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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Author
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Topic: No smoking ban starts 1st July in UK
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 07-01-2007 06:47 AM
quote: Justin Gorka
Nevada had a referendum? We never have such luxuries here. The government just rides roughshod over out civil liberties.
To be fair, the smoking ban was in Labour's manifesto for the 2005 election, so anyone who voted for them knew what they were voting for (or at least, were able to find out what they were voting for). For obvious reasons, that's as far as I'll go with the politics!
quote:
They are even calling for a ration on how much people drink! Big Brother is alive and well in the UK and ....
I agree that this probably goes too far. I certainly wouldn't have banned it in private members' clubs as well, and felt that the law should really have obliged pubs to provide a non-smoking area which is effectively segregated from the smoking area, rather than banned smoking altogether.
quote: Justin Gorka
Yes I am a smoker but the ban in pubs would not really bother me as most of my friends are non-smokers!
I'm in exactly the opposite situation: I don't smoke, but many of my friends and all my close relatives do. That tends to create a problem with pubs for me, because I'm always outvoted if I ask to sit in the no smoking area. Not that this situation used to arise very often, because in most pubs the no smoking area, if it existed at all, was just one corner of a large room, into which smoke wafted from the rest of it. York is full of pubs which had a nice (social) atmosphere and which I really liked, but for the fact that the (chemical) atmosphere in them was like the San Quentin gas chamber. So for me, personally, the smoking ban is good news. But I agree with you completely on the big brother tendencies of our government (interesting to compare it with the one in power when Orwell wrote 1984 in 1948). I, too, am wondering what they'll try to ban next.
Some health campaigners have speculated that the smoking ban might even do more harm than good, because it'll encourage more people to socialise at home, where they're more likely to smoke in the presence of children and will probably drink more.
In any case, I celebrated (me) and commiserated (with a friend) at a pub in Scarborough last night ... and at the end of the evening, the landlord gave my friend the ashtray from our table as a souvenir. After all, he explained, he won't be needing them any more!
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 07-01-2007 11:11 AM
quote: Bobby Henderson
This is one area where I do not agree with allowing the market to police itself. The market has had many decades to do that already and did nothing but allow anyone to smoke as much as he wanted.
So if the market does not agree with what YOU think is correct, free market doesn't work...but if YOU do agree with the outcome then Freemarket works? Sorry...it is either an acknowledgement that Freemarket is flawed or you position about it is wrong....you can't have it both ways.
In this case, if the businesses have not instituted a smoking ban on their own it is because they feel that on balance, they are more profitable with smoking...it is really that simple. Do I feel that the business are coming to their conclusions out of fear rather than actual practice, sure...I think the Cinema industry is self-destructive too. I think many businesses actually are happy to have the legislations since it takes the heat off of them to have such a non-smoking policy. That said, there is very little constitutional basis for a government entity to take a practice that is legal and regulate it in private industry. In a public facility, that is another matter. A private business should be free to run that business as they see fit so long they are not outside of the law unless said laws are found to be unconstitutional.
quote: Bobby Henderson
One of the driving issues with smoking bans is the health considerations for the employees working in such establishments like restaurants and bars. A non-smoking server working in a restaurant that allows smoking here in Oklahoma was seen to breathe in as much second hand smoke as having a 1-2 pack a day smoking habit.
This arguement doesn't hold water either. The employee should chose to work somewhere else that has a smoking-ban policy. A true "freemarket" person would see this as another factor the business owner would face...lack of employees due to unfavorable smoking policies.
quote: Bobby Henderson
I feel anyone should be able to do whatever he wants so long as that activity isn't affecting anyone else.
Sorry, that just simply can't be done. If you merely stand in one place you are denying someone else the ability to stand there. If you breathe...not only do you take air that someone else could have used but you replace it with CO2 that they can't breathe...to take the arguement to its absurd conclusion.
quote: Bobby Henderson
The problem is smoking does affect other people directly through 2nd hand smoke and indirectly from all the costs of the long term habit.
Same problem there...the actions of one person always affects others...that is the nature of society. That is the flaw in the thinking of most kids...that what they do doesn't have adverse affects on others.
Do you drive any motor vehicle...you actions are hurting others (raising their gas prices, polluting the environment...etc). Do you want legislation that restricts your free movement to go where you want, when you want?
quote: Bobby Henderson
Businesses are hit with lost productivity.
That is not a smoking problem but a business problem. If the business does not want to allow such breaks, that is their choice (or should be)...smoking should not be legislated to allow it either. If the business feels that they are loosing too many "good" people because they don't allow smoke breaks...then they will create the means for smoking...conversely, if smoking takes away from productivity, why cater to it?
quote: Bobby Henderson
The cost of health care and insurance are hiked. And a greater share of our taxes go to paying for it as well.
The costs of health insurance are more closely tied to what the market will bear AND the legal costs of it. If you want to cut the costs of health care, all you need to do is get some serious legislation (Constitutional) that puts limits on what lawyers can collect on medical related lawsuits and even restrict on what can bring on a lawsuit. Remember, these doctors are licensed by the government...if there is a competentcy issue, it should start there...not the court room.
But your argument on increased costs associated with life style can be translated into ALL activities...you will then be giving your neighbor the ability to regulate everything in your life since even typing on this computer can bring on medical issues.
You live in a society...in a society you have tollerence and there are expenses associated with that tollerence. The other way to have society is more of a communistic/socialistic one where you do what you are told and you always work to the common good...it doesn't encourage creativity and advancement in quality of life though.
One thing you also fail to mention or realize is that every one is going to die sometime and regardless of one's lifestyle, it will expensive in the end (medically). Heck every pet that has lived with me became real expensive in the end...people are that much more expensive. Is it much more expensive to treat a lung cancer patient or one that lives into their 90s or 100s and dies from something else but is bed ridden for the last 5-10-years?
I'm not a smoker...in fact I hate it and like the others, enjoy the new legislation but would seriously have a hard time support it being enacted. For I fear that these same well-meaning people will tip-toe into something I like to do in the name of protecting ourselves from ourselves. Personally, I would rather see coffee banned...talk about a productivity loser and an offensive odor.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 07-01-2007 01:39 PM
quote: Chris Hipp
It should be the decision of business owners and their patrons to determine if a place of business should be smoke free. If there is a significant market for smoke free businesses then they will open up or existing owners will make the change, which most have without needing a gun to their heads.
I might be willing to go along with that...so long as said business that wants to allow smoking is made to pay for the lung cancer contracted by his servers. What's fair is fair. Servers in restaurants are working in that environment for shifts that can run anywhere from 5 to 12 hours. If the workplace is smoky they're breathing that smoke the entire time.
There's one restaurant near my workplace that caters to a more "senior" clientèle. When the smoking ban went into place they didn't lose any business. But they did close down for a few days so they could scrub the caked on layers of smoky lung butter off the walls and windows and then repaint the interior.
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quote: Chris Hipp
There are certain risks that you have to accept when you decide on a certain job.
No one chooses to be a server at a restaurant or even a bar as a career choice.
In my town, there's a lot of single mothers that have that job as their only option to make any kind of decent living. It's either do that for a living or strip at a topless bar in an even more smoky environment if they're good looking enough.
quote: Steve Guttag
So if the market does not agree with what YOU think is correct, free market doesn't work...but if YOU do agree with the outcome then Freemarket works? Sorry...it is either an acknowledgement that Freemarket is flawed or you position about it is wrong....you can't have it both ways.
It is a plain fact that if the market was left up to doing something about the problem then nothing would be done at all about it. I've seen many businesses still do nothing when some selfish asshole lights up in a restaurant despite a smoking ban already in place. Some smokers are polite, but others are not. And management is often afraid of confrontation.
On market behavior, it is a fact the nature of business is to never do anything to change unless other factors force that into practice -such as law. If we simply trusted everything to the market we would still be driving cars without any seat belts or airbags.
Some issues require government intervention, management and law making to uphold public health and safety. Cigarette smoking is a dangerous, filthy, irresponsible activity. Cigarette smoke is hazardous to anyone breathing it.
I wouldn't have such a nasty attitude against cigarette smoking if the people who smoked could keep from exhaling.
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quote: Steve Guttag
This arguement doesn't hold water either. The employee should chose to work somewhere else that has a smoking-ban policy.
It is a well established fact that people who have to work in smoky environments have a significantly increased risk of developing lung cancer.
It is also a fact very few people choose to wait tables in a restaurant as a career choice. Not everybody can afford to go to college and choose exactly what they want to do for a living. Many are forced to choose just what's available.
If everyone got to do the job he wanted to do for a living we would also have gum drop sky's and rivers made of soda pop and every little girl would have her own pet unicorn. It's a bullshit utopian idea that doesn't have anything to do with reality.
quote: Steve Guttag
Sorry, that just simply can't be done. If you merely stand in one place you are denying someone else the ability to stand there.
People choose to smoke. It is not an activity that is mandatory for most -like having to drive a motor vehicle back and forth to work. The high taxes on cigarettes are supposed to help offset the costs that smoking causes against our health care system. But the taxes per pack really aren't nearly high enough to really offset those costs. And if you live in a state such as mine that is rife with tribe-owned smoke shops selling cigarettes tax free the problem is just made worse.
quote: Steve Guttag
The costs of health insurance are more closely tied to what the market will bear AND the legal costs of it. If you want to cut the costs of health care, all you need to do is get some serious legislation (Constitutional) that puts limits on what lawyers can collect on medical related lawsuits and even restrict on what can bring on a lawsuit. Remember, these doctors are licensed by the government...if there is a competentcy issue, it should start there...not the court room.
The idea that our high health care costs are only do to with malpractice lawsuits is just crap.
Lawsuits are a factor -but they're just one factor of many. I agree we need some serious tort reform. I live in a state that still has a judicial based system on worker's comp and it is costing businesses in Oklahoma a ton of money.
But the main thing causing our high health care costs is demand for health care. 75% of the patients at Comanche County Memorial Hospital, the biggest hospital in Lawton, are there for conditions they could have prevented. Poor diet, sedentary lifestyle and smoking are the main factors at work. Many of these people have no means to pay for the costs of the health care they are receiving. That bill gets passed on to everyone else through higher health care costs and a greater share of our taxes going to subsidize health care.
The only thing that is going to significantly reduce health care costs is reducing risk and reducing demand. Quitting smoking is definitely a step in the right direction to reduce demand for health care.
quote: Steve Guttag
That is not a smoking problem but a business problem. If the business does not want to allow such breaks, that is their choice (or should be)...smoking should not be legislated to allow it either.
If only it were something as simple as smoke breaks.
It is a fact smokers get sick more often than non-smokers. They miss more work. They contract more health problems. They're not getting work done when they are dealing with the health consequences of a smoking habit.
quote: Steve Guttag
One thing you also fail to mention or realize is that every one is going to die sometime and regardless of one's lifestyle, it will expensive in the end (medically).
It costs a lot less to die of congestive heart failure or a massive stroke when you're 95 years old than it does to slowly die of lung cancer or heart disease.
quote: Steve Guttag
Is it much more expensive to treat a lung cancer patient or one that lives into their 90s or 100s and dies from something else but is bed ridden for the last 5-10-years?
Hospitals aren't going to put a 90 or 100 year old person through chemotherapy treatment. They wouldn't survive the stress of it. They wouldn't crack open the person's rib cage and do quadruple bypass surgery either. That sort of thing is usually reserved for people a couple decades or so younger.
My Great Uncle, George Whitten lived to be 93 years old. A sudden case of stomach cancer cost him his life pretty quickly. The doctors could not do much to treat the cancer because of my Great Uncle's advanced age. They diagnosed the disease and hospice just did their best to make his last days as comfortable as possible. His Mother (and my Great Grandmother) lived to be 101. She died in her sleep in her own bed.
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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today
Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99
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posted 07-01-2007 04:17 PM
These days, definitely. But remember, over 50% of teenagers these days are incredibly retarded, more so than children. So you can't be too surprised. And then these people grow up and raise their children who may have the same lack of common sense. I don't see an end in sight to smoking, though I hope I'm wrong. Ex-smokers are usually the most adamant non-smokers you can find.
quote: Heenan
Do any of youse who get offended when a smoker invades your "space" (oh wait, the smoker was likely there first) get as offended when someone drinks alcohol in front of you?
I would if alcohol smelled as strongly of "loser", bothered my eyes, stuck to my clothes and hair for days and made it as difficult for me to breathe as the presence of smokers do. My brother-in-law is the only one in my family who smokes. Unfortunately he lives with my sister and my niece. When I get within 7 feet of ANY of them I am completely repulsed by the odor. They think nothing of it. If my sister comes over to use my internet, I can smell my brother-in-law's habit on her and I try not to get too close.
Not sure where you get the idea that the smoker was there first. Sure, sometimes they are and I walk around without any ass-kickage involved. Here in Denver they have painted red 10-foot by 10-foot squares (I think, they may be smaller) on the sidewalks around public buildings and that's the only place smokers are allowed to smoke. Sure, it's belittling for them to be gathered in a tiny box together like monkeys in a zoo, but they're the smokers. They've got to take what comes with the habit, those pussies. I laugh at them, for their predicament is extremely amusing. I'm not even sure they're real human beings.
Though I'd rather talk to and feed a smoker than a homeless person.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 07-01-2007 05:47 PM
quote: Mike Heenan
Do any of youse who get offended when a smoker invades your "space" (oh wait, the smoker was likely there first) get as offended when someone drinks alcohol in front of you?
No; however I probably would do if they swallowed their alcohol and then threw it up down my throat, which seems to be somewhat similar to a smoker blowing their smoke over me, as a woman sitting next to me at the bus stop was doing the other day. She wasn't intending to blow it in my direction, she was just looking in the direction from which the bus would come, and I happened to be in that direction, which also happened to be downwind of her.
In the '60s both of my parents smoked very heavily; well over 100 a day between them. My father died in about 1970, my mother in 1983, both from non-smoking related causes. My father had to give up smoking in his last year for medical reasons, there would have been some problem if he continued while taking one of the drugs he was prescribed for his other medical problems. My mother chose to give up some years later. In those days the house must have been full of smoke, but I never seemed to notice it. I do remember everything being covered with a brown film; light bulbs for example were quite horrible when removed.
For many years I have lived in a smoke-free environment, and now I certainly do notice it if somebody smokes near me in a confined space; I find it quite difficult to breathe. At one time some of our trains had single compartments, with five or six seats on each side, and no way to move to another compartment while the train was moving. I remember several times running to catch a train which was already at the platform when I arrived at the station, and getting into the first compartment without noticing that it was a smoking one. The journey to the next station really was very unpleasant,
When I was about ten my father gave me my first cigarette, I thought it tasted foul, the smoke was obviously much more concentrated than I was used to in the house. A day or two later he offered me another one; I thought it couldn't be as bad the second time, so I tried another one, and it was just as bad. I've never smoked since.
I don't object to other people smoking; I just ask that they do so where I don't have to breathe it.
Most smokers these days tend to be either elderly people who have smoked since before it went out of favour, or teenagers, particularly teenaged girls. Obviously the elderly people are coming towards the end of their lives, so the future of smoking probably depends on whether it continues to remain popular with teenagers; I have a feeling that it may not, but time will tell.
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. I still drink coffee to this day but only once or twice a week.
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