Public smoking bans for or against?

Ian

If you want to ban vintage cars and motorcycles......write to your MP.

I do not think he will treat you very seriously.

Banning smoking is a vote winner and MP's will almost certainly ban it sooner or later.

Regards

Mick

 

Mick,

should that be the case, then ultimately it is the non-smoker who will financially suffer most.

I'm led to believe that the revenue earned from the 300+% tax imposed on cigarettes is twice the total annual cost of the NHS. A ban would require a significant increase in income tax applicable to both smokers and non-smokers alike.

Personally, it will have negligible impact upon myself, as I'll be saving the (post-tax) £35 a week I currently spend on cigarettes.

Thanks for taking the time to articulate your argument, its much more useful than simply insulting.

 

Ban mountain climbing, as it endangers the health of the mountain rescue teams every time they get called out.

The evidence that passive smoking harms anyone is paper-thin.

As a doctor who looks after people with alcoholic cirrhosis, I would advocate increasing the price of a pint of beer to £25.

Any takers?

 

Great does that mean parents who has a child with asthma should tell their respiratory consultants to f*** off the next time they are told to stop smoking in front of their child again?

 

Mick about summed it up by saying it is a vote winner. Smoking is an obvious target because you can see it and smell it.

As James mentioned above and I made a few pages back, the point about alcohol is of course most of the damage done by it is hidden away. Unless of course you go down to A&E on a Friday night and witness the carnage it has caused or look into how many deaths are attributed to alcohol.

Banning smoking will have a major effect on tax brought in to the government and I hope that beer does become very expensive.

 

Wow! For once I agree with Mick !

Michael.

 

Doesn't that make you realise you must be wrong Michael?

According to today's papers, the latest ONS survey finds: 86% of adults want to restrict smoking at work, 87% in restaurants, and 20% in pubs (note: restrict, not ban). I'm in favour if business owners choose to restrict smoking in all these places, if they have separate smoking and non-smoking areas, and proper ventilation, no problem with that at all. In my own company, although the majority smoke, we took a democratic vote a few years ago and collectively and voluntarily decided not to have any smoking in the office, a policy which nobody breaks because everybody agreed on it. Isn't this the way grown-ups should treat issues of personal choice?

-- Ian

 

The first place that became none smoking in Manchester was the Trafford Centre, this then followed with Ardnale centre and since then lots of shopping centres in the area have become smoke free even the smaller ones.

I think 95% of people seem very happy with the ban. In places like small clubs or pubs it is impossible to restrict it, you either have to ban it or let everybody smoke otherwise its pointless.

 

What does this post have to do with banning smoking in public places?

 

"The evidence that passive smoking harms anyone is paper-thin."

Thanks. I must remember this next time I'm in the presence of smokers and I can feel their emissions scouring my throat, gouging my eyes and pressing down on my chest. To think that there is so much evidence that smoking is harmful but that it might somehow affect those non-smokers standing nearby!

None of this really matters anyway, as the ban is coming and there is nothing anybody can do to stop it, and don't think it has anything to do with concerns about the health of my lungs or anybody else's. The driving force, as ever, is the threat of legal action, and there's just enough evidence of the dangers of passive smoking to give some juicy law suits the go-ahead. Employers in particular may face ruin if they don't protect their employees, such as bar staff.

As far as I can see, health, public opinion, and consensus behaviour are just side issues.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1314213,00.html

-- Ian

 

I think aswell as the directly related effects of this, the bigger picture should be considered.

Many people are sociable smokers only. Or at least to start. These bans/restrictions will, I imagine, have a huge effect on this. This will lead to a general decline in smokers.

Good for health, bad for taxes?

 

Thanks for the article. Very relevent to our discussion. Considering pub is generally considered an adult only zone I could see why people decide to make this an exception compare to the other public places like what the ONS found that 86% of adults in Britain wanted to restrict smoking at work, 87% in restaurants, 85% in indoor shopping centres, 91% in indoor sports and leisure centres, 78% in indoor areas at railway and bus stations and 90% in other public areas such as banks and post offices.

Doc,
When you consider the evidence that passive smoking harms anyone is paper-thin are you only refering to people in wide open places like in the park only them?

 

There's precious little evidence that passive smoking has any effect whatsoever on the passive smoker's health. If you think about it, it's a very difficult thing to prove.

Personally, I suspect it's pretty negligible.

 

tell that to Roy Castles wife

 

95% of lung cancer patients are smokers; 5% are non-smokers.

Before I contact Mrs Castle, please tell me how to measure the late Roy Castle's smoke exposure, and how we show cause & effect.

It's very tempting to speculate about video nasties / pop songs etc which make disaffected teenagers go on the rampage with guns, etc. Then we press for a ban, eh?

 

Mother - didnt smoke - died at 54 from cancer in most organs
Father - heavy smoker- still with us
Grandfather - heavy smoker - died of emphasema aged 86

go figure

 

James, you and most others ought to know that just because there is no evidence yet doen'st make it so. Only the state of affairs at the time which may change.

we do not know nearly everything, THERE IS NO EVIDENCE SCIENTIFICALLY MANA MAKES HIFI SOUND BETTER.

Perhaps there would only be 0.1% of your figure if there was no passive smoking?

have that as a hypothesis...

even if 60,000 die per year, 5% is 3,000 non smokers per year, 3 large secondary schools per year, how many caused by inhaling? to many for me....

ban it now, or actually have separate smoking rooms, nowt wrong wi' segregation!!

 

Wolfgang, Thanks
My fathers condition is very complicated, it started with a blood disease many years ago.
Grandfather was in the Desert Rats and spent a long time in North Africa. The consultant told him that he believed that was the cause of his emphasema, not sure if that is true, i suspect he said it to make it easier for Grandad.

 

(Deleted my previous comment after reading it again. Don't want to jump into conclusion without all the details).

Penance,
Sorry to hear about father chronic leg ulcer. Have the doctors told you why he have this condition? For that matter your grandfather emphysema?


Evidences that hold water are always difficult when the opposition are critical to them. However, it does not stop some people from trying. A search in BMJ gives some opposing views. Here is one abstract to show what turn up from a quick search on 'passive smoking'.

BMJ 1994;308:380-384 (5 February)

Passive smoking at work as a risk factor for coronary heart disease in Chinese women who have never smoked
Y He, T H Lam, L S Li, L S Li, R Y Du, G L Jia, J Y Huang, J S Zheng

Department of Epidemiology, 4th Military Medical University, Xi'an, China Department of Community Medicine, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Department of Cardiology, 4th Military Medical University, Xi'an, China.

Abstract

Objective : To study whether passive smoking at work is a risk factor for coronary heart disease.
Design : Case-control study.
Setting : Xi'an, China.
Subjects : 59 patients with coronary heart disease and 126 controls, all Chinese women with full time jobs, who had never smoked cigarettes.
Results : The crude odds radio for passive smoking from husband was 2.12 (95% confidence interval 1.06 to 4.25) and at work was 2.45 (1.23 to 4.88). The final logistic regression model, with passive smoking from husband and at work as the base, included age, history of hypertension, type A personality, and total cholesterol and high density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations; the adjusted odds ratios for passive smoking from husband and at work were 1.24 (0.56 to 2.72) and 1.85 (0.86 to 4.00) respectively. For passive smoking at work, statistically significant linear trends of increasing risks (for both crude and adjusted odds ratios) with increasing exposures (amount exposed daily, number of smokers, number of hours exposed daily, and cumulative exposure) were observed. When these exposure variables were analysed as continuous variables, the crude and adjusted odds ratios were also significant.
Conclusion : Passive smoking at work is a risk factor for coronary heart disease. Urgent public health measures are needed to reduce smoking and to protect non-smokers from passive smoking in China.

Here is another link. Longer read.
http://www.ash.org.uk/html/passive/html/passive.html