SteONorDar wrote:
Mr Chris wrote:
I would make it illegal to smoke oif you're prgnant or to smoke in the house if you have kids or a pregnant woman in the house with you.
Are you serious? As it's currently legal to kill unborn babies at an age where they have a chance of survival, to ban someone from doing something with a small chance of harm is fucking ridiculous.
A very slim chance of survival which is likely to result in the kid having hideous disabilities, but that's not the point. It's illegal to punch pregnant women in the stomach, and smoking's qualitatively in the same ball park - a woman smoking whilst pregnant has a dangerous risk of harming the baby, and to suggest living with a smoking partner in a smokey house wouldn't have a similar risk is wrong-headed in the extreme.
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Mr Chris wrote:
As for cars, I agree - they're bad. But that's not a reason for not banning smoking in public buildings. There's lots of bad things in the world, and the absence of action on one is not a reason for refusing action on others.
Er, yes it is, quite frankly. There's no way you can argue that one unnecessary pollutant is acceptable, and another isn't. Passive smoking does a lot less damage than vehicle pollution, both to health and to the environment.
I didn't say one was acceptable and the other wasn't. I said the exact opposite. But because certain things are shit, but are uneconomic to do anything about, doesn't mean we SHOULDN'T do something about an issue which is cheap for the government to deal with. To suggest we should do neither in some petulant fit of "they can still do their bad thing and we can't do ours" pique is gobsmackingly silly. Looking at you, FOREST.
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Also, the smoking ban in pubs makes pubs less pleasant for most people, unless you really love the smell of stale beer, stale sweat, and stale flatulence.
You go to shit pubs then.
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It also means I'm spending most of the night outside with friends who still smoke, so getting all the vehicle pollution as well as passive smoking.
Easy answer there - your mates can quit smoking and you can all stay inside and avoid both lots of toxins. At the bottom of it, it's a stupid fucking habit, does nothing positive except relieve your cravings for it, and is incredibly bad for you.
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For full disclosure, I'm an ex-smoker as well, and probably won't start again. However, I maintain the following statements are factually correct*
1) Smoking is cool.
2) Women smoking is hot.
3) Tobacco smells nice, both fresh and smoked.
*By factually correct, I mean personal opinion, obv, but I think I'd borrowed Davydd Grimm's vitriol boiler for a second...
All this is technically true, except (3), which is entirely untrue except in relation to cigar or pipe smoke.
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Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the enviromental issues with every pub having massive heaters outdoors.
Which, if smokers weren't such wusses, they wouldn't need. BUY A JUMPER.
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And the bar staff have to come outside to get glasses, so still get passive smoking. So nothing's changed.
See, that's just daft. To suggest the couple-of-times-a-night exposure to significantly more diffuse smoke in an open space whilst collecting glasses is anywhere near as dangerous as being in a basically sealed room with a load of smokers for 6 hours every night is
frighteningly silly.