Let smokers smoke.

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Agreed. It's about controlling people. There's no other justification for it.

• They kicked them out of the supermarkets.
• They kicked them out of cinemas.
• They kicked them out of restaurants.
• They disallowed them any smoking rooms in the inside of hospitals, erect ridiculous smoking shelters and often force them off hospital grounds entirely, which can be impossible for ill people.
• They perpetuate bigotry against smokers on a daily basis, through all media - radio, TV, Internet and by public billboards and advertisements - by telling non-smokers that smokers are poisoning them and their children.
• They banned them from all pubs and even private members clubs. Absolutely no indoor smoking areas are allowed, even in pubs were 90% of the clientele were smokers. Pubs close in their thousands instead of hundreds every year.
• They fund charities that foment hatred and discrimination against smokers - hell, even the head of this government-funded charity asks what's wrong with denormalising smokers!
• They are going to ban cigarette displays in all shops, which will disproportionately affect small newsagents at huge and possibly insurmountable expense for many concerns already teetering on the brink.
• They tax cigarettes so highly - at least 77% of the price of a pack of 20 cigarettes is straight tax - that many people are forced to buy potentially dangerous cigarettes on the black market. Many run the gauntlet of buying their tobacco abroad and risk having it confiscated by the border agencies, in direct contravention of EU rules.
• They discriminate against smokers on the NHS and deny them treatment. People have been refused employment, sacked from employment. Attacks on smokers have increased.
• Now they want to ban smoking in public places.

Can you see what I'm getting at?

Interestingly, even in England some anti-smokers (i.e. people who supported extensive smoking bans) are starting to come around to the idea that smokers are becoming a bit persecuted.

No-one was "kicked out" of anywhere. Smokers can still go to all these places. They just can't smoke there.



Nonsense. Just don't smoke in public and you'll be fine.

Smokers have been persecuted by tobacco companies that take their money and sell them stinkiness, disease and death.

Yes. It is YOU.



Just quit your foul smoking, already.

Remember this dood, with his famous cigars?



He escaped the Nazis. But, he did not escape the effects of smoking cigars. He died in 1939, the result of physician-assisted suicide, because he could no longer put up with the pain associated with the cancer that his stupid cigar smoking caused.

Please - anybody - legitimate reasons for:

drinking coffee
drinking tea
fumigating wih hemp
ingesting flavored alcohol
spreading butter and sugar on charred bread
eating jello
eating yoghourt
owning a dog
scratching a cat
wearing a tie
not wearing sackcloth
constructing a snow effigy
trying to watch a video on PPR
snapping one's fingers

The list goes on

Nothing in your list is as deadly, unhealthy, and stinky as tobacco.

You can find legitimate purposes for anything in your list. Nothing for cigarettes.

Now you went and made me quote the sacred scriptures, the God-breathed word given us through the pen of our Brother Paul alias Saul:

"For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. "

In the wrong place with the wrong dosage ANYTHING is deadly poison. As for the leaves of Nicotiana, let us see if we can come up with legitimate uses.

Of course, there is its age old use as a fumigant and a ritual element among various Amerindian groups.

But you maybe don't care about the original inhabitants of this so great land.

Then there is its use in ritual among modern Americans. Ever been to an AA meeting? Those are way past second hand smoke.

But - I don't want you to think I am not serious, I am serious - try this: took me about three minutes to find it. You might have seen it if you had been collecting posters:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC526783/

Now, I am not a smoker. Hate the stuff, glad Herself quit, had a friend probably died from it. I do not like any of the pop drugs, though I will do some tea and once in a while some white wine or a bit of theobromine.

But Brother Saul got it dead to rights. ANYTHING can be a poison, God knows. But just about everything can be okay or even beneficial - handled right.

I'm not an alcoholic, and have never been to an AA meeting. Now, I pretty much do my best to avoid contact with other humans (whether they smoke or not, but especially if they smoke). Do they smoke at AA meetings? Trying to give up one addiction for another?



The article did mention several possible therapeutic uses for nicotine.

However, it does say



The article also says



Handled correctly, nicotine may be beneficial. However, smoking cigarettes is a horrible way to handle the substance.

Freud chain-smoked cigars. One can enjoy an occasional cigar without causing ill effects.

One or two cigars a month vs ten a day. By the way, U.S. Grant the Civil War general and later president of the U.S. died of throat cancer caused by excessive smoking of cigars.

ruveyn

Okay, fine. I will allow Ruveyn his 1-2 cigars per month. In his house. Or, outdoors in the open air.

Last shall be first: that is what I said and what Paul implied. So many of our prescription drugs have addictive potential and are otherwise dangerous.

You have never been to AA? I am not now nor have I ever been alcoholic nor addicted to anything but book stores [that is NOT a joke!] - but I have been to a few AA meetings. Some of them the density of nicotine fumes is at the level of the "smoke-filled room" so famous in American politics [Hey - this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke-filled_room says that this comes out of Harding's time like normalcy and bloviate!]

I quite agree with you on the joys of excess interaction with seriuous smokers, but I am here to keep you honest with your use of evidence. Needn't thank me.

I actually looked into my insurance company's actuarial tables when I started smoking cigars; their data said no detectable health impact below 2 cigars a day. Now if anyone has a reason to overstate the dangers of smoking, it's a health insurance company, and they're telling me that I need to smoke a hell of a lot more than most people do in order to even see an effect. I might smoke 1 a day in the summer, and quite a bit less than that when the weather outside turns, and that's about normal for people who smoke cigars; most people don't have that many free hours to devote to smoking the things since one cigar takes 45-90 minutes to smoke. I smoke purely for pleasure myself, the same reason that I drink dry martinis and Islay scotches, among other pursuits that have no purpose besides sensory enjoyment.

An interesting personal observation: I also smoke pipe tobacco, and flavored shisha tobacco from a hookah, both occasionally in public. Other than occasional curiosity about what I'm smoking out of the hookah, I've never had any sort of flack from anyone about the smoke or smell from that type of public smoking. Contrasted with the dirty looks, fake coughs and other rudeness I've encountered while smoking cigars in public, I really have to conclude that it's all about the smell and that the health concern is just a justification for rude behavior, especially when we're talking about well ventilated outside areas. Being me, I've taken to open carrying while smoking in public, and have noticed a dramatic increase in politeness in my immediate vicinity as a result...

A lot of it is just bigotry and intolerance dressed up as health reasons. It is not, and never was about health.

A town councillor in the UK is trying to ban smoking in the open air. How do you feel about that?

Town councillor Paul Bartlett wanted to ban any smoking in public in the town limits of Stony Stratford. He claimed that the reason for it was about cigarette butts and that it cost "millions" of pounds to clean up cigarette butts. When that reasoning was rubbished he used the "health" canard. He was photographed for a major newspaper with a load of cigarette butts in his hand. The photograph was taken in a completely different town ten miles away!

An esteemed UK libertarian blogger sent out an idea of meeting in Stony Stratford to protest and nearly 200 people - bloggers, commenters, smokers and non-smokers alike - to an extremely warm reception from the town's residents and the pub where the meeting was held was packed. Conservative MEP Roger Helmer and the UK Independence Party (my party - and in terms of votes was the fourth largest party in the UK at the last general election) leader Nigel Farage spoke movingly at this meeting.

Almost without exception in the town of Stony Stratford he had made himself tremendously unpopular, and a few days after this mass meeting the council had the vote on whether to ban it. Bartlett cowardly withdrew his motion for a public smoking ban, citing his 'worry' over his opponents being unprepared.

Two of the three anti-smoking motions were put before the town and were defeated by 148-2, and one of the two was the councillor himself. The very heated council meeting concluded with residents being seen angrily arguing with the councillor as they left.

So, the only time when a smoking ban has directly been put before anything like real people, it was voted against by a margin of 98.66%.

The problem isn't societal; it's political, as the above shows.

The Health Nazis are always busy. Some of them are vegetarians and others are on an anti-candy crusade.

ruveyn

And you just KNOW ten more years and the surgeon-general will be warning we do not eat enough fat meat and sugar.