happy moments in the film, they are not there for artistic substance. Doesn´t have too much to do with smoking but it does point out the perceived power of subliminal conditioning………… an influence that we are all subject to.
George
Harley, I’m not an adversary. I’m the person with the law on my side. You, I’m afraid, are in the the losing party. You’ve lost the argument, lost the debate, and are now losing public opinion. Smoking is down in Spain, and further extending the public places ban is a step in the right direction.
Keep up the good work for our cause Harley.
Smoke-Free Workplace Law is primarily intended to protect workers from health hazards resulting from exposure to secondhand smoke.
Even exposures in the home couldnt stand up,the congressional research office concluded:
•the statistical evidence does not appear to support a conclusion that there are substantial health effects of passive smoking;
•it is possible that very few or even no deaths can be attributed to ETS;
•if there are any lung cancer deaths from ETS exposure, they are likely to be concentrated among those subjected to the highest exposure levels… primarily among those nonsmokers subjected to significant spousal ETS.
•Even when overall risk is considered, it is a very small risk and is not statistically significant at a conventional 95% level.
According to the CRS, basing an assessment on only the most pessimistic study of those reviewed, exposure only to background ETS (as in workplaces and bars) creates a lifetime risk of about 7/100ths of a percent of dying from ETS related cancer.
Additional studies also undercut key assumptions in the “estimates” of the 63,000 victim “death toll” espoused by anti-smoking forces. The WHO’s International Agency on Research on Cancer published a 1998 study that ran for 10 years, covering 7 different countries, concluding that there is no statistically significant risk for non-smokers who lived or worked with smokers.
http://iarnuocon.newsvine.com/_news/2007/10/17/1028570-secondhand-smoke-mirrors
Its hard to make a case for any smoking bans anywhere when the evidence isnt there to begin with.
The latest niosh study on casino workers
is more a political anti-smoking study than a medical study….
There former findings after 10 years concluded the shs studies didnt cut the grade to show any cause for alarm and ended with osha making the final say as greg watchman stated above.
Be it acute or chronic exposure causation cannot be shown for any of the claims made.
Those same casino workers tested are the same ones trying to sue over second hand smoke in court against the casino owners.
Those same casino workers worked diligently on harry reid and hillary clintons campaigns.
The study came after the democrats took over the congress and the senate.
politics and science = Junk Science and laws.
It appears the solution is going to be a political one rather than sound science!
Hi Fred, since you seem to care about the children so much, you do know that fat people are next. Studys say: Fat parents make fat children. Hanging out with your fat friends will make you fat too. Shall we make new laws against fat people too? Actually they already are but the govt. and big pharma know best don’t they. Trust them and take their medicine. Save me. save me.
And it would appear that Fatter people need larger coffins meaning more wood being chopped down, meaning increased decimation of our forests meaning less oxygen produced globally leading to less air for us all to share….this suggests that fat people are a harm to smokers and non smokers……where will it all end.
Rocky, I didn’t know that being overweight can be passively passed to a person nearby lol. You talk about big pharma but what about big tobacco companies? Are they any less evil?
Fred, Yep I don’t have the link but yep, there’s a study that says if you hang out with fat people… I’m sure you can find it if you look.
Lot’s of people think we should ban alcohol too. Living leads to death no matter how hard they try. Here’s another article saying the old people are living too long, don’t you just love it.
For Lee Rathbone-McCuan, a professor of social work at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, the bigger concern is that aging brings illness, frailty and dependence on others.
“I really believe that longevity is putting the American family at grave risk,” she said. “We’re calling on people to be care givers without the support system needed. We have huge mobility barriers. Middle-class families have trouble paying for long-term housing and care.
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/04/16/2804933/a-long-way-home-challenges-faced.html#ixzz1MkzVE6ID
Did you also see the study where if you stand next to a stupid person you also become stupid. Clearly, you lot have all been hanging out together too much lol.
Rocky, you are not being banned from smoking, you must have consideration for others who don’t smoke, it’s as simple as that. What this debate shows more than anything is that smokers are largely intolerant to other peoples’ rights. You give a quote that mentions how families are having problems paying for things. Well, stop buying cigarettes then! That’ll save a fortune for a start. Doh.
Did you also see the study where if you stand next to a stupid person you also become stupid. Clearly, you lot have all been hanging out together too much lol.
Poor Fred, anti-tobacco and anti-obesity folks who hang together not only are stupid they even do studies to prove just how stupid they are!
Obesity spreads to friends, study concludes
By Gina Kolata
Published: Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus, according to researchers. When one person gains weight, close friends tend to gain weight too.
Their study, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, involved a detailed analysis of a large social network of 12,067 people who had been closely followed for 32 years, from 1971 until 2003. The investigators knew who was friends with whom, as well as who was a spouse or sibling or neighbor, and they knew how much each person weighed at various times over three decades.
That let them watch what happened over the years as people became obese. Did their friends also become obese? Did family members? Or neighbors?
The answer, the researchers report, was that people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. That increased one’s chances of becoming obese by 57 percent.
There was no effect when a neighbor gained or lost weight, however, and family members had less of an influence than friends. It did not even matter if the friend was hundreds of miles away – the influence remained. And the greatest influence of all was between mutual close friends. There, if one became obese, the other had a 171 percent increased chance of becoming obese too.
The same effect seemed to occur for weight loss, the investigators say, but since most people were gaining, not losing, over the 32 years, the result was an obesity epidemic.
Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a physician and professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School and a principal investigator in the new study, says one explanation is that friends affect each others’ perception of fatness. When a close friend becomes obese, obesity may not look so bad.
“You change your idea of what is an acceptable body type by looking at the people around you,” Christakis said.
The investigators say their findings can help explain why Americans became fatter in recent years: Persons who became obese were likely to drag some friends with them.
Their analysis was unique, Christakis said, because it moved beyond a simple analysis of one person and his or her social contacts, and instead examined an entire social network at once, looking at how a friend’s friends’ friends, or a spouse’s siblings’ friends, could have an influence on a person’s weight. The effects, Christakis said, “highlight the importance of a spreading process, a kind of social contagion, that spreads through the network.”
Of course, the investigators say, social networks are not the only factors that affect body weight. There is a strong genetic component at work too.
Science has shown that individuals have genetically determined ranges of weights, spanning perhaps 30 or so pounds, or 13.5 kilograms, for each person. But that leaves a large role for the environment in determining whether a person’s weight is near the top of his or her range or near the bottom. As people have gotten fatter, it appears that many are edging toward the top of their ranges. The question has been why.
If the new research is correct, it might mean that something in the environment seeded what many call an obesity epidemic, making a few people gain weight. Then social networks let the obesity spread rapidly.
It also might mean that the way to avoid becoming fat is to avoid having fat friends.
That is not the message they meant to convey, say the study investigators, Christakis and his colleague James Fowler, an associate professor of political science at the University of California in San Diego. You don’t want to lose a friend who becomes obese, Christakis said. Friends are good for your overall health, he explains.
So why not make friends with a thin person, he suggests, and let the thin person’s behavior influence you and your obese friend?
That answer does not satisfy obesity researchers like Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University.
“I think there’s a great risk here in blaming obese people even more for things that are caused by a terrible environment,” Brownell said.
Thanks for that Harley, it shows you to be an even greater moron than you already are. Please, keep posting, to continue this trend. You need more weight too, in that space between your ears lol.
When Fred’s scant powers of argument abandon him, he resorts to insults.
Tony: more red herrings. Living tissue is different from walls or equipment. If secondhand smoke were as deadly as the Antis proclaim, Japan would have one of the world’s shortest life expectancies, as opposed to having the longest.
And you stated that anyone who merely disagreed with you was an unfit parent. Go back and read your own post.
The Dutch (another famously short-lived, unhygienic people, lovingly refer to their pubs as “bruine kroege”, i.e. “brown jugs” in reference to the very smoke buildup you find so scandalous.
Insulting the Dutch now are you, Chris?
It’s sarcasm, klootzak.
So was mine, Cabrona.