A SERIES of arrests have been made after fights broke out over the new smoking ban.

Police have reported a number of incidents around Andalucia including a stabbing in Albolote in Granada and an assault on two officers in Vélez Málaga.

The clash in Albolote came after a waitress repeatedly asked a man to put out his cigarette.

Three customers stepped in to help her and a fight broke out that left one of them with an injured hand and the other needing stitches in his thigh.

While in Vélez Málaga, police officers asked a group in a bar to stop smoking or go outside to finish their cigarettes.

When one of the group refused, the officers attempted to arrest him but his two friends stepped in and started a punch-up that led to all three being arrested.

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415 COMMENTS

  2. I hope that there are more incidents like this.
    Perhaps the people of Spain are not yet ready to go back under a dictatorship.
    If 25% of adults smoke then why are there not 25% of venues for them ?
    The 25% of staff would be happy to work there.
    The anti smoking brigade will not agree to let smokers have their own private space

  4. As a lifelong non-smoker I am happy that I will now be able to go into whatever bar or restaurant I wish in Spain and not have to live with the possible damage to my health caused by other people smoking.

    It is good for my health and it is good for the health of others if they decide to reduces their level of smoking or quit because of the ban.

    I realise that it may be bad for business in the short term but I feel that over time the ban will become accepted and will become the norm.

  5. Why not just make it illegal and see how they manage without the taxes smoking generates. I am a smoker and hate having my civil liberties encroached upon. As one smoker said to me, wait till summer, the terraces are ours

  6. Mary – the terraces are yours all year round now.

    I have no problem whatsoever with people smoking in the open air. Smoking on open terraces is absolutely fine by me. The smoke tends to dissipate and seems not to harm anyone except the smoker(unless some new some research says it contributes to global warming or some other phenomenon).

  7. This is just one small effect of smoking bans – it splits and destabilises society. There will be more incidents of this nature, some caused by smokers and some by anti-smokers. This ban law only serves to empower the bully and the bigot. Sadistic anti-smokers will no doubt be smirking at this story and consider it a great success that they can turn man against man.

    Passive smoking ‘harm’ is a fabricated LIE that anti-smokers continue to repeat. They know that they must continue to do so as they know that eventually they will be held to account for misleading the public.

    It is becoming clearer that even the ‘harm’ allegedly caused to smokers has been exaggerated beyond all reason and it is highly likely that this is a lie too, but decades of propaganda, to protect corporate interests, makes it much more difficult to expose.

  8. The smoking ban in the UK has not saved any lives, but has seen many injuries and deaths as a result of confrontations between people smoking and smoke haters or smoking ban enforcers.
    Women have been raped and killed simply because they had to go outside to smoke.

  9. Smokers are weak-minded and stupid to boot. They are essentially drug addicts who, in the main, are not strong willed enough to give up an activity that is slowly killing them (go ask your doctor if you disagree on that won’t you?). If Ben can do it, so can the rest of you lol.

  10. Why take out the short ‘Anti-tech’ video that educates the ignorant about the passive smoking fraud?

    It is a very informative and educational video that examines the evidence cited by anti-smokers as their ‘proof’. the creators of the video have expressly stated it is not restricted by copyright. I add it again but have removed the ‘http’ part in case that is the reason for its removal.

    http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdhzk1_the-anti_tech
    Here is another short video from the TICAP conference – a conference of leading scientists etc who strongly believe medical and scientific ethics and integrity should not be compromised to support a pre-determined agenda of prohibition.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSI1ZNpcWrg&feature=player

  11. What is wrong with you nicotine addicts?

    @ Jean Bridges. You can already smoke at almost 100% of venues. Certainly more than 25%. I’d be very surprised if less than 25% of cafes/restaurants/clubs have no outside space. You just can’t smoke inside and spoil it for the 75% of people who don’t
    smoke. How can that be unfair?

    @Mary Beker. Oh, so your “civil liberties” are more important than mine? What about my right to breathe smoke-free air in enclosed spaces? You’ve always had the terraces anyway, but it didn’t stop you smokers lighting up inside – spoiling it for everyone else. I can’t remember ever been asked by a smoker if I minded them lighting up in side.

    @Vellocatus. ETS “harm” is not a fabricated lie. It is backed by overwhelming evidence. It’s time you just accepted that because it’s not going away and the evidence just grows every day.

  14. Can you show us some independently verified proof for that Charles. That pubs are closing because smokers are drinking at home?

    Nothing to do with the fact that drinkers prefer to drink at home because supermarket beer is so much cheaper than pub beer is it? Nothing to do with falling beer consumption overall, perhaps driven by massively increased duty and taxes?

    I thought not… all the fault of the anti-smoking lobby. Don’t let a few facts get in the way of your story…

  16. Dur Charles. I used to manage (not own) a very successful real ale pub in the uk and part of that success was because it was non smoking long before the smoking ban. I used to have to go outside to smoke which I wasn’t keen on but the customers wanted it that way. The reason pubs in the UK close is because alcohol is cheaper in the supermarket, people have their own decking/beer gardens at home, food was poor or non existent, a gin and tonic was a tiresome cocktail, asking for more ice or lemon was an affront, good service was inconvienent, a yobbo “I’m ‘ard don’t look at me or I’ll glass you” atmosphere. Some good pubs close, some popular pubs close and the bad all close eventually. Good popular pubs don’t close. Do you really think that if no-one had ever smoked there would be no pubs?

  17. Few pubs closed before the smoking ban.
    Few pubs closed in previous recessions.
    Alcohol has been much cheaper in supermarkets for many years.
    Wetherspoons went smoke free, before the smoking ban, but lost so much money, they soon allowed smoking inside again.
    Most people now drink at home because they can drink, smoke and socialise in comfort.
    Before the smoking ban the majority of regulars were smokers.
    It is no coincidence that smokers are staying home far more since the smoking ban.

  18. This entire controversy can be avoided by requiring businesses that permit smoking to post a sign on the door that says so. Then, simply don’t go in there.

    Let the smokers have someplace to go. So what? Where I live, there are a few bars that routinely violate the smoking ban. (years after the ban went into effect) I simply don’t give them my business. It’s no big deal.

    If you are worried about cancer, then you shouldn’t be drinking alcohol anyway. Check with the American Cancer Society if you don’t believe me.

  20. Still no evidence Charles… oh and the duties and taxes were lower before the smoking ban and much lower in previous recessions…

    Erm spyglass you don’t seem to get the simple fact that if I take a swig of my usual poison it’s not going to give the person sitting next to me in the bar cancer – which smoking does.

    antismokers know “full well that outside will be the next target”? Sorry chris, if I had that kind of crystal ball, I’d be down at the bookies instead of wasting my time on this thread. Oh, and I’m not antismoker. I could not give a continental if you or anyone else wants to smoke. Just don’t do it around me or my kids. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

  22. guirizano,

    You don’t seem to get that your bad habits cost us all in healthcare costs. You can google “secondhand effects of alcohol use” to get more ways alcohol affects others.

    You also don’t seem to get that when you enter a bar, that bars is owned by somebody. It’s their bar, and if they want to require everyone to wear bicycle helmets in their bar, that’s their right.

    Just patronize bars that don’t permit smoking. That’s all you have to do.

    If you believe the second hand smoke hype, how often do you go to a doctor for a lung cancer check? You obviously have been exposed to it. You are at risk for life, therefore. Do you go to a doctor once a week for xrays? Your only hope is to catch it early.

  23. Gusano: You don’t need a crystal ball. All you need is to look at places that are farther down the road to antismoking lunacy. First, it’s separate sections indoors, then it’s out into the cold with the smokers, because tobacco smoke is so toxic it just seeps throught walls. Then the antismokers whine that they have to walk through a “cloud of smoke” by the door, so you have to be 30 feet away. Then it comes down to not wanting to even SEE anyone smoking. The eventual goal is criminalization and it really should be stopped.

  25. Sorry Charles, your link does not provide evidence for anything at all.

    Spyglass, I completely agree that when alcohol starts to have “secondhand” effects, then those need to be stopped, especially if it is a public health issue. Drinking in moderation doesn’t usually cause “secondhand effects” and it’s also not going to affect the person sitting next to the drinker in a bar/club/restaurant. You can’t say the same for tobacco smoke. You don’t seem to get that crucial difference do you?

    Oh, and if a bar is open to the general public and licensed to be so then I’m afraid it’s not the bar owners private place to do what they feel like. It’s not his private front room. The bar owner has an obligation to comply with relevant legislation. And if that means no smoking inside, then that means no smoking inside.

    I think you’re being a bit paranoid chris…

  28. guirizano,

    I am quite capable of exaggerating the effects of alcohol just as you are exaggerating the effects of tobacco smoke.

    I walk by a tobacco shop everyday, where tobacco is smoked inside legally. I have never been in there. I don’t feel deprived. I don’t resent the smokers for having a place to go. I simply don’t go in there.

    I don’t think you understand the concept of choice. You CHOOSE to go into a bar where there is smoking going on. You can CHOOSE not to.

    You apparently are not too worried about the alleged dangers of second hand smoke. I note that you have not stated how often you go to the doctor for a cancer check after having been exposed to SHS.

    All I can conclude is you are some kind of control freak who can’t stand the thought of somebody indulging themselves. If their smoking bothers you, just step away. That’s what I do.

    BTW, it will be interesting when marijuana is finally legalized how the second smoke from that is dealt with.

    Smoking is Healthier than Fascism.

  29. Spyglass,

    I don’t think I’ve exaggerated the effects of tobacco smoke. The dangers of tobacco smoke including ETS are well established. There’s nothing to add.

    You talk about choice, yet when smoking was allowed indoors choice was effectively denied to non smokers. The majority of people. It only takes one smoker to light up and everyone inside is affected. The way things are smokers can still smoke and indoors everyone is able to enjoy themselves.

    Control freak? No I don’t think so. I just want to be able to enjoy a meal or drink without your stinking tobacco smoke. If anyone is a control freak it’s you – trying to force your habit on others.

    Oh and I’m sure marijuana will be dealt with in exactly the same way.

    Yup, and not smoking is healthier than smoking.

  30. guirizano. The bars in Spain have lost 15% of trade within one month of their smoking ban. What would you put their losses down to?
    Ireland and Scotland, who introduced their smoking bans before England, saw a lot of closures in their first year. What would you put thoe closure down to?

  31. I still don’t understand. If you make a choice to go into a cigar bar, you are “forced” to inhale smoke?

    Again, if ETS is so deadly, how often are you going to a doctor a cancer check? It could strike you at any moment.

    That’s right, the healthiest choice is not to smoke or drink. Both are bad for you, and both cause cancer.

  33. What if you work in a bar and don’t want to smoke?
    All this whinging about the new legislation is pathetic. If you don’t like it so much and you think your ideas are so popular why not register to vote and change things at the ballot box? If you don’t, can’t or won’t vote stop your whining.

  35. “That’s right, the healthiest choice is not to smoke or drink. Both are bad for you, and both cause cancer”

    Exactly. You’re starting to get the picture.

    Oh and before the ban just about every bar allowed smoking. There was no real “choice”. Now there is. You can still smoke (outside) and the rest of us (the majority) can enjoy our cup of tea (inside) without your stinking fumes.

  37. guirzano. Wetherspoons went smoke free before the smoking ban, but reverted back to allowing smoking because they lost too much money.
    They gave non-smokers a choice, but even non-smokers didn’t support them enough.

  40. Smokers always present themselves as victims, and non-smokers as whining moaners, who have no justification.
    I have just returned rom holiday in Thailand staying at a hotel with a breakfast terrace, so guests could enjoy the morning sun. Most days that was spoiled by smoking foreigners, including a breakfast cigar smoker yesterday. Whether or not secondary smoke is bad for you (and it is) it is just unpleasant having a mouthful of breakfast, contaminated by smoke. Bit like having a picnic in your back garden while your neighbour has a smoky bonfire on the go.
    My ‘choice’ to avoid this would be to eat inside but why the hell should I be denied breakfast in the sun and fresh air, by a selfish minority who are unable to deal with their addiction-or even to admit it to themselves. ‘I can stop smoking anytime I like’ -yeah, tell that to the marines!

  42. Strangely, I have no problem with your link Charles, and if you read through to the end of the article instead of stopping at the bit about the 49 English pubs they made smoke-free, this is what Weatherspoons said:

    “Jim Clarke, the finance director at Wetherspoon, said it was premature to come to any conclusions about the smoking ban.”

    It seems you will only read the bits which suit you. And you have to agree that the picture was mixed at that early stage (August 2006) – to say the least.

    My Guardian link is from November 2006. I know you can find my links if you really want to, there’s something called “Google” which might help, but just to give you a clue, the headline is as follows: “Wetherspoon buoyant despite its smoking ban”

  44. Article from The British Medical Journal, 17 Jan 2011:

    A new study of the income of pubs and restaurants in Norway, which completely banned smoking in such establishments in 2004, shows that the ban has not had a negative long term effect on either type of venue.

    The study, published in the European Journal of Health Economics (doi: 10.1007/s10198-010-0287-6 ), concluded that “smoke-free laws do not affect restaurant revenue directly or as a share of private consumption [total consumer spending].” It adds, “There is some evidence for a short-run effect on pub revenue as a share of private consumption, but there is no evidence of a short-run effect on the absolute level of pub revenue and no evidence for a long-run effect using either measure.”

    But still, smokers will believe what they want to believe…!!

  47. Steve. Well done for finding ONE country where the smoking ban has had liitle effect on the pub trade. I can think of another, Iran. The majority of European countries who introduced smoking bans have seen a loss in bar/pub trade.

  48. …… never mind pubs and jolly bars >> non smokers are unconsidered b*st*rds – I am sure not even one of them is thinking about the loss of income for Oncologists and heart/lung specialists. It is proven by the Heart and Lung Associations worldwide that a smoking ban has resulted in closure of many, many golf and country clubs ……. Keep Smoking for a Free World ! Down with the Non Smoking Fascists ! Smoke On my Smoking Comrades We will overcome or Die smoking …..

  50. Steve: You wanted smokers banished from inside and they were. Then when you wanted to be outside the smokers were there and that annoyed you, too. Apparently everythign is supposed to be tailored to your comfort and liking and you are never supposed to have to give in to someone else.
    One thing I’ve notied about Antismokers is that no matter how many intolerant “victories” you achieve, you’re never happy.

  53. guirizano. We all believe what we want to believe, but some of us look at more facts than others.
    I believe that the facts show that majoriy of countries in Europe have seen a loss of trade in their pubs/bars, since their smoking bans. Do you?

  54. “I believe that the facts show that majoriy of countries in Europe have seen a loss of trade in their pubs/bar. Do you?”

    Of course I don’t. There is absolutely no hard evidence to suggest that.

    I suppose you’ll believe it though, just like you believe that “Wetherspoons went smoke free before the smoking ban, but reverted back to allowing smoking because they lost too much money” in spite of Wetherspoons themselves saying otherwise…

    We have not seen you provide a shred of evidence that the majority of countries in Europe have seen a loss of trade in pubs/bars due to a smoking ban.

  55. guirizano. England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, Spain and Holland to name a few that have lost trade since their smoking bans. How many European countries can you name that haven’t lost trade since their smoking bans?
    If Wetherspoons’ non smoking pubs were doing so well when they introduced a smoking ban before July 2007, why didn’t they make all of their pubs smoke free?

  56. guirizano,

    So I guess you are implying that bar owners are too stupid or stubborn to go smoke free on their own? To what reason do you attribute the fact that bar owner’s have nbot banned smoking on their own?

  57. Government statistics from the UK and Ireland show 11% of pubs closing in both countries.

    While we’re on the subject of evidence, let’s not forget that there’s no hard evidence that secondhand smoke is harmful, either.

    If a majority wanted smoke-free bars, wouldn’t they exist and, indeed, thrive without government intervention?

    Sharon: Japan has the world’s longers life expectancy AND one of the highest rates of smoking. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

  58. No Chris, it is ridiculous to suggest that I want everything
    tailored to my comfort and liking. But I just want to be able to breathe clean air-breathing is obviously essential while smoking is optional. If smokers want to contaminate there own lungs then that is their prerogative, but don’t contaminate those who choose not to smoke.

  59. Charles, you make assertions but never show any evidence for them. Please show us independent data which prove that any of the countries you mention have lost trade over the long term due to a smoking ban.

    Please read what Weatherspoons had to say themselves, and stop trying to second guess their business tactics or strategy.

    Chris, is that 11% entirely due to a smoking ban? What was the percentage of pubs closing before the ban. The majority did want smoke-free bars, and now they have them…

    Oh and Japan has about the same rate of smoking (24%) as most western industrialised countries. The life expectancy in Japan has been rising as the rate of smoking drops. It’s all relative anyway. So your statement is nothing but a red herring.

  62. Steve: I assume then that you neither drive nor go out into any area where auto exhausts (or anything) else might be polluting the air. Am I correct on that? Tell, me this: would you allow us poor disgusting smokers to have places we can go (clearly marked and sealed off, of course) where we can enjoy our filthy but pleasurable habit? That way you don’t have to see or smell us and we don’t have to hear your fake coughs or observe your prune-faced disapproval?

    Gusano: Britain’s Antis keep trying to find another culprit for the closings, but it’s obvious that closings increased exponentially after the ban. Consult Pete Robinson’s blog at thepublican.com. You’ll see the numbers shoot way up in 2007 when the ban came in to effect.

    “The majority did want smoking bans…” The majority of whom, pray tell? The majority of antismoking fanatics? Did the “majority” get to vote on it? Once again, as you seem to have trouble grasping a basic socioeconomic concept: if the majority of pub customers wanted smoke-free pubs, they would exist without a law and be in the majority because pub owners would ban smoking on their own to accomodate their customers. Fact is, the majority of bar patrons are either smokers or tolerant nonsmokers.

    Japan may have a similar rate of smoking to Greece and Austria (which, BTW, have longer life expectancies than antismoking Britain and the US), but it’s fairly high and their culture is extremely smoker-friendly. So if everything’s relative, smoking has no bearing on life expectancy?

  64. “You know full well that pubs in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland have suffered since the ban or do you deny this?”

    No I don’t deny that they have suffered since the ban. They were suffering before the ban too and it got a whole lot worse when duty spiked upwards at more or less the same time as the ban. From the evidence I have seen the fall in ontrade beer sales has a whole lot more to do with the rise in duty and competition from supermarkets than the smoking ban.

    You have still failed to provide any evidence for your assertions Charles. You are the one making them, you back them up!

    Chris, I guess you “pros” won’t let facts get in the way of your rants. I suppose increased duty had nothing to do with, apart from the fact that pubs were closing before the smoking ban. There’s been a longstanding trend of pub closures. The majority? Well considering more than 70% of people (in Spain or the UK) don’t smoke I’d say that’s a majority.

    “smoking has no bearing on life expectancy” Are you being serious Chris? Like I said, don’t let the facts get in the way…

  65. Gusano: Are you really saying that people stop going to pubs just because prices go up? I guess from your previous comments you’re also a non-drinker (and perhaps anti-alcohol to boot? So virtuous!) so you don’t quite understand the culture of what you’re talking about. Unless prices rise dramatically, it doesn’t deter people. However, people will stay away if something about a venue ( the crowd, the management, the quality of the beverages or food) makes it noticeably less enjoyable. Having to stand outside for a cigarette is one of those things and many British and Irish smokers have discovered you can get drunker cheaper at home–and enjoy your smoke as well. Not to mention the fact that the Labour Party pulled a bait-and-switch on the British public and claimed the ban would only apply to places where food was served and then reneged once in office.
    Your logic is faulty when you assume that those who don’t smoke automatically favor a ban. Once more (you’re also quite a slow study, by the way), if a majority of bar customers had wanted smoke-free establishments, they’d already be in existence without neo-Franquista social engineering by the State.
    I was making a natural assumption from what you’d written, but let’s say that smoking has much less bearing on life expectancy than standard of living and access to health care, as the examples of Japan, Germany, Switzerland, France and many others indicate. Apparently your hatred of smoking blinds you to anything else.

  66. Well, New York City just banned smoking in parks and beaches, so you can see what is in store for Spain.

    Not all bars lose money after smoking bans. It depends on their particular range of customers. But many do, and when they do, business drops off up to 40% until it comes back months later, if it does. Many bars resort to raising alcohol prices to make up the difference but not all bars can get away with that.

    I feel sorry for bar owners and workers in Spain. Many of them are looking at a tough few months in these hard times, thanks to the control freaks.

    Those of you who support these bans might want to consider leaving some big tips to help them out.

  67. “Are you really saying that people stop going to pubs just because prices go up?”
    Yes, Chris, that’s what the evidence suggests and especially since beer in pubs costs a lot more than through other channels. Not to mention breaking the tie, drink driving laws being tightened up (country pubs), more home entertainment options (funny how broadband became more widely available in the UK just about the same time as pub closures accelerated).

    “I guess… you’re also a non-drinker”
    You guess wrong Chris, and I love going to the pub even more now that I don’t have to breathe smoky air.

    “Unless prices rise dramatically, it doesn’t deter people”
    The opposite seems to be happening Chris, people are buying their beer through the cheaper channels and overall alcohol consumption in the UK has started to fall. Nothing to do with duty spiking upwards in about 2006 I suppose?

    “smokers have discovered you can get drunker cheaper at home” Yes, and non-smokers have discovered this too.

    “Your logic is faulty when you assume that those who don’t smoke automatically favor a ban” Just as faulty as yours is when you assume that all smokers don’t favour a ban.

    Yes, the majority of people did want smoke-free establishments but owners were too fearful of losing trade to make the change and the vociferous pro-smoking lobby with their “freedom of choice” red herrings put owners off even more. All it needed was a legislative push. In a decade from now everyone will be wondering what the fuss was about. Nobody complains about not being allowed to smoke on planes and was there a sudden drop in the number of people flying because the could not smoke on board any more?

    “Apparently your hatred of smoking blinds you to anything else.” Yes, I do hate it when a smoker makes a choice for me. Why can’t I enjoy that meal/drink or club without having to breathe smoke? So much for “freedom of choice”. And don’t try the “oh well you could just go somewhere non-smoking” because in practice those sorts of places did not exist for the reasons I have given above. At least I’m not blinded by an addiction to nicotine.

    Does it drop off exactly 40% spyglass? I know of some bars in my town where takings immediately when up after the smoking ban…

  68. “Well, New York City just banned smoking in parks and beaches, so you can see what is in store for Spain.”

    Excellent news, lets definitely ban smoking on beaches – I mean who wants to sit in sand filled piles of butt ends? Answer: smokers do, of course.

    Its so funny to watch the smokers’ arguments slowly destroyed on this thread.

  69. This argument is a waste of time as the smoking ban isnt really being enforced in Spain. Yes nobody is smoking inside bars but terreces which are covered and enclosed yes which is the same thing. I went to my local police station and the town hall to ask about the law for outside terreces to be explained to me but got 4 different answers from 4 different people so who knows what to do. To give you example of how stupid it is there is a bar next to my daughters school which has its terrece completly enclosed (no free air), kids inside when smokers are smoking and is within a 100m of a school yet nothing is done about while they break the law 3 different ways. To make matters worse twice everyday the local police stand outside this bar to direct the traffic no more than 2 meters from the door. Smoking is also banned in football stadiums yet during the Valencia match last monday the president of the club sat in the stand smoking, pathetic. Spain will never change but really hasnt got the ability to change. I wish i never came here and i wish i could turn out the light when i leave.

  71. Gusano: you continue to talk circles around yourself. You claim the majority wants no smoking establishments but owners are afraid of a “vociferous minority” (as if the anti-smoking lobby weren’t exactly that!) and they’re too stupid to see what a majority of their customers want? OK, so now that we’ve seen smoking bans “work” (at least their proponents claimm they do), make it optional. Who will kill the goose laying the golden egg and go back to allowing smoking? Unless, of course the reverse is true and the public doesn’t really favor enforced wholesomeness in all spheres, especially “adult” ones like bars. The reason nonsmoking places that would suit you didn’t exist is because you’re in an extremely small but well-funded minority. What on earth would you do without money from Bloomberg and J&J?

  73. OK, so now that we’ve seen smoking bans “work” (at least their proponents claimm they do), make it optional. Who will kill the goose laying the golden egg and go back to allowing smoking?

    I think that’s a brilliant idea. I completely agree.

    Oh and by the way, most adults don’t smoke, so a smoky atmosphere being “adult” really does not make sense. And you talk about me “circles around” myself…

    I’m in a small and well funded minority? Erm, I don’t think so. Seventy percent off the adult population does not smoke, that is not a minority, it’s not small and I really can’t see how it would be well funded.

    “What on earth would you do without money from Bloomberg and J&J?” Huh? What have you been drinking chris? J&B?

  75. If a ban on smoking was so popular why was it that only Wetherspoons tried going smoke free before the ban?
    If the smoking ban is now so popular then surely nearly all pubs would stay smoke free?
    Let the market decide.

  76. Unfortunately the market was not allowed to decide Charles, because big tobacco and the vociferous pro-smoking lobby had a stranglehold on things – and since when did we have a truly free market, especially in Spain? For many years. Non smokers just had to lump it. It finally took a little legislative push, and hardly an onerous one. You can still smoke outside venues, just not inside. Hardly a hardship is it?

    Chris above suggests withdrawing the legislation once people get used to the idea that. I completely agree. Very few places will go back to being smoking. I’m certain of that.

    Wetherspoons were preemting the ban, that was well publicised. Oh and I take it you still refuse to accept what Wetherspoons themselves said about the performance of their non-smoking pubs. Here’s that link again, perhaps it will work for you this time…

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/nov/02/smoking.money

  78. Thing is, anti-smokers lie, cheat, deceive and ‘spin’ – they have done for decades, and the Wetherspoon’s (anti-tobacco supporters) case is no exception!

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/mar/04/health.smoking

    ” JD Wetherspoon ends no-smoking trial”
    “· Proposed ban in 630 pubs is scrapped”
    “· Chain sees profits plunge as customers rebel”

    Let’s look at how the ‘spin’ works;

    In March 2006 JDW has 49 non-smoking pubs and 630 smoking pubs…….. YES – 630 SMOKING PUBS!!

    “Profits from 37 pubs that were converted to non-smoking dropped by 20% for the three months to January 22″… BUT in November those same pubs (WHERE PROFITS DROPPED BY 20% in 3 months) – NOW miraculously become the best performing pubs in the group!!
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/nov/02/smoking.money
    ‘Creative accounting’ ? – I would never suggest such a thing! Then;

    “JD Wetherspoon reported an increase in first-quarter sales today, despite its move to make its pubs smoke-free ahead of a ban on smoking in England next year.”

    Can you see what they did there? To the casual reader, how many JDW pubs were ‘smoke free’ pre-ban?

    Think about this and use a bit of common sense!

    Wetherspoons have indeed had a degree of success, they have only lost almost half their share value from 800 pence pre-ban to 450 pence today.
    However, other pubco’s have been devastated AND their decline starts at almost the exact same time – mid 2007!
    For example;
    Punch; Share Price from around 1400 pence pre smoke-ban to under 70p now!
    Enterprise Inns; Pre-ban, nearly 800 pence – now just over 100p!

    Smoke bans devastate the hospitality trade, and ‘anti-tobacco’ is the most despicable and untrustworthy cult in existence today. As they say, the evidence is IRREFUTABLE!

  79. Once more, Gusano, just being a nonsmoker doesn’t mean one as an ANTIsmoker, and yes I’m aware there are pathetic individuals (the media always seems to find them) who want to quit smoking but don’t have the strength of character to doso on their own and so think that if Big Brother steps in it’ll be easier.
    “Non-smokers just had to lump it” Really? They couldn’t approach their bar owner and express their desire for smoke-free space, and, like the loser ex-smoker wannabe above, need the Nanny State to jump in? If there truly are a majority of you, you’re an awfully wussy majority.
    It may well be that very few places would allow smoking again once the ban is lifted, and that would also be fine with me–those places would get my business and there’s still be more than there are now.
    It’a a well-known fact that deep-pocketed anti-smoking interests like Michael Bloomberg and Johnson & Johnson fund antim-smoking legsilation. That’s how it gets passed. Since you admit that what you think of as the antismoking majority is too lacking in testicular fortitude to express their wishes to their local landlords, you don’t seriously think antismoking is a grass-roots movement, do you? I only WISH the supposedly all-powerful tobacco companies would protect the rights of their customers, but no such luck; they’re enjoying record profits as all this “forbidden fruit” free advertising actually drives the smoking rate UP in places like Ireland.
    J&B?? If I drink Scotch at all, I drink single malt.
    Maybe one reason pub attendance is down is that the only people there now are smug, superior types like yourself, Fred and Mark.
    Apparently you also fail to appreciatre the difference between an airplane and a pub. Here it is: in many cases air travel is necessary, and no one todya expects it to be enjoyable, anyway. Pubs visits are not mandatory, and when they stop being enjoyable, people stop going.
    Mark: maybe the Spanish police realize that their job is to serve the people and not to enforce unjust laws. Or perhaps they have more important things to do and don’t interfere until some pecksniff calls them and whines.

  80. You obviously don’t live in the real world Vellocatus. Everything doesn’t go in straight lines. Things go up and things go down.

    March 2006 the Wetherspoons “experiment” not looking so clever but that was early days.

    November 2006 and it’s obvious that their experiment is a success. The non smoking pubs doing very well. Yet you try to “spin” it as “creative accounting”.

    By July 2007, with smoking banned in all their pubs, it’s obvious that this has done the Wetherspoon’s business no harm at all. In fact it’s done their business good.

    http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/leisure/article2100100.ece
    Has it not occured to you that the pubcos are being hammered because of a spike up in duty around the same time as the smoking ban? Add that to long term declines in beer, and even alcohol, consumption and a long term trend of pub closures. Isn’t it interesting that the acceleration in pub closures was in 2007, when the duty shot up. That’s what the publicans themselves say:

    http://www.beerandpub.com/documents/publications/industry/Beer%20Briefing.pdf

    Don’t let facts get in the way of your frothing-at-the-mouth rant Vello…

    Oh an the only IRREFUTABLE thing in this equation is that tobacco smoke kills.

  81. “guirzani. What on earth has big tobacco got to do with publicans deciding if their pubs should be smoke free or not?”

    About as much as the “anti-tobacco lobby” has to do with medical science.

    I’d be a rich man if I got a quid for every time some ranting nicotine-head addict wrote that the vast mountain of epidemiological evidence that smoking causes disease and death is nothing but a conspiracy on the part of the lying, cheating, deceiving, spinning, “anti-smoking lobby”…

  83. “..epidemiological evidence” Kind of like “military intelligence.”

    Question; if the Wetherspoon’s experiment was such a rousing success, why did others not rush to copy it, thus proving once and for all that the drinking public wants sterile, smokeless environments in which to get tight?

  84. >Maybe one reason pub attendance is down is that the only
    >people there now are smug, superior types like yourself, >Fred …

    And long may it continue. I had a lovely meal and a few pints a couple of Sunday’s back, free of fumes. Pub was packed, and if someone wanted a smoke they went outside for a few moments. No big deal.

    Chris, have you been to see your Doctor and what does he/she say about your smoking habit? Is it good for your health? Is that really what you are saying? Whose fault is that you are addicted to nicotine?

    Lol, now watch Chris avoid the question. Waiting your answer regarding the Doctor’s advice, Chris…

  85. From all the above, this is a very emotive subject, surely it could easily be resolved by having non-smoking or smoking establishments so that the relevant factions can make their own choice without resorting to vindictive disagreements about who is right or wrong. I believe it is wrong for Governments to enjoy the revenue of a pleasure/habit, call it what you will, and then vilify it by banning it. Will they soon be legalising other drugs so they can earn a mammoth income by taxing them? Surely the people who smoke have more than paid for their health treatment in the extra taxes they pay (by their own choice). As Alf Garnett once said “I´m smoking for England”!! So come on guys let´s have a bit of tolerance for everyone and work something out.

  86. Why don’t you ask Wetherspoons Chris? Oh and I think the fact that the general ban came in shortly after they tried their experiment might have something to do with it.

    If you think epidemiology is like “military intelligence” I take it you are one of those who would treat a case of leukemia with a chamomile poultice to the forehead, the laying on of hands and a bit of chanting. No doubt you burn a stick of incense – just to be sure. And when your “treatment” fails you blame it on the fact that the patient “didn’t believe in it enough”. Personally I stick with science (which includes epidemiology, because it works – even if you don’t believe in it).

    Suzy, every establishment is already open to both smokers and non-smokers. Just as long as the smokers don’t smoke inside. Not exactly a hardship going outside occasionally for that nicotine fix is it?

  87. I see the ‘tobacco control’ useful idiots are still commenting on here, intent on getting the last word like some petulant child; wind them up and let them go with the brief that they can say any absurd thing as long as they are persistent with their cr@p and include a few propaganda hate slogans like ‘smelly addict’ etc . gullibility is essential, intellect is not!

    guirizano, It is clear you find rational thinking difficult but writing something for the sake of it, only serves to highlight your bull-headed stupidity. Apologies if I sound somewhat contemptuous of you and your gene pool – but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind! On the other hand Upton Sinclair’s famous principle may apply to you: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

    I think the majority of impartial readers can understand the Wetherspoons ‘spin’ (deception) even if you cannot. Maybe if you look really closely at the graph of the Punch pubco Guz, you may just be able to detect what has sealed its demise – (I won’t hold my breath).

    http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/2011/02/seriously-its-cruel-to-laugh.html

    Quote; “Isn’t it interesting that the acceleration in pub closures was in 2007, when the duty shot up.” Isn’t it just Guz! What you seem to be having problems understanding is what is ‘cause’ and what is ‘effect’. What could possibly caused the duty to ‘shoot up’ in 2007? Think about it – it isn’t THAT hard to understand! How would anyone react at a sudden and devastating loss of income, if the opportunity was there to ameliorate the situation by upping the price?

    Nice that you have also highlighted what the smoking community have been warning against for years – that smoke bans are NOT just about smoking – that there are OTHER objectives for the parasitic puritan element in our rapidly decaying society, like controlling what we eat (fatty foods, salt etc) and what we drink (alcohol). The campaigns against these ‘sins’ are well advanced as we speak. Fortunately the increasing resistance against righteous anti-smokers and the blueprint ‘WHO Framework convention on Tobacco control’ has prevented (for the time being) the implementation of the ‘WHO Framework Convention on Alcohol control’ – same insidious campaign, same use of fraudulent science, propaganda etc.

    Suzi,(and anyone who thinks it possible for any meaningful discourse with anti-tobacco), these brainless drones are typical of the tobacco control corporate mentality. Honesty, impartiality, tolerance, rational thought/deeds, compromise etc are all alien terms to them. Effective civil disobedience as we see in Spain, is the only ‘discourse’ they will understand!

  90. Gusano: But you’re obviously the superior intellect here, so I’m asking you.
    Given the statistical, social-science nature of epidemiology and the ease with which it can be manipulated for political ends, I place about as much trust in it as I would the faith-based methods you recommend for leukemia. Not to say it’s all crap, mind you.
    And to answer for Suzy, I don’t see why I should have to leave my drink and go out into the elements because of a small number of bigots who aren’t imaginative or enterprising enough to open their own drinking establishments.
    Fred: I smoke very moderately and swim laps regularly. My doctor has tested my lung function and found it to be “excellent”. My doctor never lectures me about smoking. Maybe he knows that whether or not one smokes is one mere factor in overall health, which seems to be something you don’t know. Before this little jihad, I smoked even less and under normal circumstances would advocate moderation, as smoking is not good for health, even though it may be enjoyable. See, there’s a balance…
    I guess it would be fashionable to blame the diabolical mind controllers at Big Tobacco for my “addcition”, but I must confess, I haven’t enjoyed smoking, or wanted to smoke, as much as I have since this whole ridiculous antismoking crusade started.

  91. 3
    If I was so boring, sooo long ago Ben and Fred, why on earth are you continuing to read what I have to say and then feel the need to make these inane one-liner comments? Are you just on here to make Guz look good? Beginning to realise that not everyone is as gullible and easily led as yourselves and that your gravy train is running out of steam?

    Oh, and If you need some doctor’s advice Fred – here’s one who hasn’t fallen for the anti-smoker deception. This one is about your tobacco control paymasters and how they ‘help’ smokers to become ‘quitters’. Unbelievably, some doctors are STILL prescribing this stuff!

    http://douglassreport.com/2011/01/31/Chantix-and-suicide/
    Don’t read it Ben – I expect you will find it a bit boring (ie you won’t understand – nor even want to)!

    Useful idiots is a compliment to you guys!

  92. @Chris

    What is so wrong with statistics? And what is so wrong with social science? The fact is Epidemiology is an evidence-based and you can’t get around that Chris.

    Politicians manipulate all sorts of things, it doesn’t make the epidemiology wrong. The medical establishment seems quite confident in the epidemiology around smoking.

    There is absolutely not a shred of evidence that “faith-based” methods are of any use apart from the placebo effect (which science-based medicine has anyway). Stick to your charms and incense sticks if you want to!

    Just because you have “excellent” lung function in spite of being a “moderate” smoker and your doctor (I thought you were into “faith-based” stuff?) has not raised the issue doesn’t demolish the weight of evidence that smoking causes disease, it shortens lives, it kills.

    What’s more if you want to take those risks, that’s your choice and your problem (if like the vast majority of smokers you suffer some detrimental effect). Just disabuse yourself of the notion that you somehow have the right to impose your choice on others!

    Nobody has stopped you smoking. Smoking has not been banned. Smoking indoors, in spaces open to the general public, has. And that is a perfectly reasonable thing.

  93. @Velocipede

    Cause and effect… can you provide some independent evidence which definitively links ALL pub closures to the smoking ban? Because that is what you are claiming. Some halfwit’s blogs don’t count as evidence of anything by the way.

    Duty is set by the government, not the pub landlords. And you call us idiots!

  94. >I smoke very moderately

    Good, then you can give it up more easily then Chris.

    >smoking is not good for health

    You are a lot more sensible than many of the smokers on here, and at least admit that smoking is not healthy. And therein is the issue; if smoking is not healthy, it should not be done around other people who do not smoke. That’s just common sense Chris, and I think, deep down, you know that to be the case.

  95. Well thankyou to that arrogant bar owner who thought he could defy the law. He has, by his protest, given it so much more strength. His premises have now been ordered to close, following his refusal to comply and fine of 140,000 euros has been imposed. If any other establishments were considering similar actions I doubt they will now. The smokers just don’t get it do they, or they refuse to get it. 75% of us don’t smoke, that is the majority and we live by democracy which is MAJORITY RULE. The 2006 law allowed for smoking in some bars, but the smokers took over every bar and resaurant and it was business as usual. This tighter law is the result of their selfishness. They only have theirselves to blame. Going out is now a joy, and I don’t have to wash my clothes and shower afterwards. If you packaged carcinogens in an aerosol spray and discharged it in a restaurant you would be arrested, this is what smokers do everytime they light up.

  96. >If I was so boring, sooo long ago Ben and Fred, why on >earth are you continuing to read what I have to say and >then feel the need to make these inane one-liner comments?

    I regulary post more than two lines in my replies. But seriously, your argument is so weak that it doesn’t deserve much of a reply, Vellocatus. I read this thread mainly for entertainment value you appreciate.

  97. Now that stupid man is saying it will take 4-5 years to get him to court, by which time HE will have changed the law.
    No by that time he will be bankrupt, if his smoking habit hasn’t killed him first. Smoking has not only damaged his health, it has seriously damaged his wealth LOL!!!

  98. Who are you trying to convince that you are not a stupid ‘useful idiot’ Guz – yourself or someone else? Ha! The former is easy but the latter, I’m afraid, is beyond your capabilities.
    Cause and effect – READ your previous comment, then READ mine – YOU have provided the evidence, but try thinking one syllable at a time and you may begin to understand, instead of trying to fallaciously interpret the content of my comments with crude use of the straw man!

    Not sure which blog you refer to Guz; Dick Puddlecote or Dr Douglass, but if either were to see your evaluation of them as ‘halfwits’ I’m sure they would be suitably flattered – that is high praise indeed when it comes from a gullible tobacco control stooge! I commend their writings and knowledge to anyone but on this occasion I’m sure that most normal people would have realised I was merely drawing attention to the Punch graph on Dick’s blog! In the Doctor Douglass case, Do you think that Chantix is a good or efficient way to eliminate those smokers you hate so much Guz?

    Guz: “The fact is Epidemiology is an evidence-based and you can’t get around that Chris”

    In reality, the fact is, epidemiology is STATISTICS based if you want to call that ‘social science’ Guz. We all know how statistics are manipulated to suit the manipulator – just like epidemiology. Even at its best and at its most impartial, it is very very imprecise. It is ‘circumstantial evidence’ at best, YET it is the ONLY evidence that anti-smokers can draw upon to ‘prove’ tobacco ‘harm’, so I can understand why your boss tells you to sing its praises and try to con the public into believing that it is real ‘science’!

    While the cult anti-tobacco industry’s deity will always be Hitler, Their patron saint is undoubtedly Prof Richard Doll who is credited with regenerating Hitlers anti-smoker campaign using epidemiology. His work is the foundation of the present anti-tobacco agenda.

    Here are a few quotes from Doll, who, with hindsight, seems to have realised and rues the ugliness he arguably instigated;

    “epidemiology is no science but an exercise in imagination”.

    “The effect of other people smoking in my presence is so small it doesn’t worry me.”

    and:
    As the amount of ‘smoke related’ cancers continue to increase year on year DESPITE the reduction in smokers;

    “It does look as if it’s the cancers that are principally caused by hormones that are not affected by smoking. Most of the other cancers throughout the body are induced by exposure to chemicals, often environmental ones”.

    Dare you criticize your patron saint guys?

  99. Fred says: “your argument is so weak that it doesn’t deserve much of a reply, Vellocatus.” – What you mean is you are unable to come up with a suitable reply! Ha! Not surprising really, when all you have to work with are anti-tobacco lies, deceptions and pseudo/false/fraudulent science, all steadily being exposed Fred!

    “I read this thread mainly for entertainment value you appreciate.” That is very accommodating of you Fred – nice of you and your co-workers to provide us with the laughs and entertainment, even though this has never been and never will be, a laughing matter!

  100. Jan; You applaud and wish to encourage the ‘tyranny of the majority’ and soviet style ‘show trials’ to oppress popular public opinion, when you know as well as I that the anti-smoker agenda is actually supported by very few people, who tend to be fanatics and nutters. Also, in mind numbing wishful thinking, you want to get people to believe that Spanish resistance to this BAD law is limited to ONE person and one premises? Give your gullible head a slap!
    http://frank-davis.livejournal.com/141961.html (Go on, Go on, give this blogger a compliment too – there are many others!)

    I look forward to the ‘You tube video’ showing showing state sponsored violence using jackbooted thugs to evict this ‘freedom fighter’ and his customers. Are you hoping against hope that this will be kept from a concerned Spanish public? How long before normal people everywhere will eventually have had enough of ugly people with an ugly mentality supporting an ugly agenda!

  101. Gusano: I have nothing at all against social science, I have a degree in it myself, nor do I really have an ax to grind against statistics, except how crashing dull they can be. I merely stated haow they can be manipulated and are thus not as inspiring of absolute trust as you seem to think. And I have never, here or elsewhere, advocated faith-based medicine. Don’t put words in my mouth. that’s an obvious and cheap tactic. But while we’re on the subject of the pacebo effect, you know that it works in lots of ways. For example if enough people tell you others smoking will make you ill, you’ll feel ill. Power of suggestion.
    Are you a doctor or medical professional? By what means to you presume to know what the “medical establishment” thinks? Last I heard, there was no single medical establishment and lots of “second opinions”.
    Lots of the more enjoyable things in life are risky and may shorten life. You may even enjoy some of them. And someday there may be some annoying, self-righteous campaign against these things too. If you’ll care to notice the health nazis are now going after alcohol and food using the same techniques of demonization and denormalization.
    “Smoking kills”. Can you name even one person whose death certificate says s/he died from smoking? Don’t forget, “alcohol kills” to as do most foods that taste good…
    And besides the bulk of yoru whinging (and that of msot other antismokers) is how unpleasant you find smoking, not how unhealthy. If you haven’t noticed, it’s not the government’s job to create a pleasant environment for you.
    The perfectly reasonable thing would be separate smoking and non-smoking spaces. If you were agitating for that, I’d be with you. But,noooooo–you had to be greedy!

    Fred: no intention of giving it up. Some things are worse than bad health and letting small-minded lifestyle fascists dictate to everyone how they’ll live is one of them. I also don’t believe smoking has any appreciable effect on nonsmokers. That’s superstitious nonsense.

  103. Fred: Accepting unjust/unreasonable laws is hardly a grown-up thing to do. If people had had that attitude back in the 1920s, wwe might still be stucek with Prohibition. To the contrary, “just because I said so” is the hallmark of the tyrranical parent seeking to thrwart maturity.

    I encourage you to visit the website of any anti-alcohol organization and see how familiar the rhetoric is to that of Antismokers. They also have something the smoke haters don’t have and that’s a list of actual victims–innocents who lost life or limb due to someone else’s drinking.

    Are you saying we’re going to ban anything that “travels through the air and into other peoples (sic) lungs”??? Like auto exhaust? Pray tell, when are we banning cars? I’m sure a devotee of clean air like yourself doesn’t drive one of the filthy things, do you?

  104. Remember Fred – Passive smoke ‘harm’ is a fraudulent statement – It is (according to many studies) beneficial to children as YOU well know. Public figures are lying about smoking harm – get your brain into gear and wake up.

  105. Really Chris!
    All this talk about ‘Grown up’ attitudes is really amusing. Babies have dummies, and to see all these so called ‘grown ups’ standing outside in thge cold with their smoking ‘dummies’ just makes me feel sorry that they have not been able to live their lives without this crutch. They are victims and they want to mske victims of us all. I don’t smoke because I don’t like the look, the smell or the harm it does to both my health and my wealth. I am a grown up. end of.

  106. Oh please Chris! How can not being allowed to smoke in enclosed spaces be unjust or unfair? It’s perfectly resonable. You can smoke if you want to (outside) and the rest of the world can get on an enjoy their meal/drink/dance. And please don’t try and put car exhaust fumes on an equal footing with smoke indoors. With someone smoking outdoors, fine, but not the same as being forced to breathe someone’s smoke indoors.

    If you don’t have a problem with social sciences, why did you bring it up in the first place?

    You never advocated faith-based “medicine”? Well these were your words in reference to exactly that: “Not to say it’s all crap, mind you.”

    And please stop muddling politicians twisting things to suit their own needs with peer-reviewed science published in reputable journals. The epidemiology could not be more clear regarding tobacco smoke and it’s effects on health. Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to mislead. Smoking does not kill, but the diseases which smoking triggers do kill – so that’s what you’ll find on most smokers death certificates. It doesn’t change the fact that smokers are way more likely to die earlier than the average.

    Vellocipede, Perhaps you could give us links to these studies which say ETS is beneficial for children?

  107. “Are you saying we’re going to ban anything that travels through the air and into other peoples (sic) lungs??? Like auto exhaust?”

    Chris, I was talking about alchohol, which is a liquid btw, and cannot be transmitted in the same way as smoke. Do you understand?

    Anyway, this is a law concerning public places, where people congregate. When I am in a bar or restaurant I am not sitting right next to a car exhaust lol. Can’t you comprehend the difference? Silly question, you can never change someone who is in denial.

  108. Jan: Well, we all have our “dummies”, don’t we? Some of us smoke and others console ourselves with delusions of superiority and self-righteousness. You are most certainly NOT a grownup if you insist on dictating to others how to live their lives if they don’t fit in with your simplisitc image of what is right.

    Gusano: surely even someone as purposely thick as you can tell the difference between advocating something and saying it’s “not all crap”. BTW, is English your first language? If it isn’t, I apologize for using vocabulary that might be a challenge and will try to use simple and easy-to-understand terms from here out.

    I, like millions of other smokers pay taxes–more taxes than nonsmokers, in fact and so we have rights. Included in these is the right to assemble and enjoy ourselves in comfort. Any law that totally denies us this right is unjust. Furthermore, it’s a really bad idea to let government get involved in the business of interfering with social life. Now, if you hate smoke so much, I assume you only socialize with other smoke-haters, right? So get yoruselves a bar where you predominate, get them to ban smoking and voila! you’ve got your smoke-free paradise to which you can retire and leave the rest of us alone.
    I see that you haven’t done your homework about outdoor smoking: as soon as everyone’s forced outdoors, the Antis shart to whinge that they have to navigate “clouds of smoke” generated by the very people they were so keen on forcing outdoors in the first place and the proceed to whine that further restrictions are needed. I’m willing to bet you’ll be one of the first. Just scroll up a bit to Stevie’s post of January 30th, in which he complains of being unable to enjoy his brekkie on an outdoor terrace because the smokers are out there–where he demanded they go!!!
    Come on, guys, at least be honest: you don’t care about air pollution, litter, danger to health or any of it from any source other than smoking.
    Plus, you never said anythign about indoor/outdoor in your original post.
    I don’t have a problem with social sciences, I merely pointout how easily they can be manipulated (“hard” sciences can too) in the service of ideology.
    If smokers do die earlier than nonsmokers, it kind of negates the whole fairy tale of secondhand smoke and how smokers are killign hordes of innocent bystanders, doesn’t it? Certainly the smokers of Japan live on the average longer lives than the nonsmokers of certain neopuritanical western nations I could name…

    Fred: With the proper amount of funding, media hype and collaboration from members of the research community, I’m sure it could be established that alcohol fumes are breathed in by innocent bystanders and poison them. Presto: secondhand drinking. There’s already sceondhand obesity, so don’t count it out.
    No, you can’t change someone who is in denial over his gas-guzzling, planet-destroying vehicle. Go green!

  110. (aka Suzy).. I am appalled at the amount of vitriol and downright personal rudeness generated by this topic. As previously, why is it not possible to moderate the out and out ban and have smoking and non-smoking premises, thus allowing the various factions to select where they go for entertainment and enjoy themselves in their chosen venue without vilifying one or the other. If smoking is so bad than why is it not banned altogether along with other Class A drugs eg Cocaine, Heroin etc., probably because the governments enjoy a “healthy” (pun intended) revenue from it. I have no axe to grind with smokers or non-smokers, both sides have valid points to make but come on guys, let´s see a bit of tolerance from you all.

  111. Jan: what you desire is not clean air, but air with no evident tobacco smoke. If you want truly clean air, have yourself sealed in a plastic bubble. You don’t like smoke and want places to go in which it’s not present. That, in and of itself, is not dictatorial. What is dictatorial is your apparent desire that every single place conform to your wishes. Correct me if I’m wrong on this account, but I’ve yet to hear an Antismoker acknowlege the rights of smokers to their own spaces. I’m convinced that the primary motivation for many of them is not smoke-free air, but denying smokers enjoyment.
    So, how about it? Will you support a separate-but-equal system? And if not, why not?

    Suzannah: I couldn’t agree more and have always been willing to compromise.

  112. ‘Grown up’ are you Jan? really? Listen to your gullible self and give your head a shake for goodness sake! You’re as deluded as Guz claiming he isn’t stupid! I’m sure Freud has a theory able to explain your collective mental turmoil.

    I know that the perverted mind of an anti-smoker is unable to comprehend this, but anyone who quits smoking in todays climate of stupid self-righteousness is obviously of very weak character. You all seem to have a deep seated jealousy of smokers tenacity in their refusal to respond to your anti-smoker coercion, and their resolve in the face of bigots and bullies who are so easily manipulated like yourself?

    Let’s not forget that most smokers have just stayed away from those places where they are not welcome anymore … and your kind never had any intention of replacing them; http://www.thepublican.com/story.asp?sectioncode=16&storycode=69085&c=3

  113. Guz
    Still reading from the script you have been instructed to repeat by your controllers, and ignoring everything else including overwhelming evidence of the anti-smoker fraud! Myopic and arrogant bluster!

    SHS is Beneficial to children! One such study finding was pointed out in the short film I linked to earlier;
    http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdhzk1_the-anti_tech

    But here is a link to that large WHO, 12 center, 7 country, European study (That was withheld from publication!!);
    http://www.data-yard.net/2/12/1440.pdf

    “Conclusions: Our results indicate no association between childhood exposure to ETS and lung cancer risk… Odds ratio [OR] for ever exposure = 0.78; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.64–0.96.”
    (an [OR] of 0.78 = beneficial effect)

    Remember also that much of the evidence that proves SHS is harmless is contained within that peer reviewed science to which you refer Guz, but we need to look beyond the limitations (as explained earlier) of epidemiological research, at the wider picture to understand the anti-smoker fraud.

  114. Fred quote; “When I am in a bar or restaurant I am not sitting right next to a car exhaust lol.” –

    If you CHOOSE to go to an area where smokers congregate – you would be exposing YOURSELF to tobacco smoke – BUT if you are so frightened of tobacco smoke- you would avoid those places and congregate where other neurotic non-smokers congregate! It is called choice and personal responsibility – do you understand Fred! Oh, and diesel smoke KILLS, according to some scientists – and you driving your 4×4 down the road affects others far more than that whiff of tobacco smoke!

    http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/diesel_lung_cancer.html

    The hypocrisy of you people is unbelievable!

  115. When someone resorts to the ad hominem it’s a sure sign that they’re losing the argument Chris. No need to get personal.

    As for you paying taxes, well the tax your tobacco earns the state doesn’t even begin to cover the added healthcare costs treading smoking related diseases. Non-smokers pick up the difference. And since when was your “right” unlimited? There is no such thing as an unlimited right. Your right is limited by our right to breathe clean air in enclosed spaces. Get used to it because our right is not going away.

    Oh, that really is scraping the barrel Vello. The mockumentary you linked to there falls at the first hurdle, tripped up by Godwin’s law. Oh and I don’t see which independent peer-reviewed journal your smoking is good for kiddies “study” was published in. Nor any of the other studies mentioned for that matter. And if a study is withheld from publication, that should tell you something, but no, I’m sure you’ll see it as some sort of anti-smoker conspiracy. Laughable!

  116. taking the liberty to quote from Wikipedia:

    “Vellocatus was a 1st century king of the Brigantes tribe of northern Britain.”

    – well he seems to have lived quite long smoking away all those days but I dare say his personality hasn’t really developed a lot since birth …………..

    Vellocatus it might be a personal victory to join the 21st century and accept some modern insights

    on the other hand who cares keep smoking but please do it in your own tribal dwellings ……….

  117. The hypocrisy of you smokers is unbelievable! First of all, the majority of people do not smoke. Smoking is a habit, an addiction, with health consequences, as any Doctor will tell you. Restauarants and bars are public places, so smokers definitely have to have be the ones who need to be controlled and removed, indeed it is amazing to me that this was never the case to begin with. You’ve had it good for a long time Vellocatus, now it’s the non smokers turn.

  118. I got fined last night for not following the smoking law. Of course i wasnt aware i wasnt following the law as i had spoken to the town hall and Police to have the outside terrece bit explained to me. The info i recieved it seems was incorrect (suprise suprise) and although i seem to following the law a lot better than 80% of other bars in Fuengirola i have been fined. I have just driven the length of the seafront and would say even on a sunny day like today atleast 100 bars/restaurants are breaking the law far worse than i was (i say again “i wasnt aware i was breaking the law”) yet still are doing trade. This morning the bar next to my daughters school (20m away) was doing roaring trade with all its “toldo” and doors shut, add this to fact that it is within a 100m of a school (3 schools) and there were kids inside the smoke filled toldo, of course the Policeman outside the bar directing the trafic couldnt see this. As someone who follows 95% of the law here, pays tax, employs / contracts locals and really tries to do things right i feel i have really been really let down.

  119. A seperate but equal system was introduced in 2006. Not good enough for the smokers they wanted it all. Where there were smoking rooms they left the doors wide open so that their pollution could escape into the restaurant.
    Restaurants larger than the permited 100 sq m still allowed smoking, and children. Your fault smokers. if you had been fair, this new stiffer law would not have been neccessary. You weren’t happy to give non smokers a choice.
    NOW GET OVER IT. IT IS THE LAW. YOU FOUGHT THE LAW AND THE LAW WON.

  120. Jan 18th @2,28pm
    Funnily enough, I have never had any trouble finding non smoking bars and restaurants in Spain. Okay, there may be more that allow smoking but that is how supply and demand works, If there was a greater demand for non smoking bars then there WOULD be more of them.

    The 2006 smoking regs in Spain were always considered the best in the world, catering for all. It was widely known as ‘The Spanish model’ and held up as the ideal solution where tolerance, liberty and equality are considered desirable. That very success and popularity is why the fanatical parasites in anti-tobacco need to break the will of the Spanish people – for their selfish ends.

    I think you will find that the Spanish will not be broken as easily as say, the idiots in that ‘sunshine dystopia’, otherwise known as California (where most of this ‘healthist’ madness and social cancer originates). I would suggest that living under that earlier fascism is too fresh in the Spanish memory!

  121. Shaz 18th @ 12.05;
    I am flattered that my comments have inspired you to research my ancestry Shaz!! I started to research your name to reciprocate the compliment, but got stuck at ‘Big Mac’.

    Referring to me as ‘King’ is a too grand and a bit embarrassing though as I originated from humble stock and I was really only the Queens consort. Hey though, that wasn’t too bad as she was also a living goddess, with the beauty and a voracious sexual appetite to match – every red-blooded man’s dream. Of course, we didn’t have the testosterone enhancing effects of tobacco smoking back then and had to make do with oysters and the like as a aphrodisiac. Mind you, It is a little disrespectful to refer to our grand Royal Palace at Stanwick as a ‘tribal dwelling’

    For you to go to such efforts, I must have given you much to think about, which is in fact my intention; to raise awareness in those who labour in ignorance of the odious and egregious nature of ‘tobacco control’ and their ugly gullible followers.

    I wonder what ‘modern insights’ you refer to though Shaz? Debase characters and power hungry tyrants have always tried to impose their will on others throughout human history, based on greed and/or fanaticism. The anti-smoker campaign is similarly based but merely a bit more subtle. Fred demonstrates the corrupt mentality and how human weakness is exploited – quote; “… smokers definitely have to have be the ones who need to be controlled and removed …”(sic). Replace ‘smokers’ with ‘Jews’ in 1930‘s Germany or ‘N*gg*rs’ in 1960‘s USA and you can see why this is far from being a ‘modern insight’.

    Is it smoking bans that you think are ‘modern’?

    Well there have been smoking bans in C17th China, Mongolia, Japan; C18th France, and C19th USA to name but a few – ALL tried, tested and rescinded as a return to common sense has prevailed. Our present bans have their roots in 1930/40 Nazi Germany, with their use of misinformation, propaganda, pseudo and fraudulent science and the debase use of stigmatization, irrational fear mongering etc continuing to the present day.

    Anti-smoker nutters have been around for centuries and smoke bans are only ever regressive. Corrupting and exploiting genuine science is not a ‘modern insight’ to be proud of !

  122. Guz 18th @10.44:- “Godwins law’ (ie last resort – desperate comment); “healthcare costs” (Paid for 5 times over by smokers); “… if a study is withheld from publication, that should tell you something…” (I already know you have difficulty understanding the most basic of concepts, but the WHO trying to hide the truth (their own research) certainly tells me something, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with your ‘conspiracy theory’ straw man)

    Give it up, you are embarrassing yourself Guz! Trust me, we can see it today, but you will only realise with hindsight. It’s like gullibility – you live in blissful ignorance and only realise you have been taken in when, with the benefit of greater knowledge, you look back and curse yourself for being so stupid. You really need to update your knowledge of the anti-smoker fraud but you will never understand it while you only read the official propaganda – start here for some independent information and discover the evidence;: http://fightingback.homestead.com/

    By the way, are you all some new breed of Lord Haw Haw? “… Get used to it …”(Guz) : “… now it’s the non smokers turn.”(Fred) : “NOW GET OVER IT.”.(Jan) – sounds like you guys are getting desperate! As much as you may want it, closing your eyes to the evidence with fingers in ears going “LaLaLaLa” will not make it go away! The truth WILL out – so YOU get used to it!

  123. To Mark

    I am sorry you were fined if you were genuinely trying to get it right. The section of this law pertaining to children is going to be the difficult area. Folks will take advantage knowing that kids have no real voice, or financial clout. I have seen smokers in the terrace of Burger King right beside their childrens playground. The worse part is the congregation of smokers at then entrances to shopping malls, having their last gasp before dashing through the shops. Customers have to negotiate this pollution cloud, and those customers contain a lot of children. the malls place ashtrays right beside the doors which encourages this. The ban should cover car parks and entrances as it does for schools and hospitals.

  124. Well, I rest my case that tolerance is not forthcoming, as the antagonism caused by this topic continues at a pace. It obviously will run and run. After pausing to read through the entire thread again, I have to say the smokers do appear to have the better sense of humour and the anti-smokers appear to be more petty/childish (with a tad of smugness thrown in). As an ex smoker I can appreciate both sides but again would ask for tolerance of both parties if that is at all possible.

    Vellocatus – your passion is admirable and you are very amusing.
    Jan Saunders – you come over as a bit of a “bossy boots” saddo, I´m afraid.

    Keep going guys, this is very entertaining, even though I´m hoping for “peace” in the long run with everyone being satisfied.

    Once again, try and be

  125. “Fred demonstrates the corrupt mentality and how human weakness is exploited…”

    Here we go, we eventually got to the old “anti-smoking law is fascism” argument, which of course also means the pro-smoking argument has been totally lost by this time. It’s really quite laughable that you make that comparison, Vellocatus. A Jewish person cannot stop being a Jewish person, can they? But a smoker can become a non-smoker. And, you have other options e.g. smoke outside, or sit outside and smoke. You obey other laws, do you not?

    So desperate are you to force your will on others that it has affected your ability to reason logically. Keep going; you are destroying your argument far better than I can, and demonstrating how thoroughly ignorant you are at the same time lol.

  126. Suzana

    Not bossy, jus b****y angr. Watching my belove niece die from throat cancer aged 46. The mother of 12 year old twins. She never smoked, but was raised in a home of chainsmokers, she worked in a bookies, also a smokers den. Now she is paying the price for others ignorance. When I read the stupid arguments put here by smokers, I do get angry. I don’t apologise for that.

  127. My head is in knots reading all these differing comments about Smoking. SMOKING DAMAGES YOR LUNGS! FACT! I have seen Friends and Family with COAD ( Chronic Obstructive Airways Desease) DUE TO SMOKING! Some have given up and some carried on and take Medication whilst still smoking! It is so sad to see them suffering, but the saddest thing is seeing how it affects their family as the smoker can not do normal everyday things like walking, shopping, household chores and it is left for the CARER to do, while the Smoker sucks on his/her oxygen or Ventolin. I have seen this, and yes i did used to smoke but stopped several years ago. It is also pleasant to be able to go into a Bar and not smell of Tobacco right through to my underwear!

  128. Jan, that is very sad and I´m sorry for your loss. This quite understandably explains your vehemence against smokers, unfortunately it´s a hard habit to quit and, of course, some people don´t want to stop, they enjoy it. However, I still think that some compromise could be reached. We are lucky in Spain that it is mostly pleasant to sit outside but I feel very sorry for people in colder climates. Whilst in England during the heavy snow and freezing temperatures, I passed an old peoples´ home and was saddened to see a poor old lady sitting outside in her dressing gown having a cigarette. I think this sums up the inflexibility of the no smoking laws.

  130. Jan Saunders 19th@5.55pm
    Save the drama for your church play Jan, – more practice needed though!

    Jan’s insincerity is palpable and nauseating! The ‘touching’ note “To Mark” – (pat him on the head for being a REALLY good boy and praise him for fastening his shoe laces for the first time) followed by her ‘concern’ for the poor, defenceless little children had me reaching for the sick bag. This is compounded even further in her next comment where she exploits her own niece’s sad condition (throat cancer) to emphasize the hollow emotive plea to the gullible … and she is “angry” at all those “ignorant smokers” who think she and her kind are nutters … bless her!

    Jan is almost certainly a fully paid-up (or paid) member of the tobacco control movement and as such, she cannot possibly be unaware that Throat/Oral cancer is primarily caused by the HPV virus (found in many lung cancers too) but she persists in inferring that ‘passive smoke’, known to be harmless, was responsible;
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/oral-sex-can-lead-to-throat-cancer/article758334/

    “The same virus that causes cervical cancer is the principal cause of throat cancer, according to a new study.”
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/17/oral-sex-cancer-documentary-jaime-winstone

    “Rates of oral cancers have gone up by 50% in men since 1989 and are rising by 3% a year in women, even as smoking, once thought to be the major cause, declines.” (note the ‘even’ that is added to give the impression of surprise!)

    Anti-tobacco keeps repeating that smoking causes these cancers (and others) but REAL science says otherwise AND a vaccine has been developed to prevent HPV cancers; Why ? …. BECAUSE that marvelous ‘science’ called epidemiology (exposed earlier) has already ‘proved it – beyond doubt’ according to anti-tobacco! This of course, demonstrates to the rational mind the [in]validity of ALL anti-smoker ‘science’ and that just wouldn’t do, would it Jan!

    There is another reason too – another one learned well from their revered deity;
    “I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.” Adolph Hitler

    Here’s one for you to gloat about Jan It’s another one of them ‘whinging smokers-as-victims’ essays that you have no empathy with;
    http://frank-davis.livejournal.com/2011/02/19/

  131. This disingenuous concern for children’s health by Jan and anti-tobacco activists like her, is purely another emotive attempt to demonize smokers and frighten the hell out of parents and pregnant women. Most, if not all, recent ‘science’ relating to smoking has been corrupted by the anti-smoker movement. in general we know that passive smoke is beneficial to children, particularly relating to the more serious diseases. The frightening statistics on all those thousands of children who will allegedly die as a result of passive smoking is pure fantasy and one of many fallacious scare tactics;

    http://velvetgloveironfist.com/index.php?page_id=47

    I have already pointed out the Boffetta et al. study on cancer that discovered the statistically significant result that passive smoking is BENEFICIAL to children, but there is much more evidence that suggests this beneficial effect on children AND the unborn child.

    The most likely reason tobacco smoke benefits the future health of children is the ‘Hygiene Hypothesis’. It works in a similar way to immunization that often uses deadly but attenuated viruses to strengthen the immune system. Would you refuse your child the benefit of those child vaccines currently in common use?

    http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=32441

    We know that SHS is one of several ‘triggers’ that may induce an asthmatic attack, but child asthma has increased ‘manifold’ during the same period that smoking prevalence has been substantially reduced, is testament to the serious consequences of passively accepting dubious ‘expert’ advice.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12086081

    The issues relating to maternal smoking and fear-mongering relating to the health of the unborn child is also corrupted by inaccurate anti-smoker propaganda. Here is some information that ‘they’ don’t want you to see about maternal smoking; http://www.forces.org/evidence/hamilton/mat-smok/intro.htm

    Here is more of Hitler’s advice, propagated and followed religiously by tobacco control activists;

    “The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is PERCEIVED as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.” (Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler).

    We surely owe it to our children to question anti-tobacco claims! Their (and our) future health and individual freedoms are seriously threatened by an active invidious campaign being played out right NOW.

  132. guirizano, you are absolutely right, smokers can exercise their right outside, happily in the Spanish climate. My point was that some people are not able to do that, ie my example of the elderly, who, let´s face it are not about to give up smoking and it will not make much difference to their health at their age anyway.
    I give up on the argument, it is obviously too emotive, you either smoke, or don´t and never the twain shall meet.

  133. Oh here we go again, Vello desperately trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel again. Not a single link to a peer-reviewed study published in a reputable journal. The closest we got to that was the study they apparently refused to publish (all a bit Nazi anti-smoker conspiracy).

    The way he goes on you’d think we all get together at the local neo-Nazi anti-smoker club to sing the Horst Wessell lied.

    Keep it up Vellocipede. It’s amusing to read your rants if anything.

  135. Last night i was talking with 2 of my Spanish staff who would not have it that it was bad for a woman to smoke when pregnant. In fact one said that a doctor had told his sister it was better a smoke a little than get nervous from not as the axiety was bad for the un born child. Funny that both members of staff are smokers, i am still shocked that people think this way in 2011 and for a doctor to be giving out advice like that is a shocker.

  136. Now in spain doctors are not so anti smoking as uk primarily due to the fact that is not only smoking that can kill you its the combination of smoking , fast food full of trans fats and beer that will shorten your life . the meditteranean diet is the healthiest diet in the world so if you eat well and healthy have a glass or two of good rioja you can have a smoke without doing untold damage to yourself … its when you eat bad , drink heavy and dont move your ass that the smoking related illneses start. and thats a fact.

  137. Gusano: Well, some people are impervious to logic and reason, so winning the argument isn’t enough.

    Jan: So you’re saying that the 2006 law is fine as long as the doors to smoking rooms merely needed to be kept shut. OK, I’ll go for that.
    Are you absolutely sure your niece got throat cancer from being in smoky environments? Why do you suppose the chain smokers she lived with didn’t get it?

    Suzannah: I’ve never been to Spain (and until this latest antimsmoking law is tossed out, I won’t be going), but i think the idea that it’s all permanently warm and sunny is a stereotype and that necessitates indoor spaces. Never the twain shall meet??? Smokers and nonsmokers got along quite well until fairly recently, when a minority of antismokers decided to invent yet another way to divide people.

    Mark: do you have a medical degree? Maybe the doctor knows a bit more than you do. Maybe not all doctors are on the bandwagon. Maybe the antismokers are not really medical preofessionals.
    I’m fifty and my generation is the longest-lived in history and the majority of us grew up when people smoked everywhere. Unless excposure is concentrated and excessive, the idea that shildren or anyone is harmed by exposure to tobacco smoke is a crock.

  138. Chris, you seem to have missed my point, read my comment about witnessing in the UK an old lady sitting outside a nursing home smoking during heavy snow and freezing temperatures. This is totally wrong and cruel. As you haven´t been to Spain you cannot appreciate that the weather is usually temperate enough to sit outside and enjoy a smoke but my argument all along has been that there should be provision for smokers inside bars/cafes, where anti-smokers need not venture. Additionally, surely with modern technology there exist ventilation systems which could dispose of the smoke that causes so much offence. Never the twain, well this thread seems to illustrate the antagonism caused, although you do have a point in that everyone used to get along okay, although I´m sure the anti-smokers will say that it was forced upon them !! I am even older than you, smoked for many many years and can still climb my local mountains with the dogs each day, so not doing to badly health wise!!

  140. Suzannah: Yes, I can imagine that the Spanish climate is much more conducive to outdoor socializing than that of the UK, but I’ve heard there are parts of Spain (Galicia?) that get a fair amount of rain.
    These Antismokers further miss the point that lots of factors contribute to the state of one’s health. Exercise is surely one, so keep on climbing!

  141. Mark; If you haven’t realised yet, the current tobacco control strategy, is for a concerted push for OUTSIDE smoking bans. As New York’s Mayor Bloomberg, and one or two other vacant/compliant US politicians, begin to flex their righteous muscles, Jan thinks ‘the time is right’ everywhere else too.

    You should be aware by now that each insidious restriction anti-tobacco succeed in implementing is merely a stepping stone to the next. If you allow them to prevent smoking in your bars, then you can forget about the terraces – smoking will be prohibited there next! In fact if you don’t win this battle for your private property rights, it would be wise to get out of the trade altogether, if you can. If you don’t or cannot, your business MAY survive, but the odds are not good that it will. It is in the interests of NON smoking bars to join the popular resistance against the anti-smoker mafia too, working with a common purpose towards a common goal. They want to steal your rights as a property owners too and competition to retain the dwindling customer base will also affect you too, probably more so than present smoking pubs. You can easily revert back to non smoking when the ban is amended.

    Nice to see that Spanish Doctors haven’t been nobbled yet and are still free to advise their patients with their welfare in mind rather than that which is dictated by the anti-smoker agenda.

    It seems you haven’t read the link that shows the benefits of smoking for pregnant woman, so for your benefit;
    http://www.forces.org/evidence/hamilton/mat-smok/intro.htm

    “The babies of women who smoke during pregnancy have a better survival rate ounce for ounce, a somewhat lower rate of congenital defects, a lower rate of Down’s syndrome, a lower rate of infant respiratory distress syndrome and a somewhat lower rate of childhood cancer than do the babies of non-smokers.”
    Anti-smokers are dangerous for our children

  143. The casual reader will notice that guirizano has made quite a few comments, but if you look at the content of those comments he actually says very little. His comments consist almost entirely of bluster and attempts to void the arguments from the pro-choice and smoking community WITHOUT actually addressing the issues raised, (often referred to as truth avoidance techniques (TAT)) These techniques are commonly used by anti-smokers to avoid dealing with subject matter that would lead to embarrassment for them and the wider tobacco control movement.

    Is anyone conned by someone who ignores the facts – then claims he wants to see ‘facts’. What he means is he only wants to see ‘facts’ that he agrees with.

    How easy it is for the indoctrinated to avoid reasoned debate by labeling valid and searching arguments they don’t like as ‘conspiracy theories’, or shriek ‘Godwin’s law’, rather than try to deny the obvious connections and linear evolutionary ties from nazi propaganda and tactics, to anti-smoker propaganda and tactics!

    Fred is demonstrating again that a gullible weak mind can only produce weak pathetic arguments. (usually ‘one liners’, as pointed out earlier).

  144. Guz 22nd @ 8.26am
    Quote; “Not a single link to a peer-reviewed study published in a reputable journal.” You obviously haven’t even looked Guz? Stupid! Stupid! Your apparent obsession with ‘peer review’ is nothing more than an attempt to convince the layman that, somehow, only ‘peer reviewed’ information is reliable.- It may well be reliable sometimes, but the opposite can be true also.

    “…The over-expansion and domination of peer review in science is therefore a sign of scientific decline and decadence, not (as so commonly asserted) a sign of increased rigour. Peer review as the ultimate arbiter represents the conversion of science to generic bureaucracy; a replacement of testing by opinion; a replacement of objectivity by subjectivity. And the increased role for subjectivity in science has created space into which dishonesty has expanded.” (Bruce G. Charlton, Professor of Theoretical Medicine, University of Buckingham )

  145. Gusano: then you shouldn’t just swallow hook, line and sinker every engineered bit of hysteria spewed forth by the antismoking lobby. I do envy them in that the media just accept whatever they say and never question it.

  146. “Wanda Hamilton is an independent researcher for the Smokers Rights Groups”

    Totally independent then, lol. Can you send us some links about Area 51 and the new Loch Ness monster sightings as well please, Vellocatus?

  147. Vellocatus scraping the barrel once again, displaying his enormous capacity for ignorance. I don’t want to be rude about the University of Buckingham, but it’s not exactly a research university – and Professor Charlton’s is just one opinion. If most of the scientific community felt the same way then I think we’d be onto something, but they don’t. Keep on scraping Vello. You might eventually scrape right through and fall out the bottom of the barrel…

    Chris. I have actually taken the time to read most of the relevant scientific literature. Well as much as I can possibly manage. It’s pretty clear to me – having read the literature – that smoking is dangerous, it triggers fatal diseases, and no level of smoking is safe. No matter how much you bang on about the anti-smoking “lobby” and about how gullible all the anti-smoking lobbyists are it won’t change the facts.

  148. Fred, oh gullible one who apparently cannot read. The evidence on the benefits of maternal smoking is ALL correctly referenced from INDEPENDENT research – READ IT, you may learn something! I believe it was your mate Guz who said “When someone resorts to the ad hominem it’s a sure sign that they’re losing the argument”. Need I add more?

    Wanda Hamiltons CV and experience is no secret – it is published on the web: –
    Wanda Hamilton received an M.A. and completed three years of doctoral studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. In addition to teaching at three universities, she has worked as a journalist, a library specialist, and an administrator of a group home for adolescent girls. For the past nine years she has been an independent researcher and writer on scientific and public policy issues related to smoking and smokers’ rights. Wanda has appeared as a pro-smokers’ choice commentator on international, national and local television and radio. She is a long-time member of FORCES.

    Dare you expose YOUR allegiances/conflicts of interest Fred? While you’re at it can you send me the link to your psychiatrist?

  149. Guz, your posts (and Fred’s) get more ridiculous by the hour. What have I told you about embarrassing yourself!! Listen to yourself:- Not the ‘right’ University? Not the ‘right’ academic? Not the ‘right ’ Facts! Oh and then ‘consensus science’ – ‘everyone knows’ that 3062 scientists have to agree that ‘the debate is over’ before anything becomes ‘absolute fact’! FFS! As I say, you only like ‘facts’ IF they agree with your abstract thought processes. Galileo must be turning in his grave!

    Here is another view on ‘consensus science’:
    “I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
    Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics.” (Dr Michael Crichton)

    Before you reply, Yes, I know that there are a lot of consensus scientists who think that consensus science is ‘real’ science, agreed by consensus, thats why it’s called consensus science BUT Michael Crichton’s view is VERY VALID – consensus science is NOT science!

    The ACTUAL consensus amongst people with integrity is that anti-tobacco lie and deceive!

  150. Seen at El Engenio car park yesterday. in a car. Mum and Grandma in the front, small baby on grandmas lap. Granddad in the back with another small child. No child restraints (so expensive when compared to the price of cigarettes) and all adults puffing happily on their cigarretes. Even if it were not hazardous to the children’s health it is hardly a pleasant experience for the children to have to endure. Worse it is being inflicted upon them by the people they love and trust. I rest my case and will not be visiting these pages again as I know the foolish smokers will claim that the children enjoy it and it is good for them. It is not difficult to give up I gave up 24 years ago when my daughter was pregnant with my first grandchild. Her request was that she wanted her child to smell fresh and clean like a baby should, and have a Grandma to grow up with, not one to remember that died young fom a smoking related disease. I listened to her arguments and stubbed out permanently, and I thank her.
    Enjoy your arguments, I have better things to read.

  152. Gusano: you’ve just proved me right. Of course no amount of living is safe either! As the Russians say, “Don’t smoke or drink and you’ll leave a very healthy corpse”. BTW, have you read the scientific literature that doesn’t adhere to the party line?

    Jan: what a weighty responsibility it must be determining what’s good and bad for others and determining how they should live their lives to be in accordance with your beliefs. Those poor ignorant folks at the car park don’t even know how wrong their lives are! Hey, there’s a great idea for a new reality show: we’ll take a family of ignorant common people and give them a tailored cultural makeover by their betters. How’s “Nanny Knows Best” for a title?
    What a lovely daughter you have. Charm must run in the family. And how lucky your grandchildren are to have such elders!

    Fred: So those retreating from the argument are actually the victors? Curioser and curioser. “Execution first; trial later!”
    I don’t know how you can claim consensus has prevailed, when apparently a very large swath of society has not been consulted or taken into account. Oh, I see. The consensus is that of those who think like you and those who don’t simply don’t count.

  154. “you’ve just proved me right” What exactly have I proved right? If you don’t want to leave a health corpse, that’s your problem. Just don’t think that you can make that decision for others…

    “have you read the scientific literature that doesn’t adhere to the party line?” Yes, there are studies which find no effect, are inconclusive or find positive effects, but there is no escaping the fact that the vast majority of studies find that smoking causes disease, that smoking shortens lives and that there is no safe level of smoking.

  155. Gusano: I see you don’t get the joke. The point is the irony that a healthy corpse is still a corpse. Everybody dies, no matter how they’ve lived. It’s things like that that make me wonder if English is your first language. You needn’t be insulted.
    I recommend the “Le parisien” interview with Dr. Philippe Even, a noted pulmonologist of the Neckar Institute, aptly titled “On a cree un peur qui repose sur rien” (“They’ve created a fear based on nothing”).
    What you’ve proved me right in is that you’re a blinkered fanatic. And you parrot the party line perfectly!

  157. Yes Chris, everyone dies, it’s not rocket science, but why should many die sooner than they should from nasty diseases because people like you insist on subjecting them to your tobacco smoke. I really don’t have the strength to laugh my head off at someone choking to death from emphysema because they had to spend their working life behind a smoky bar etc. You really are not very funny Chris.

    Like I said. Not all literature toes the party line. Dr Even is just another example. It doesn’t change the FACT that an OVERWHELMING number of studies find that smoking shortens life, it causes disease and that there is NO safe level of smoking. Overwhelming.

    Like I said above. I have read as much of the relevant literature as possible and made up my own mind. You on the other hand have obviously made up your own mind and then gone out to find only that literature which backs up your position.

  158. Still at it then Guz; Your unsubstantiated drivel carries on unabated, perpetuating anti-smoker misinformation, propaganda and the ‘overwhelming’ “everybody knows’ sound bite, even when we know that 5 out of every 6 studies show ETS to be either beneficial or has no effect at all! Here is a list of most of the studies;
    http://www.velvetgloveironfist.com/index.php?page_id=33

    Prof Even, world-renowned pulmonologist, retired president of the prestigious Research Institute Necker in France is the ‘wrong’ expert presumably from the ‘wrong’ research institute again eh Guz?

    Okay, you will not accept any science that goes against your indoctrination – Hows about we look at this from a ‘common sense’ perspective? Maybe you could enlighten us and show where these hundreds of thousands of people that anti-tobacco ‘science’ promised would be ‘saved’ if we all became ‘quitters’?

    Fact is, Despite a substantial proportion of the population ‘quitting’, we have never had as many so called ‘smoke related’ deaths as we do today in the developed world. For instance, the incidence of lung cancer (new cases) in USA, according to American Cancer Society figures (that are NO LONGER available), INCREASED by nearly one THIRD (31%) from 2000 to 2008!! Compare this to US population growth over the same period of around 8%. AND the obvious conclusion of this is that : “The majority of lung cancer diagnoses in the United States now are either in people who never smoked or in people who have quit,” (Dr. Bruce Johnson of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute Boston)

    Because of the anti-tobacco campaign and stupid people unquestioningly perpetuating their myths, lung cancer is wrongly seen as a ‘self-inflicted’ disease caused by smoking and as such can easily be prevent by ‘quitting’.

    The really important consequence of this is that Lung cancer, the NUMBER ONE cancer killer, receives only around 5% of the funding that goes into cancer research as a whole!

    Are you too stupid to work out that this irrational obsession with a ‘smoke free’ utopia is actually putting YOUR health at risk and preventing the advancement of better public health?

  159. Like Christopher Snowden is independent Vello? I’m sure his list of studies has been very carefully picked.

    No, I didn’t say Prof. Even was wrong. Read what I wrote again, you might actually understand the second time around.

    And you are wrong. Smoking related deaths have been falling over the long term – in line with reducing rates of smoking. Eight years is hardly enough time to pick out a trend. Try 1950 (which is well before rates of smoking began to fall) to 2010. If you can find any data anywhere which shows that smoking related diseases or deaths have increased between 1950 and 2010 I’d love to see it.

    Keep going Vello! For our amusement if anything…

  160. Funny to see Vellocatus still thrashing about and losing the argument. Mind you, he does try very hard, what with all those careful links he provides to support his cause etc. I would say therefore, that he has an agenda, and is most likely under the wing of a smokers lobby group – an “astroturfer” in other words. For those of you who don’t know what astroturfing is, please see a recent article:

    http://bit.ly/eBr4R2

    The tobacco industry are strongly into astroturfing these days, and because Vellocatus is trying just a bit too hard with his posts, I’d wager this is what he is up to. You’ve been found out Vellocatus lol. OP please take note.

    Here is another link showing Vellocatus’s perfect world for our planet’s children:

    http://bit.ly/hDUcTh

    Nice eh?

  161. Gusano: I must’ve missed the news story about how bartending is the new white slavery and people are forced into it at gunpoint.
    I see you employ the tactic of demanding links and then pooh-poohing them when provided. That’s why I rarely bother.
    And I see that whan all else fails you resort to pretending to care for the health of employees. And accusing the opposition of working for the tobacco companies. And that old standby, invoking (cue the violins) “the children”.

    “Smoking-related deaths”: An increasing number of diseases are linked to smoking, some quite tenuously. Then anyone who dies of one is said to die of a “smoking-related” disease. The #1 killer in the US today is heart disease, which is “linked to smoking.” So now anyone who dies of it, whether they smoked or not, or spent any real time around smokers, still dies of a “smoking-related” disease and presto!–vast, impressive numbers to scare people with.

    I may not be funny, Guso, but you are–in an H.L. Mencken sort of way.

  162. My great aunty died of lung cancer, she had never smoked in her life. In fact lived a healthy outdoor life on the farm. Another great aunty died of a liver disease generally associated with drinking heavily, although she had never drunk alchohol in her life. If it´s in your genes, sadly you will get this stuff, makes no matter what you do to help it along. I have no scientific evidence to offer for this but smokers/drinkers take their chances according to popular propaganda, let them decide, some will live, some will die, as will everyone. Is driving a car so very much removed from the dangers of smoking?? Why do we explain the deaths of young athletes and yet old farts who smoke, drink, never exercise live on. It´s in your genes folks.

  163. “let them decide” Exactly Suzannah! Let them smoke outside and not indoors – that way they don’t get to decide for me (or anyone else who doesn’t want to breath tobacco smoke). I think that’s fair, don’t you?

    BTW, my great-uncle, a 20-a-day man, died at 62 from emphysema. It was a quite drawn out and not a particularly pleasant experience for him or those around him. Considering his parents, my great-grandparents both lived well into their 90s, not to mention his siblings who got to 89 and 90 (none of them smokers), I think he was slightly short-changed don’t you? Must have been the genes… surely not the tabs… Enough of the anecdotal evidence, it’s meaningless!

    I’ve never asked for links Chris, but simply for independent, peer-reviewed literature published in reputable journals. Several times. I’m still waiting. Even Vello with his veritable linkfest has not managed (apart from that one study “they” refused to publish) Oh and as you know (being such an expert in epidemiology), a single study doesn’t amount to much, but a meta-analysis would probably do, well for me at least it would.

    Violins cued, bows at the ready, so find me a single meta-analysis of the literature which points to smoking being good for children would you? Just one? Please… pretty please…

  165. @SIMON

    My outside terrace only had the front section of the “TOLDO” open and both sides were down (one side should also be up). The front of my Toldo is 14 metres long and side parts are 4 metres but this wasnt deemed enough. It seems the Police / Junta are only acting against bars that have had complaints against them (my complaint i’m pretty sure came from a bitter rival bar). Since i had my visit very little has change in Fuengirola except i am now it seems only one of a very small number of bars/restaurants following the law. If i had a Euro for every place i have seen breaking the law since my visit i would be very rich, it really is a joke.

  166. Guz; It seems that your plan is just to bore everybody to death with asinine and unsubstantiated comments. Just deny everything out of hand regardless. This is the main strategy of tobacco control when faced with challenges to their invidious ‘consensus science’. I refer you back to my comments on ‘consensus science’ (Feb23 10.35pm) and ‘peer review’ (Feb23 1.40pm) in relation to your continued insistence in quoting these as definitive proof that ‘the debate is over’. (they are NOT – it is NOT). As far as your ‘amusement’ is concerned – I don’t see you as being amused at all – you are floundering and your arguments are becoming increasingly desperate. How can you possibly be amused at this?

    If you have any evidence that Chris Snowden is anything other than independent, I would like to see it. If you want people to think otherwise, then it is incumbent on you to provide the proof he is not. He provides most, if not all, the shs, mainly peer reviewed, studies on spousal exposure. If you have any more please provide us with them. The same applies to the ever increasing tally of ‘smoke related’ diseases from 1950 onwards – Please provide us with the actual figures (Not those that are tainted and/or ‘adjusted’ – only used to cloud the issue) and where you obtained them from. While the ‘cancer epidemic’ was evident then, strongly believed to have been caused by the increasing use of asbestos amongst other industrial cancer causing pollution, there were far fewer in 1950. Let us not forget either that while ‘hard’ science can easily prove that substances such as tiny amounts of asbestos or irradiated material CAUSES cancer and other diseases, it cannot prove the same with tobacco smoke, despite years of trying! With the increasingly strict controls on asbestos and radiation sources, we SHOULD be seeing a reduction in cancers etc, that you claim for smoking, but this is not happening.

    I suspect the only studies you would support are ones like these;
    http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/01/anti-smoking-researchers-in-california.html

    I think you know, but choose to ignore, who carefully cherry picks studies to support a pre-determined agenda, and it is NOT pro-choice advocates!

    In addition, we must expose the claim that smoking has no advantages that decades of anti-smoker propaganda has brainwashed people into believing. This is only one example – there are many more that we can cover later if you wish Guz.

    Danish article outlining research into the mind-improving qualities of tobacco smoking;
    http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=da&tl=en&u=http://dengulenegl.dk/blog/%3Fp%3D2675&rurl=translate.google.com&twu=1&usg=ALkJrhgVD4kztE9MIsY3ioZJafpjKGQTkg

    Extended further and developed by Frank Davis:
    http://frank-davis.livejournal.com/146951.html

  167. Fred; (27TH, 5:25 PM) Hope you have put a lot of money on your wager – you will lose it!
    More desperation territory Fred?
    The tobacco control industry proclaim the tobacco industry as ‘evil’, ‘child killers’ etc etc ….. ad infinitum. Are they really, or is the tobacco industry the biggest manufactured straw man ever produced – the Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein of the tobacco control industry? Do you honestly think that that many people believe this crap?

    Lets look at the evidence: The Tobacco companies were ‘fined’ and brought to heel by the US Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) in the 90’s? …Yes? …Were they really, or was this nothing more than a comfy agreement where corruption reigned free? Many individuals, lawyers, groups and organisations earned a fortune from this – INCLUDING the tobacco companies – look at their value now;

    http://www.trustnet.com/News/Research.aspx?id=187833
    “The FTSE 350 Tobacco has returned 539.43 per cent in the last 10 years, outperforming the FTSE All Share by 495 per cent.”

    You see, the MSA extorted $billions from tobacco companies and they promptly added those costs to tobacco production and made smokers pay, BUT in return they were effectively guaranteed a monopoly in tobacco production. It was a win-win agreement for both tobacco and tobacco control but the Pharmaceutical industry cashed in too! The losers were smokers and public health of smokers and non-smokers in general!

    When they are unable to answer the charges against them, tobacco control activists have to resort to the disingenuous claim that everything and everyone who refuses to ‘comply’ with their diktats are ‘shills’ coordinated by tobacco companies – but think about it … why would the tobacco companies ‘rock the boat’ when they are doing so well? They know that ‘tobacco control’ is led by idiots and followed by gullible fanatics who are adding much more value to their companies and their profits?

    In reply to your ridiculous claim “You’ve been found out Vellocatus “; I have nothing to do with tobacco companies nor pharmaceuticals, I do not earn one penny from any of them, directly or indirectly. As far as I am concerned they are all in the same corrupt bed, all in it to line their own pockets, as are those in ‘tobacco control’, in all its facets. I am an independent individual and comment to expose as much of the anti-tobacco deception as I can. I do associate myself with INDEPENDENT pro-choice organisations, and recommend that anyone who believes in liberty, choice, tolerance etc and wants to ‘stop the rot’ and degradation of our societies does the same, many of which are listed here; http://fightingback.homestead.com/

    My motivation was inspired several years ago when I discovered the ‘passive smoking’ deception, and that the moral corruption linked to it, extended to many public and previously respected figures, to the detriment of society.

    NOW; Guz, Jan, Fred, I have outlined MY position – YOUR turn now! Have you the courage to outline your allegiances and conflicts of interest? Can YOU HONESTLY deny being part of the tobacco control network? Then we can discuss the Tobacco control ‘astroturfing’ strategy, of which I believe you all to be a part of.

  168. Mark, This is no joke! These bar owners are fighting for their livlihood that they know IS threatened by this bad law.

    By conforming to this bad law, you are condoning it and as such, you too are threatening their livelihood. You could well be making yourself unpopular. If this does succeed then there will be some very disgruntled people who may vent their anger on you as a ‘collaborator’. Anti-smokers stupidly think that the downside is all on smokers and those who support them – think again, I suspect that this could create much ‘bad feeling’!

    ALL bar/restaurant workers/owners need to stick together on this. The principle involved is not really about smoking.

    http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10097/

    If you dislike smoking so much and want to go ‘smoker free’ – do it after the challenge to your property ownership rights has been defeated. That way, you may gain some respect amongst your peers.

  169. “Guz; It seems that your plan is just to bore everybody to death with asinine and unsubstantiated comments”

    Er no, that’s what you’ve been doing over and over on here yourself, Vellocatus. Why don’t you go for a new record of posting four replies in a row next? Not that it makes any difference, whatsover.

    Anyway, I’ll leave you to get back to your lobbying. lol.

  170. @vellocatus

    I dont get what you are getting at as i support the smoking law and have been trying to follow it. It is just ironic that i have been fined when doing my best to follow it while all around me break the law at no risk. The difference is i was reported to the Junta as someone who was breaking the law (not that i was aware i was) and then fined as they did an inspection. I would imagine the inspector drove / walk past at least 50 bars which were breaking on the Law on his way to mine but they werent reported so i guess are legal.

    My bar take was 8.5% up in januray and 5% in feb so the smoking law isnt effecting me. In fact if i was allowed to do what 90% of bars do with their TOLDOS when the weather changes i would be even more up on last year. Viva clean air

  171. Mark: Gotta laugh. Hoisted on you own petard. It serves you right for supporting a stupid law like this. You’re free to run your bar the way you want and other bar onwers should be free to run theirs the way they want.
    Not to give you ideas, but why don’t you simply employ the time honored practice of “ratting” on those who break the law? You can always tell yourself you’re doing it for a good cause.

  172. @DEBORAH

    the “ratting” subject was brought up on another thread and although i have been tempted it really isnt my job to tell the inspectors which bars/restaurants are breaking the law as all they have to do is open their eyes. I believe bar owners should be free to run their bars who they feel free and in Fuengirola that seems to be the case unless you have no family in the local police or any form of enchufe. I have been tempted of late to make a denuncia against the Inspectors of work inspections and those controlling the Smoking law as they arent doing their job. I would love to play on a level playing field but Spain is so corrupt and hasnt the abilty to enforce simple laws so that will never happen. The ones who are stupid enough to follow the Law suffer while the ones that dont get rich richer pretty much risk free.

  173. “It serves you right for supporting a stupid law like this”

    It’s not a choice Deborah. Everyone is equal before the law – well that’s how it should be – so whatever you personally think of any individual piece of legislation is irrelevant, as it is your duty to obey the law!

    If you really don’t like it then get a petition together, lobby your representative and get the law changed…

  174. Gusano: If you don’t approve of the smoky atmosphere of a certain venue, it’s up to you to decide whether to enter or not. It’s not up to you to decide for an entire roomful of people that they can’t enjoy themselves because of your delicate sensibilities.

    If anecdotal evidence is meaningless, why bring it up? Maybe you consider anecdotal evidence that supports your argument to be somehow more valid…
    But since you bring it up, I’ll ask: was you uncle not in possession of his faculties? Then why was he “short-changed”? He heard the same warnings as everyone else and made his decisions as an adult. Did he have a full and satisfying life? Did he leave a positive legacy? Oh, wait–he was a smoker, so he must have been a stupid and selfish person, right? The kind of person who went around polluting other people’s air. So he paid in the end.

    I’m not particularly a proponent of the idea that exposure to smoke is good for children, nor am I a proponent of its opposite. Consult Vellocatus for sources of that one.

    Mark: good thing the police have the sense to use discretion in enforcing a clearly unpopular and unnecessary law. We beat alcohol Prohibition here in the US in part because the cops themsleves liked a drink. I imagine your average Spanish police officer likes to relax with a “copa” and a smoke after work and sees this sort of law for the nuisance it is.
    “level playing field”: are you admitting that bars that allow smoking have an advantage over those that don’t? Funny, some on this thread claim the antismoking law enjoys “majority” support, so the smoke-free bars should be raking it in!

    Gusano (again): civil disobedience has a very long and distinguished history. Would you have told Gandhi and Martin Luther King to get petitions together and lobby the government for justice? Going through official channels is long, cumbersome and expensive, if not entirely rigged. Mass disobedience beat the Antis in Greece and could well beat them in Spain, too. Esperemos!

  175. @CHRIS
    “Mark: good thing the police have the sense to use discretion in enforcing a clearly unpopular and unnecessary law”

    what by giving me a fine but letting everyone else off, that seems fair as atleast i made an effort to follow the law. I am a victim of jealousy as my English owned Spanish bar does very well and takes a lot of trade off the local Spanish bars who are stuck in their backwards ways and refuse to move with the times.

    I said before my bar has been doing better since the smoking ban has come in. The problem for me lies in when there is bad weather as i shut up my Toldo which means the outside area is enclosed so no smoking. This of course has an effect especially when my customers can go to another bar close by and smoke in an enclosed toldo, hence i follow the law when forced to by the conditions and lose out to a bar that is only benfiting from the fact i have followed the law where it breaks it.

  176. Chris: If you want to smoke in a certain venue, it’s up to you to go outside. It’s not up to you to decide for an entire roomful of people that they can’t enjoy themselves (and have their lives put at risk) because of your stinking tobacco smoke.

    You’re right. I shouldn’t have bought up the anecdotal “evidence”. It’s meaningless. So shouldn’t anyone else…

    Like I said before, Vellocatus’ “sources” don’t amount to anything. It’s like providing links to the Flat Earth Society to prove that the world is flat.

    Yes, Chris, I would have thought that civil disobedience was acceptable when there clearly is an injustice, which in this case there is not. Smoking is still allowed, so smokers can continue their habit under most circumstances, except the one where they interfere with the enjoyment and health of others. That is hardly an injustice. Good luck with your civil disobedience, I think you’ll find that even in Spain you only have support from a small minority of die-hard nicotine addicts. Everyone else, and we’re talking at least 70% of the people don’t agree with you. It’s called democracy. It was a slow and clumbersome process for us “antis” as you like to call us (more like ordinary people who just want to breathe clean air indoors), and now it’s law, so get over it!

  177. Mark;
    Am I to believe that you are also an astroturfing tobacco control employee? After all, amongst their many cons, we see them purporting to be weak minded pathetic smokers, pleading for anti-smoker saviours to save them from themselves or trying to convince other smokers that ‘resistance is futile”. “Look, I am one of you and we must accept that we have lost … if you do not comply you will be exterminated” – “exterminate, exterminate!!” (concern troll) Its nothing new for anti-tobacco to introduce a few pretend business, pub and restaurant ‘owners‘ to laud how well their business has ‘improved‘, citing all those non-smokers rushing in to replace smokers, and making them rich!!

    Are you are for real Mark? If so, you and anyone else in the hospitality trade in the same semi-comatose state as you, need to see this and think about your future. How much more evidence do you need to realise that the target for anti-tobacco is the same target as anti-alcohol – YOU!

    http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/2011/02/now-drinkers-can-hate-ash-too.html

    Guz, Fred and Jan are probably already booked up for this – all at the taxpayers expense of course. Are you too Mark?
    http://www.ashscotland.org.uk/policy/event-tobacco-and-alcohol-policy-summit
    *
    “You tricked me. Hangman!,” I shouted then,
    ?”That your scaffold was built for other men
    ?And I no henchman of yours,” I cried,?
    “You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!

    “??Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,?
    “Lied to you? Tricked you?” he said. “Not I.?
    For I answered straight and I told you true
    ?The scaffold was raised for none but you.

    ??For who has served me more faithfully
    ?Than you with your coward’s hope?” said he,?
    “And where are the others who might have stood
    ?Side by your side in the common good?”

    ??”Dead,” I whispered. And amiably
    ?”Murdered,” the Hangman corrected me:
    ?”First the foreigner, then the Jew…
    ?I did no more than you let me do.

    “??Beneath the beam that blocked the sky?
    None had stood so alone as I.?
    The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
    ?Cried “Stop!” for me in the empty square.

    (Part of a Poem by Maurice Ogden)

  181. Gusano: If the room is full of smokers, as a goo dmany bars used to be, then it’s you who should bugger off outside.

    The sources you cite are completely independent, I take it, with no pre-existing biases or links to anti-smokng organizations or interests?

    And back to that perennial brain-teaser: if the majority of the populace wanted smokeless bars, why did no one provide even one before the ban (shoved through, like much unsavory legislation, right before Christmas, when legislators were anxious to knock off for the holidays and the public were otherwise occupied)? I know plenty of politicians who’ve voted for antismoking laws, and not a single one, not even Mike Bloomberg, brags of his/her “accomplishment” in subsequent election campaigns.
    Democracy, by the way, also protects minorities from the “tyranny of the majority”, if a majority indeed you are.

    You guys sound like you’re jealous of Vellocatus’ flair and creativity, your own thinking being somewhat limited.

  182. Mark: Does that somewhat ethnocentric attitude manifest itself in interactions with the “natives”??? If so, no wonder you have enemies. You could always move back to gray old Blighty…

    Sorry, but smokers will go where they’re made comfortable and welcome, much as the plan is to deny them such places. I assume from your last posting that you have smoking customers. Do they know the contempt in which you appear to hold them?

  183. @Chris

    Why would i move back to grey old Blighty? I have said many times before on this site i would behappy to live here if i was retired. The problems lie when you have to deal with lawyers, town hall, police, gestors etc as having a business here is very hard and having a legal business even harder.

    I make smokers feel comfortable in my bar and they have a terrece to smoke on. However when i am forced to stop people smoking due to the weather condition (TOLDO shut) i am made out to be the bad guy. This is because when other bars are faced with the same problem they dont follow the law which is there choice and risk, when i say risk there is none it seems unless someone calls the police.

    My enermies stem from one think which is jealousy, i keep myself to myself, work very hard and have always tried to be a good example to other foreigners that live, so if that is a bad thing in you eyes so be it.

  186. If anyone is interested I, like Mark, run a bar and like Mark I, as a foreigner, have to uphold the law where perhaps the locals might get away with it although here they generally comply.

    The smoking ban has not made the slightest bit of difference to my takings, although I still wish it wasn’t in place.

  187. It is days like today that bars will suffer because of the smoking ban. I expect to do 20% less than normal today as i will close up my TOLDO which will mean my outside area is no smoking. Of course i wont lose it because of the ban i lose it because i am following the ban. Already today i have seen 50+ bars / restaurants with their terraces enclosed(closed TOLDOS) with people smoking inside. So while they break the law (at what seems little risk) and are busy i will be quieter from following it which to me seems a little back to front, but hey that’s Spain.

    And to all the pig headed smokers on this thread who cant see both sides of the coin, people arent breaking the smoking law because they are against it, they are doing because they can due to the south of Spain being a lawless bandit country. I received a fine for for doing a lot less than 90% of the bars are doing today who are now busy when i’m quiet (normally the other way round)but i’m just some stupid foreigner who is following the law that is really fair.

  188. Fred: not according to Mark’s postings. Oh, and a word about “outside”: you know as well as I do that when the weather is nice and nobody wants to be inside, the Antis will be whinging about how the smokers they’ve forced outside are now spoilin their al fresco experience.

    Mark: I have always appreciated the sentiments of the other side. Believe it or not, I originally supported designated nonsmoking areas–back in the days when you could smoke anywhere and everywhere. My beef comes in when I’m told that no place whatsoever is allowed to cater to me. Outside may be a better option in Spain than in Britain, but you know all too well that it’s not when the weather isn’t good.
    Maybe you’d do better with your peers if you didn’t keep to yourself or give off the vibration of one who is working harder to get farther ahead–you must know that Mediterranean societies are very big on “levelling”–not letting anyone get too big for their britches. Maybe they interpret this as being unfriendly and superior. And for your sake, I hope that you don’t share your opionions about southern Spain being “bandit country” with them. After all, in their view you’re a foreigner who’s come in to make money and perhaps does not respect their culture. Again, in many societies, being law-abiding is not necessarily something respected. Take it from an American who grew up in the 1960s and ’70s.

    Didn’t Spain have a famously flexible system before this latest? Assuming that it didn’t provide enough nonsmoking areas, why couldn’t those who wanted them simply make their wishes known to their publican? Or do as Alan suggests and vote with their feet (and wallets)?

  190. @CHRIS

    I personally think there needs to be a balance and a Non-smoking area makes sense. I am lucky that my bar is big so i could do so but many bars aint so lucky and this seems to be where the problem would lie.

    I have always kept himself to himself and most of my customers or rivals dont even know that my bar is English owned. With the few Spanish customers, staff and friends i do know i voice my fustrations as i believe that people need to know how tough it is. Of course i do this in an educated manner to spark a debate which quite often happens and ending most of the time with the Spanish feeling ashamed of what goes on.

    I dont see myself as a foreigner who came here to make money because if it was about the money i would of stayed in London. I came here for a change and a challange which i have certainly found.

  191. Tug – if you’re free to harm me when I visit a restaurant, why can’t I harm you? Would that be ok? ‘It’s all about choice’ … are you serious? What choice did non-smokers have before? Stay at home for fear of some selfish smoker ruining their lunch?
    Why are some smokers so ignorant and selfish? Thankfully no-one’s offering you the choice any more! Now if you don’t like respecting other people, you can stay at home!

  192. Vellocatus …. you clearly support everyone’s right to kill themselves slowly (and in the end very painfully – first hand knowledge sadly), and that’s fine. If they’re that ignorant it’s their affair.
    Of course, harming other people should be a different matter, don’t you think?
    Economics don’t matter, the rights and freedoms of smokers don’t matter … the rights of everyone else to enjoy a meal clear of filthy smog is what matters. Oh, and the rights of the people who work in the bars and restaurants, and bus stations, and garages, etc. Don’t they count, or is it ok to inflict harm on them?

  193. Fred: Who hurt you, baby? Whatever is inside you that makes you the sort of mean-spirited, small-minded person you are won’t go away, no matter how unpleasant you try to make life for others.

    Mark: you, at least, seem somewhat reasonable. I believe the problem with smaller bars is usually resolved by letting the owner decide whether to be smoking or non-. Then there’s a range of different places with different policies and everyone can find places that suit them.

    Except for people like Fred, who are just miserable.

  195. “I believe the problem with smaller bars is usually resolved by letting the owner decide whether to be smoking or non”

    Well, you’re in a minority Chris. Most people don’t want smoke inside. The law is not likely to change. Just accept that and get used to it.

  196. Fred: I personally don’t patronize places where I have to stand out on the pavement. My disposable income gets pissed away in places where I’m not treated like a second-class citizen.
    But one thing I’ve noticed about Antismokers is that no matter how many intolerant “victories” they achieve, they’re never really happy because people continue to smoke where you can see and smell them. So if this idiotic law does prevail, 6 months from now you’ll be whining about the “cloud of smoke” you have to pass through (for all of 3 seconds) on you way in to all these newly smokefree places.

    Gusano: If “most people” don’t got to bars, they really shouldn’t have anything to say about what goes on in them. And if a majority of bar customers do not want smoke inside, that preference will be reflected in the vast number of nonsmoking bars in comaprison to the paltry number smoking ones, with no need for the government to be involved. You’ve yet to explain how the majority can want smokefree, yet not have a majority of bars be so. Unless, of course, the ban, and whatever support exists for it, is not so much about providing smokefree spaces as it is about satisfying the good old Anglo-Saxon Puritan desire to deprive one’s neighbor of pleasure.
    Being in the minority isn’t always a bad thing, Guso. Remember that a minority of folks in 1930s Germany didn’t like Nazism and they turned out to be right after all!
    Are you some kind of insider in the Spanish government? How do you know the law is unlikley to change? Laws are modified and overturned all the time. The Netherlands has recently softened its ban–thanks to resistance that was both legal and civil disobedience. Bans in Croatia, Macedonia and Bulgaria were scrapped almost immediately thanks to drastic and severe drops in revenue. And the Greeks, God bless’em, continue to “Just Say No” and let their government know who’s boss.

  197. Face it Chris. The fact is most people don’t want to breathe smoke indoors. That includes bars. Just because smokers used to hog the bar in the past should tell you something: Non smokers didn’t want to go into places like that. Now they can and at the same time smokers are not banned from smoking in most situations. A reasonable compromise.

    Oh and if some venue treats me like a second-class citizen, I tend not to go back either. Perfectly understandable.

    Any venue which wants to remain in business long-term would be mad not to make sure smokers have somewhere comfortable and sheltered to light up. Common sense I would have thought.

    Oh, and I have no problem walking through the “picket line” of smokers who for some reason always seem to gather in front of a door if they can. It’s just one of those things… At least I don’t have to have a whole meal or a whole night out ruined…

  198. And as for the law change being unlikely… I would have thought that was obvious. Most people don’t smoke, and most people don’t want to.

    I wouldn’t read anything into a few die-hard Greek smokers giving two fingers to their government. There is a culture in Greece of not obeying the law if it doesn’t suit you. Much worse than here in Andalucia.

    As far as I can make out you are incorrect re Croatia and Macedonia. Smoking bans still in place in both. Bulgaria delayed but not repealed…

  199. “I personally don’t patronize places where I have to stand out on the pavement.”

    Good, then stop moaning as you have already found a solution then: patronize a place where you can smoke.

    “people continue to smoke where you can see and smell them”

    We know it all too well Chris; smokers reek!

    Thank you for agreeing with what we have been saying above lol.

  200. Gusano: OK, then we’re back the original question: if the vast majority prefer no smoking, why the need for government intervention to establish them? The myth of hordes of nonsmokers staying home in wait for “clean air” (in a bar!) turned out to be just that as the British and Irish pub industries learned too late. Once again I’ll bring up the pre-ban attempts at nonsmoking bars and their spectacular failure to become popular.
    The situation we are banned from is one of the best in drnker- and smokerdom: sitting ’round the bar and having our drinks poured by someone, hopefully with a fag dangling from his/her mouth. Anything else is just an ice cream parlor that happens to serve alcohol.
    Someone as well-versed as you seem to be in these matters knows the Antis won’t stop there. They’re already working on outdoor bans in the US and UK.

    Now you’re saying smokers DO need to be catered to! Which is it? Are we a disposable minority or a necessary part of the clientele? We can’t be both.

    I imagine smokers gather by the front door to maintain the communal contact that they’re being deprived of. You may not have a problem with it, but your fellow Antis will in short order.

    “…most people don’t want to.” You’d never know this from the other components of the Antismoking crusade, which involve removing tobacco products and smoking from sight and consciousness. It’s called “denormalization” and the goal is to make smoking something you have to do hiding in your basmement. So apparently the siren song of the Demon Tobacco is so strong the sheeplike majority must be protected even from the sight of it or its use.
    Once again, not smoking is not automatically a desire to not allow others to smoke.

    more later…

  201. OK, Guso, where were we? Oh, yes, the Greeks. I suspect it’s more than just a few diehard smokers, or there wouldn’t be such consternation among the powers that be, or such seeming difficulty in implementing the ban. Greece has lots of smokers, but I’d furhter wager lots of nonsmokers are leary about giving the government more power over their lives. You’re closer to the mark when you say Greek culture is “worse” than Andalusian as far as disobeying stupid laws. That could well be and that’s why Greece will get my tourist dollar and Andalucia now won’t.
    You seem to have a quaintly naive view of laws as being passed by noble individuals to reflect the wishes of a majority. It’s not my place to disabuse you of your Disneyfied version of the system, but a quick glance at legal history will educate you as to the huge number that do not fit those parameters, as well as the nubmer that have been repealed or simply allowed to languish through disuse. Once bad laws are on the books, it’s very difficult to get them off, so yes, maybe the bans are still in place in Croatia, etc. But are they enforced? It looks as if Spain might go that way, if some posts on here are to be believed, and all to the good. We had 13 years of alcohol prohibition here in the US and we eventually got rid of it (not totally, as a visit will tell you), not only through legal means, but also through disobedience and good old corruption. People are rational beings and will follow laws they perceive as just or sensible and violate those they don’t. Don’t want laws broken? Pass good laws.

    Fred: the nearestr smoker-friendly indoor place is about an hour away. I’d like some closer at hand. BTW, I’m sure if someone had told you there was a nonsmoking bar an hour away, you would’ve screamed to the heavens that that was not sufficient. And you DID have non-smoking bars in Spain before January. I’m also sure plenty of bar owners would like to be able to tap into the tiny niche market that smokers now constitute.

    Better to “reek” of tobacco (some people like the smell) than have the sort of fecal soul that some have festering within..

  202. >that’s why Greece will get my tourist dollar and Andalucia
    >now won’t.

    Oh good, well, go to Greece and stop whinging then.

    The only thing festering here is the bruised ego of a person losing an argument publically, lol.

  203. “we’re back the original question” Yes, you never got around to showing us any independent evidence that pub closures in the UK are 100% to do with the smoking ban, or even 50%, or even 10%. The pub trade itself seems to think that duty is to blame.

    I never said you were a “disposable minority”. Where did I say that? And yes, smokers can be catered for, but just not inside. Unfortunately you can’t control where your smoke goes indoors and never could, which is why you can now feed your addiction outdoors, where it doesn’t affect other people. You seem to struggle with that simple idea.

    “Once bad laws are on the books, it’s very difficult to get them off” Yup, true, and good laws are even more difficult to get off, so you won’t see the smoking bans going anywhere soon.

    “maybe the bans are still in place in Croatia” No, not maybe. They are…. “But are they enforced?” Well they should be, like any other law. If you don’t like the rule of law, why don’t you just move to North Korea and see how much you like it.

    “People are rational beings and will follow laws they perceive as just or sensible and violate those they don’t”. Hardly rational. More like opportunistic – and even more reason for laws to be enforced.

    “The only thing festering here is the bruised ego of a person losing an argument publically, lol.” I can’t help but agree…

  204. Let’s make something clear. People who smoke, whether it be inside or outside, are ALTERING the base environment in which we all have to live, eat, breathe, drink, talk, etc. And they are altering it in a proven dangerous way.

    A non-smoker sitting on a terrace, chatting to a friend, and eating breakfast is in no way is impinging on the rights of anyone around him. The smoker on the other hand, if FORCING people around him to not only suffer a dangerous alteration of the immediate environment, but to momentarily ‘take up’ the bad habit of the smoker as well. Should that non-smoker be pregnant or have a child with them, then those children are also forced to smoke a cigarette, albeit second hand.

  205. Gusano: I love how you and your ventriloquist dummy Fred keep declaring yourselves the “winners” of some imaginary debate. I’ve see that in antismokers before. You seem to take seriously the tongue-in-cheek advice of the US Senator who said, re Vietnam, that his country should just “Declare victory and get the hell out.” If you’re so childish as to see this as a contest with winners and losers, well, you’re just pathetic. But if it is a debate, you should know that as a participant, it’s not your place to declare who wins. Nor is it mine, which is why I don’t–besides the fact that I’ve got way too much class for that.
    I also don’t see any statement in any of my postings about pub closures in the UK and the ban, so naturally I don’t feel obligated to defend such statements, but I believ if you’ll check the statistics (and you’re a big believer in statistics [when they suit your argument], right?) you’ll see a significant increase in closures starting in July, 2007.
    No, Guso, the original question you’ve been avoiding answering is the one about why there was not a profusion of nonsmoking pubs before the ban, if that’s what the majority prefers. I’m still waiting for your answer to that.
    I’m sure that with the right amount of ingenuity, smokers can be catered for indoors, in separate rooms. Or back to the old idea of separate bars, another issue you’ve ducked (red herringed?) because you have no answer. You also cannot control where smoke goes outdoors, so that’ll be the next target of the wowsers.

    Habra mas…mas luego!

  206. As if on cue we have delighful little Susan to plug for an outdoor ban, because cigarette smoke is just more dangerous than plutonium and kills everything it comes into contact with. Don’t you see the piles of corpses littering the streets? Susie, old girl, let’s make a list, shall we?, of all the things that “alter the base environment” and ban them. And by all means, let’s start with your CAR!

    Gusano: you’ll appreciate an article in the Latin American Herald Tribune of March 2: Venezuela imposed a smoking ban and then rescinded it one day later! And here I was annoyed with Chavez for banning alcohol sales during Holy Week in 2007. Todo es perdonado, Hugo!

    Laws on the books: let’s go through them and see all the laws that are not enforced and think whether it would be a good thing if they were. For example, many places have laws against “fornication”, defined as sexual contact with someone you’re not married to. Yes, it would be a much better world if the police took that law seriously, wouldn’t it, Guz?
    It’s news to me that North Korea is a lawless society. i was under the impression that the law in that country was embodied in one man and his word was law and anyone defying it would face rather unpleasant consequences. It may interest you to know that Spain enjoyed a similar state of affairs until the 1970s, which may be one reason Spaniards are a just un poquito resistant towards the idea of having every aspect of their lives micromanaged once again.
    You really need to get out more.

    “Opportunistic”: and the laws aren’t? They’re a true reflection of the “will of the people”? Please. I’m tempted to think you’re one of my more naive countrymen, except that you haven’t yet stooped to pointing out typos or calling me gay.

    Fred (8=>): This year I’m thinking more in terms of Japan: a smoker’s paradise with alcohol vending machines and the world’s longest life expectancy. Go figure.
    I’m sure if there weren’t a ban, or if the current one is amended (here’s hoping!) you would or will be whinging, too. It a democratic right to whinge. Sheesh! Do I have to teach you people basic human rights, too?

    If you boys really were “winning”, it’d be obvious, wouldn’t it, and you wouldn’t have to say so, would you???

  209. Adrian: when outargued, declare the debate closed. Gee, I’ve never seent that tactic before. But thanks for recognizing our brilliance. Too bad the Antis aren’t up to it.

    Fred: Vellocatus and I agree about most things, a situation rarely found among married couples. But of course you wouldn’t know. I can’t imagine there are too many women lining up for the dubious honor of being “Mrs. Fred”.

  210. By ‘outargued’ I take it that you mean you’ve posted a few dozen links to some dubious smoker-lobbiest websites, made some stupid remarks that fly in the face of all medical opinion, and then exclaim you’ve constructed a flawless justification for smoking? Er, no Chris, that’s not how it works lol.

    Btw, are you American? “Honor”, “Gee” etc. That would explain a lot. Keep guessing in the meantime.

  211. Fred: what rich irony that you, who on a good day spews out a paltry line or two of snot and nothing else in his postings criticizes my argumentation skills. Further red herring: I’ve never been about constructing a justification for smoking, but opposition to laws taking its restriction to absurd and repressive levels. I have presented questions for proponents of these laws that have gone ignored and unanswered, so I’m assuming it’s because they can’t.

    In my very first post here, I stated that I lived in the US (not very observant, are you?) and I am in fact a born and bred “Yank”. I must take this opportunity to apologize to citizens of other countries for the leading role of the US in all this antismoking hysteria and other forms of prohibitionism we now see plaguing much of the planet. It’s a source of deep shame and embarrassment to many of us. But I wonder, why does Britain imitate the US to such an extent that they actually surpass us in idiocy? In New York, there are at least 5 bars where I can smoke indoors. A mere handful, but better than nothing. London boasts exactly one such establishment and it’s restricted to members of Parliament! After a hard day of spending the British taxpayer’s money making new rules for him/her to follow, your MP kicks back with a pint and a fag, while voting to deny you the same privilege.

    Say what you want about Americans (I’ll probably agree with you in lots of it), but at least they don’t consider “smug” a compliment!

  212. Sorry I missed your first post Chris, but that didn´t actually say outright that you were a yank. You could have been in the US, but be Russian for all I know (and care).

    Btw. I don´t think anyone has surpassed the US for idiocy btw. And if you don´t like my snot, don´t read it Chris. I shall be thinking of you the next time I enjoy a lovely smoke-free meal lol.

  214. I have just had to wade through more dross from a pair of spoilt juveniles (Guz & Fred) whose total input amounts to two points – ‘our gang is bigger than your gang so we get what we want’, and ‘we don’t just want the biggest slice of the cake, we want it all and sod anyone else’. (you wish!!) Then, like a pair of chimpanzees at a tea party clapping at their own antics, try to claim some sort of ‘win’. Unfortunately, as Chris rightly points out, neither of you have answered ANY relevant points, just continued to reel out the standard anti-tobacco cliches, memes, slogans and diversionary tactics.

    Sorry to have to inform you that Chris owns the pair of you!
    “…on a good day [fred] spews out a paltry line or two of snot and nothing else…’ – Classic, and right on the button! (btw, is it your or my turn to pick the kids up from school today Chris)? Ha! Mind you, I have to credit fred with the most amusing comment of the whole thread. A comment that sums up the intellect of your typical tobacco control employee :-

    “Btw, are you American?”……………… Brilliant!!

    I’ll give you another couple of weeks to see if you can work out where I am from fred. Clue: While I used to visit often, I don’t live in Spain. I know I shouldn’t mock the afflicted but you were warned that you were embarrassing yourself but you insisted on proving that suggestion beyond any doubt, Jan at least had enough sense to do a runner early on.

  215. Anyway, moving on. Taking the Pi** out of these morons may be fun but does tend to trivialise the serious problem of anti-tobacco mania.

    Integrity and credibility! I must admit it threw me when fred attacked my integrity/credibility by suggesting that I was some sort of tobacco control mercenary. Surely, I surmised, he must realise that this would lead to a counter challenge to HIS integrity; any criminal would tell him that! Then I realised that the fool really believed I was representing some tobacco company!! He has soaked up anti-tobacco propaganda like a sponge, without question, gullibly believing that only evil tobacco companies would challenge the ‘noble cause’! Guz also attacks the credibility/independence of Chris Snowden yet fails to substantiate that fallacious allegation, demonstrating his character.

    I see that my counter challenge (Mar 1st 2.12pm) Requesting you disclose your vested interests and conflicts of interest has been ignored to date, so am I to assume that you guz and jan are all corrupt, mercenary, anti-tobacco stooges, only interested in the amount of cash you can trouser and/or to protect your taxpayer/ Big pharma funded jobsworth salaries? Am I to assume that you are happy to ignore or agree with the fact that your ‘noble cause’, targets, first and foremost, the ill, the aged, the infirm and the poorest members of society, then ‘uses’ them to frighten the hell out of everyone else who refuses to abide by your organisation’s invidious diktats? Sordid, morally corrupt and disgusting!

    Come on guys, Jan’s history, but you two may still have time to admit your part in this machination and ask for the forgiveness of your fellow man for trying to deceive them into believing you are just normal citizens. (some chance! lol)

  216. Mark; “…. i lose it because i am following the ban. Already today i have seen 50+ bars / restaurants with their terraces enclosed(closed TOLDOS) with people smoking inside.”

    Maybe it would be wise to go see your Spanish counterparts and show some solidarity with them. Face this attack on your businesses together, instead of falling into that well used trap they set of ‘divide and conquer’. After all, in January 2010, before the imposition of the ban, in a straw poll by The Independent on Sunday of Spanish pub and bar landlords, Nine out of 10 were ferociously opposed to the ban … So much for ‘democracy’!!

    Smug Adrian; Please go back through the comments – you will see that SHS is HARMLESS but the anti-smoker campaign has CAUSED the deaths of many untold victims and even threatens YOUR health by greedily pocketing $millions (possibly $billions) that could be used to find REAL causes and cures for so called ’smoke related’ diseases, that now kill far more non-smokers than smokers!!

    Anti-smokers also deceive gullible people like yourself into believing that diseases such as lung cancer is a smokers ‘self-inflicted’ disease that can be solved simply by forcing people to become quitters. This myth has resulted in lung cancer, the biggest cancer killer by far, to receive only 5% of total cancer research funding. In addition the anti-smoker hate campaign has increased isolation of the aged and infirm CAUSING many deaths. CAUSED financial difficulties resulting in depression and suicides. Tobacco medicinal properties are routinely denied to a wide range of mental health patients, Dementure and Alzheimer’s patients etc CAUSING many deaths and mental anguish – the list of deaths CAUSED by the anti-smoker campaign go on and on, but of course they hide these deaths from the apathetic and ignorant. Wake the F**K up!!

    (three in a row for freds pleasure!)

  217. Fred: A Russian would really lay into you schmucks! If you think the US is so idiotic, why scramble to imitate and surpass its policies? The British smoking ban is far more restrictive than most of the US (except maybe California) and what’s with all those surveillance cameras? I had to go through Heathrow last May and I thought I’d arrived in the midst of some event honoring George Orwell. Do British schools really send home guidelines for what parents can and can’t put in their children’s lunches?
    You seem to read and respond to things you don’t like; so do I. I just happen to do it with more thoroughness and flair.
    And I shall think of you next time I’m enjoying a cigarette indoors. I have to say I never enjoyed smoking as mucha s I have since you lot have made clear yoru determination to deprive me of it.

    Gusano: It’s really more Fred and some of the other intelligentsia, but you do imply that the discussion is over because there’s some crappy law in place.

    Vellocatus: I believe it’s your turn to get the kids. Don’t forget to stop and buy them smokes!!

  218. gottle o’ gear, gottle o’ gear – I am so pleased that I am in your daily thoughts. Off for a lovely nicotine free dinner now, but I will be think of you all as you continue this well and truly doomed thread lol.

  219. @vellocatus

    thank you for taking the time to read my postbut i think you missed my point about why people are breaking the law and it has nothing to do with solidarity. i repeat for you:

    “people arent breaking the smoking law because they are against it, they are doing because they can due to the south of Spain being a lawless bandit country. I received a fine for for doing a lot less than 90% of the bars are doing today who are now busy when i’m quieter on days when i have to shut my TOLDO and stop smoking, but hey i’m just some stupid foreigner who is following the law that is really fair.”

    When everyone is breaking the employment laws, building laws or cheating their taxes is that solidarity as well?

  220. Fred: if the best you can say about your dinner is that it’s “nicotine free”, it’s not much. I’ll bet my last peseta that this thread is one of the longer and livelier ones on here.

    Mark: What makes the smoking ban different is that opposition to it is supported by a good many bar customers. Breaking employment, building or tax laws may inspire indifference or even condemnation from the public, but in this case much of the public wants the government to butt out of its bar experience.
    Also, for many people, a bar without smoking just isn’t a bar and to follow this new antismoking law would be to deprive the bar of its very essence, in a way that those other violations you mention do not. A bar’s atmosphere and “culture” is largely determined by its regulars and if you drive them away and replace them with DBs like Fred, what have you got? Exactly.

  221. @Chris

    I dont want to appear rude but as a bar owner who lives in Spain and can tell you that your wrong. I have be suprised at how little the ban has affected trade and actually people choosing now to sit inside rather than amoungst smokers outside.

    As for: “Breaking employment, building or tax laws may inspire indifference or even condemnation from the public” i can ensure you there is no such thing as “Indifference or Condemnation from the public” as that’s the way it’s always been so they dont expect anything else or know any different. People general think if you get caught breaking the law be it taxes, employment law or the smoking ban etc you are basically unlucky, which in itself is very sad.

  222. “I’ll bet my last peseta that this thread is one of the longer and livelier ones on here.”

    It’s certainly a long thread, but that’s only because the same people have been spewing out the same endless pro-smoking drivel for weeks on end. One can only protest about something so much in one thread, and the smokers have surpassed that to the point of obvious desperation on this one. Life goes on after the smoking ban Chris. Go and lobby your senator or whatever it is you do out there. Palin for President!

  223. Yes, it’s the longest comment thread by far! Here’s the current top 20:

  225. Wonder if the same addage holds true re the number of comments posted by contributors to the site? :-)

    1.Fred (1,061)
    2.Stuart Crawford (151)
    3.Ben (137)
    4.guirizano (127)
    5.Chris (123)
    6.Mark (91)
    7.Paul (83)
    8.Justin R (78)
    9.Nick Schofield (55)
    10.Peter the Brit (53)
    11.Steve (50)
    12.pablo (49)
    13.Justin Roberts (46)
    14.Christopher (46)
    15.Carlos (44)
    16.tony (43)
    17.Paul Whitelock (43)
    18.Gresham (43)
    19.Karl (Web Manager) (43)
    20.Charles (42)

  227. Mark: you’re one of the least rude people on here, but have you stopped to consider that your neighbors have a higher degree of political sophistication than you give them credit for. The idea that government is not your friend, but in fact some form of organized crime, not to mention capricious and arbitrary, and any way you can get around it is OK and if you run afoul you’re simply unlucky is common in many places. Consider discussion of traffic fines–nobody is ever in the wrong, just unlucky. Or the violations of the risible drug and alcohol laws. I’ve been a criminal since I bought my first six-pack at 15.
    At least that’s how it is in the country whose folk heroes include Billy the Kid, John Dillinger and Tony Soprano.
    I’m further puzzled by one other thing: you say the ban has had little effect, but you claim other bars are gaining some adavantage over you when they don’t enforce it. Which is it? Is the ban the new, happening thing and actually drawing people in, or are your competitors making out unfairly by ignoring it?

    Fred: And finally we see your level of political sophistication! You’d make a perfect American Know-Nothing, Freddy, because no one can tell you anything. if you find this thread so tiresome, why do you keep coming back? And if I thought lobbying the prostitutes and scoundrels that pass for my elected officials would do any good, I’d be doing it. Ever hear the old saying, “If voting could change things, it’d be illegal”?

  228. You are enaging me in rhetorical questions Chris, so it’s only polite to answer you. If you don’t want a reply don’t keep referencing me. Anyway, know-nothing yanks (your words) shouldn’t be giving advice to anyone about anything lol. I bet you’re popular at home.

  229. Fred: Your inability to answer the questions I pose doesn’t make them rhetorical.
    I don’t know how popular I am, but I’m not your stereotypical rah-rah USA #1 American. In fact, I’m often called anti-American, unpatriotic, traitor, communist, etc. for my criticism of US policy.
    I did not mean that all yanks are Know-Nothings. I see that you’re fond of slapping labels on groups of people (“smoker” “American”) and then proceeding as if everyone in that group were simplistic caricatures, with no variation or nuance. Probably because you lack a certain depth of intellect yourself.

  230. lol, you just can’t stop summoning me can you Chris? “Why do you keep coming back” is a rhetorical question. Are you sure you have a degree in anything? ;=>

    As for labels, well what do you suggest I call smokers? “Nicotine Challenged persons” perhaps?

    Asking if you are an American is hardly ‘labelling’ you with some derogatory term is it? It’s factually correct is it not? You had better re-read your own replies above to see the labels you’ve been placing on people. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Perhaps you’re hung up on the fact that you were not born a European and are stuck in a country you loathe?

  231. Fred: That’s exactly the perfect expression: “summoning” you–as one would an evil spirit. I would be interested in knowing why you persist, so it’s not quite that rhetorical.

    It’s not the words “smoker” or “American” I object to so much as your seeming belief that those these words are applied to fit into some insulting, all-encompassing stereotype. Interesting to note though (as one of my degrees is in linguistics) the change in terminology. It used to be that “__________smokes”; now it’s “__________is a smoker”. Smoking has gone from being an activity (verb) to being an identity (noun) and no surprise that this shift has coincided with the rise of the Antismoking “movement.” BTW, you would seem to be the one who’s “nicotine challenged” as you seem to have an obsessive fear of it.

    Once again you prove my point: I tell you I’ve been called unpatriotic, etc. and you project it as my “loathing” the US! So, in your tiny mind the US population consists of either Palin-worshipping cementheads or self-hating Europhile manques. No middle ground or subtlety whatsoever.
    I visit Europe as often as I can and like it very much (the part that’s still smoker-friendly, that is), but I’m under no illusions about it or its people being perfect or superior.

    Congratulations, though. I see you’ve finally learned to compose postings that have a bit of content to them!

  232. You are trying just a bit too hard to prove your ability as a cunning linguist. No assistance is required with nouns and verbs; we covered that back in primary school. Are they still on the curriculum at American Uni? I did so enjoy the ‘fill in the missing word’ game though lol.

  233. My ability as a cunning linguist is well known. I see your back to facile, moronic rispostes. And I had such hopes.

    Anyhow, the blanks were meant to be where someone’s name went and the point was that smoking has gone from being something one did, that was just a part of what one was, to being what one is in totality. It’s kind of a way of verbally reducing someone’s humanity.

  236. Are you really stooping to pointing out grammar mistakes? And acting like it’s something no one’s ever thought of before?

    No, I have absolutely no self-control. I can barely drag myself out of my nicotine-induced frenzy to reply to you. Tell ya what, Fredzo, why don’t you show me how it’s done and YOU stop. I like to have the last word and all you have to do to shut me up is not reply.

  238. But I didn’t say I possess self-control. In fact I said just the opposite.
    Difficulty with reading comprehension? Oops, sorry–another question. I guess I prefer them because it’s more effective to let you demonstrate your ignorance than to merely state it myself.

  242. You took you a long time to reply Chris, I thought you had almost gained your self control back. Alas not. Are you running out of things to say perhaps?

    Anti-smoking laws are not fascist Chris; you just label anything you don’t personally agree with as ‘fascist’ as an act of attention-grabbing desperation.

    The government amended the smoking laws, and the people voted for the government. If people want the smoking laws changed then you just need to vote for a government that will change them. Elections are on their way soon. Democracy in action.

    Now do run along.

  243. Sorry for the delay, Fred, but some of us have these little things known as “lives” and we don’t always have the luxury of sitting in front of the computer screen waiting for a reply so we can pounce on it.
    But, congratulations, I see you’re back to writing posts that actually have some content.
    I do agree that the term “fascist” is overworked, and is harldy likely to grab much attention, Study the history of antismoking laws and you’ll see that before 1990s California, the place that pioneered antismoking laws in the modern era was Nazi Germany. Laws that attempt to tell people how they can live their lives, demonize segments of the population and try to coerce them to live in a certain way are fascistic in nature.
    I believe you’ve gotten the chronology wrong, Fred. Did the people vote for the current government because they promised to ban smoking if elected during their campaign? If so, it’s a first. I’ve noticed over the years that no one runs on a platform promising a smoking ban and polticians that support such restrictions never brag about them when up for re-election. Didn’t you ever hear the old saying, “If voting could change things, it’d be illegal”??? Voters in both the US and UK recently voted for cadidates promising change and didn’t get it. I can’t imagine Spain is muy diferente.
    I don’t run along; I get the last word.

    Cris P. Bacon: the topic was trolls. Care to comment?

  244. I use an iPad mostly on here Chris, since then I get these clever little alert things whenever you post, so that I can be summoned to come back and correct you. I replied to some of your troll-posts whilst doing a spot of gardening, and I recall on one occasion I even replied to you whilst eating paella on the beach lol. You really must embrace the mobile Internet.

    Anyway, you are not being coerced to stop smoking, you are just being made to desist from doing it in public places, which is quite sensible, and a good compromise. If I was in power I´d tax and price tobacco out of existence. All laws are designed to control peoples lives, are they not? Do you have an alternative to law?

    Non-smokers put up with yor habit for years, and now it´s your turn to be inconvenienced. I won´t lose any sleep over that.

  247. Fred: how nice that you have little beeping gadgets to keep you company. Might one surmise that they fill the gap made by a dearth of flesh and blood companions?
    And bully for you that your days are filled with gardening, paella and the beach. I unfortunately am afflicted with that famous curse of the drinking classes, the need to work for a living.
    A good compromise would be separate rooms or even separate pubs for smokers and non-smokers. Can you tell me why you find that idea objectionable? Other than the distinct possiblity that the smoking places might just prove more popular and you’d be stuck in some dreary place with a few other miscreants as miserable as yourself.
    “If I was (sic) in power, I’d price and tax it out of existence”. No, you wouldn’t. Ever hear of the black market? We now have a thriving one here in New York, where none existed before they raised prices to as high as $13 per pack, and city officials are whinging that they’re losing tax revenue. Oops.
    To be respected, laws should be fair and make sense. They should also reflect the will of the people who have to follow them. Otherwise they’ll fail and deservedly so.
    I can remember, not so long ago, when people smoked everywhere and nobody much noticed or cared, except a few bedwetters. It took tons of “education” (funded by tons of money) by antismoking organizations to reach the level of intolerance we see today. C’mon, Fred: why did no one open smoke-free bars for all those “inconvenienced” nonsmokers? And in the few instances when they did, why did hardly anybody go to them???
    Congratulations on your excellent progress in producing content-based writing. Now we have to work on logic.

    Cris P.: No, but you’re more than welcome to toke on my joint.

  248. You should watch out what you obtain from the black market Chris, there have been a spate of deaths from things far worse than nicotine found in those fake cigarettes.

    Seriously, you must stop having these online tantrums about smoking Chris; it will ruin all that progress you made at your anger management classes.

    Btw, the iPad is for work and amusement, clearly the latter when replying to dumb broads like you lol. I’m off to plant my tomatoes now, beautiful day here.