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Merged Smoking should be banned universally

I am a non-smoker who has made a living in various areas of the smoking industry for more than 25 years and continue to do so. Is smoking a negative activity? It seems silly to even ask this question!

The entire question of this thread is such a slippery slope. Who among us does not take part in an activity that in some way brings unwanted harm or cost to us and others? If you do not then I applaud you and pity you as well as you must live a very boring life.

So what activity, or in my case multiple activities, do you take part in which should be banned and cause you to have the authorities stop you immediately?
 
PAC said:
I am a non-smoker who has made a living in various areas of the smoking industry for more than 25 years and continue to do so. Is smoking a negative activity? It seems silly to even ask this question!

The entire question of this thread is such a slippery slope. Who among us does not take part in an activity that in some way brings unwanted harm or cost to us and others? If you do not then I applaud you and pity you as well as you must live a very boring life.

So what activity, or in my case multiple activities, do you take part in which should be banned and cause you to have the authorities stop you immediately?
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Interesting perspective - we can only be having fun if we're causing cost or harm to somebody. Woot! that certainly opens up a whole new range of unexplored options for me...
 
jiggeryqua said:
And you certainly love avoiding actual questions, or even actual discussion, in favour of snide remarks. How is an appeal to emotion a strawman? It was an honest question, an honest answer would be appreciated. You gave the impression of despising emotion - you certainly think it has no place in a discussion of human behaviour, which suggests you despise emotion. Or humans. It's probably humans, actually, thinking about it. The dirty, smelly 'non-affluent' ones at any rate.
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You are ascribing traits to me that I do not possess, and then attacking me based on your mistaken assumptions. Textbook strawman. Does that answer your question?

Last time I checked the banner at the top of the page, 'critical thinking' was just one of the topics suggested. Last time I checked the OP, this thread was to discuss the contention that 'Smoking should be banned universally'. You can check for yourself, just under the banner you mentioned.
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I was engaging in both critical thinking and the thread topic. Are you asserting that it must be one or the other?
 
Dorian Gray said:
You are ascribing traits to me that I do not possess, and then attacking me based on your mistaken assumptions. Textbook strawman. Does that answer your question?

I was engaging in both critical thinking and the thread topic. Are you asserting that it must be one or the other?
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What a tedious fellow you are. It would be far too much work to go back and pick out all the relevant parts of the relevant posts (not least because you refuse to be pinned down, ducking and weaving, moving goalposts, changing the subject, conflating issues etc). Nobody else will bother to establish the truth either, I'm sure, so you can bounce around for a while and then post "I'm right and you are wrong" and probably genuinely believe it's true. I'm popping you on ignore now, luvvie, ok?
 
Francesca R said:
Your statement "there is absolutely no benefit to smoking whatsoever." is wrong, and indicates lack of critical thinking skills and/or ignorance. So it undermines the coherence of your posts somewhat.
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I'm sorry, what would be a benefit of smoking?
 
23_Tauri said:
Because asking for private clubs where only smokers congregate so they can enjoy a legal product is so comparable to the things you mention, right?

btw, what's wrong with prostitution? Consenting adults 'n' all that.


Wow, you are a master at moving those goalposts aren't you? Your issue was with parents smoking in the house and how this affects their childrens' health. Likewise, feeding them junk and allowing them to veg in front of a tv all day is bad for their health.
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Lol! Playing games and eating junk are not inherently bad. They can be if they are all you do/eat. By the same token, no one is going to get cancer from smoking or breathing the secondhand smoke from one cigarette. But that's not what happens when parents smoke in the house, is it?
 
23_Tauri said:
This is what the health zealots in government don't get. You ban smoking in pubs and the old pensioner who has every day for the last 20 years sat in the corner of the pub with his pipe is forced to stay at home; in the process losing the only social contact that the has, causing depression and loneliness in his final years.

What does it matter to the old boy whether he smokes or not? What matters to his quality of life is that he still gets out of the house each day and sees his friends.

This is not me making this up. Anecdote they may be but these are the stories that are being repeated across the UK.

footnote: btw, I think you got jiggeryqua's point mixed up. He's not advocating "smoke up Johnny" at all, but he is making the point that social policy on health is politically motivated. And, as it happens, it is the same under Nu Labour and the Con-Lib Coalition.
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What's preventing Old Guy from going to see the same people he's seen for the last 20 years? Nothing. And if he doesn't go because he can't smoke there, it's his choice to place smoking above companionship, isn't it.

Social policy on health is health motivated. It's probably also financially motivated, because getting people to quit smoking will make their health care less expensive overall.
 
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jiggeryqua said:
What a tedious fellow you are. It would be far too much work to go back and pick out all the relevant parts of the relevant posts (not least because you refuse to be pinned down, ducking and weaving, moving goalposts, changing the subject, conflating issues etc). Nobody else will bother to establish the truth either, I'm sure, so you can bounce around for a while and then post "I'm right and you are wrong" and probably genuinely believe it's true. I'm popping you on ignore now, luvvie, ok?
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Translation: I'm too lazy to back up the unwarranted assumptions I've made, so I'm just going to run away.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Speaking as an employee in an oncology clinic, I have to say I firmly respect the freedom of choice of every individual, and if they choose to indulge a habit that gives them harmless pleasure and often leads to profits and paychecks for me, who am I to judge them? Live and let live and let charge according to the limits of coverage under the contracted insurers.
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So what happens if I then refuse to smoke, because I don't want to harm my health, and knowingly deprive you of some potential profit (a refusal I'm doing right now and admitting to and am not seriously thinking of changing my mind on right now. So I'm depriving you of money, and I'm gonna keep doin' it.)?
 
mike3 said:
So what happens if I then refuse to smoke, because I don't want to harm my health, and knowingly deprive you of some potential profit (a refusal I'm doing right now and admitting to and am not seriously thinking of changing my mind on right now. So I'm depriving you of money, and I'm gonna keep doin' it.)?
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Awww, that's sweet of you to worry about me, but it's okay. If you're male, you have a 1 in 2 chances of getting cancer at some point in your life anyway. Female, 1 in 3. Even at their nonsmoking worst, the odds are still pretty good. I mean, bad. Bad. Yes. Mmmhmmm.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Awww, that's sweet of you to worry about me, but it's okay. If you're male, you have a 1 in 2 chances of getting cancer at some point in your life anyway. Female, 1 in 3. Even at their nonsmoking worst, the odds are still pretty good. I mean, bad. Bad. Yes. Mmmhmmm.
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I suppose, but that doesn't mean I should go and do something that's of no real benefit to the world to increase it even further when I know that's what it'll do. (a little "high" is something I can easily sacrifice.)
 
The best way to get rid of smoking is to work to make it as unglamerous as possible. If instead of being a method of rebellion that makes you cool, it was treated like walking about the place with cow manure on your gumboots and those that took it up made to feel like morons, then less people would be willing to take it up, and it will die a natural death with the older generations. While it is still glamerised and "cool" banning it will only result in more idiots taking it up.
 
Dorian Gray said:
Social policy on health is health motivated. It's probably also financially motivated, because getting people to quit smoking will make their health care less expensive overall.
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UK NHS spending on health care for smoking relating diseases is estimated at ~£5billion.

Money taken by the governement on tobacco duty = ~ £8billion.

In the UK that doesn't hold water as more money is taken in tobacco duty than is spent on healthcare. Note that this is just the figure for tobacco duty and not the combined duty + VAT figure, as VAT is going to be collected anyway on this spend no matter what it's spent on (more or less)

Social policy on anything is politically motivated. Politicians enact policies which are going to be more likely to keep them in office, and keep the monies spent on politicians by lobbiers rolling in. By and large they don't care so much if they are doing the right thing, they care to be seen to be doing the right thing by the majority of the people that will actually get off their arses and vote.
 
Limbero said:
If you have a drink it won't affect the person next to you, I know what point you're trying to make
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I think you missed this one.

Alcohol is a drug, as is nicotine. Consuming either can effect other people, more damage is caused to other people every year by a considerable margin from alcohol consumption than from nictotine comsumption.

Neither the water example or the alcohol example are strawmen. Strawman is when you misstate your opponents argument and then tear your version to shreds and imply that you've torn down the opponents argument in the process.

I am using water and alcohol to illustrate that your argument is flawed. Just because something is harmful to a person, or potentially other people it doesn't follow that you should automatically be restircted from that activity.

Everything you do in life carries some measure of risk to yourself, nothing is entirely safe. Most things you do in life also put other people at risk as well. Mostly the 'other people risk' is neglible, and the other people are consenting parties so that's all fine.

When other people don't consent and also that risk is larger than negligible, then that is where we ought to draw the line and say, no you can't do that here and possibly harm other people.

There is no good body of evidence to say that SHS outdoors is any significant risk to the public.

There is evidence to suggest that prolonged exposure to tobacco smoke is harmful, but most of the problems with SHS are when you are in an enclosed space with little no no ventilation.

when I'm outside and near a smoker, I can smell the cigarette, even from a distance of 10 meters. That means that the smoke is reaching my nose, and in extension, my lungs.
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Are you aware of just how fantastically sensitive your nose is, and at what level of ppm you can smell stuff?
 
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