Well I'm sure these rules will help us all have nice clean lungs to fully appreciate the Chemtrails they are spraying daily above our heads............just look at the trails across our skies then type CHEMTRAILS into google video :)
Remember Comtrails are what happens when hot gases exit jet engines at high altitude......so why do these trails sit up there for hours and slowly dissipate.
http://www.carnicom.com/

No problem. In the USA it's been 18 to purchase tobacco for years. In some states like Virginia, I believe buyers have to be 21.

I get really frustrated by this posturing. These medical 'experts' are really just health nazis with a one track agenda. They are completely devoid of the real world education to allow them to think logically or pragmatically.

The problem is really that their views are rooted somewhere inside an upper middle class utopia. They have known little else.

Kids are drinking and the legal age is 18. The age makes little difference other than making the activity seem more rebelious. Kids can buy cannabis and other drugs whether it is banned or not. Dealers don't have age limits. Cigarettes will probably make another nice sideline for them.

The muesli eating neoconservative establishment need to get real and stop window dressing. We need action on solving the causes of poverty and all it encompasses. Poverty is the number one reason for poor education, smoking, crime, drug use and every other issue that the Executive is trying to factor out via bans.

Do these 'experts' really think that banning ad infinitum is going to stop kids trying to shut out their lives? The more the legal alternatives are banned, the Buckfast and the cigrarettes, the more they will just go to a dealer for a buzz instead.

The reality is the booze and fags will just get replaced with heroin, speed and cocaine that are easier to get hold of and provide more profit to dealers. I know which scenario I'd prefer to treat and pay for in the long term.

You can't erradicate poverty by banning the symptoms. It hasn't worked in the USA and it won't work here.

I would like to see it made 21 here in Oz,its horiffic to seeschool kids puffing away - right out in the open......... Who can we blame? wasnt it Sir Walter Raleigh that first brought it in England - [I may be wrong] he was be-headed in the end [was this for bringing the weeed into the UK?]

#6 Bozo.

Well yeah but what are the kids seeing these days? Divorce is through the roof. Kids are going from one 'uncle' to the next and parents are either working long hours or wasted and not working at all.

Concentrate on the fags though. Just keep that daft agenda going that the worst thing a parent can do is smoke and the worst thing a kid could take up is smoking.

Would you prefer a smoking mother that cared for you that lived 60 years or one that was too caught up in multiple partners to care for 90?

A lot of good people are being labelled evil in this crisis of sensibility.

The health fascists don't like to admit they are normally part of life's problems rather than the cure.

I would rather have the latter, Statsman. I'd rather my mother lived longer no matter what personal activities she was partaking in. Much rather this than watching her die in a hospital bed from a smoking-related illness. Your comment is pretty retarded. And yes smoking is pretty evil. Go the smoke ban. here in Aus, South Australia are trying to bring in a ban on smoking in car with children under 16. Heavy fines to the reprobates who do this.

Its about children's healthy and nothing else.
Its abuse pure and simple, at least the Scottish Parly is trying to do something to discourage children from starting the filthy habit and that is good.

"...that Scotland is turning into a "puritanical state" where adults are not free to make choices...."
16 year olds are not adults. They can't vote, can't (legally) buy alcohol so why should cigarettes be any different. This lower age limit has been strangely at odds with the limit for alcohol for ages, and should have been changed before now. Once more, Scotland leads the way in the UK.
#7 I agree that there are more issues that one at play here, but that is ALWAYS the case. If we applied your logic no legislation would get passed since the fundamental issues in society were unaddressed. This legislation is maybe one piece in the jigsaw, but one that should help to at least reduce the amount of teenage smoking. No shopkeeper could rightly claim to mistake a 14 year old for a 18 year old right? Also, school kids openly smoking in the street should be reduced as well. The key as always is enforcement -- if there are no strong penalties or the law is not enforced strongly it will fail.
Remember, we're talking here about a product that is highly addictive and more than likely to kill you. As has been pointed out before if discovered today it would be illegal. It's only legal in the first place for historical reasons.

why do people refer to smoking as a 'filthy' habit? I've smoked for years and I'm perfectly clean! Or is it another case of by 'saying something loudly enough it is somehow true'?

Let me get this straight:

at 16, you can legally have sex, potentially contracting a deadly STD, join the armed forces and be blown to bits fighting someone else's war, pay full fares on transport even if you're still at school and not earning, drive a moped with all the dangers that entails and all the while pay full taxes to a nannying goverment who deny you the right to vote or to have a cigarette.

Interestingly, as this annoucement is made in Scotland, The Isle of Man will today allow 16 year olds to vote in elections for the first time.

Who's forward thinking now?

The current UK should be able to vote at 16.
All the rest at 18.

#12 I agree, we should give 16 year olds the vote, and stop 16-17 year olds going into combat. I would be happy to see more restrictions placed on the use of mopeds and other motor transport by those unfit to do so, but I'm not sure that most 18 year olds are more fit than most 16 year olds in that regard. Similarly, prescribing an age at which sex suddenly becomes consensual is ridiculous, but it is probably the least worst option - unless you can think of a better one.

But the use of any harmful drug, including alcohol and tobacco, needs to be controlled to prevent the stupid and easily led becoming victims. The severity of tobacco addiction is strongly linked to the age at which smoking started, so this increase in age, though not perfect, sounds like a step in the right direction.

There are 16 and 17 year olds already, leagally, addicted. To refuse them fags constitutes a breach of their human rights. This will lead to many a law suit and the tax payer will inevitably foot the compensation bill.

Beware.......

12. JonnyCab /Well said/ Another stupid nanny state law introduced by the pathetic numpty,s .Do these idiots think it will stop the neds having a puff with their buckfast, no chance.They have bugger all else to do ,but interfere in every thing we do. The sooner this control freak puppet executive are out the better.
ban ,ban ,ban.They have banned every thing from non existing fur farms to smoking outside in bus shelters.Quite pathetic really.

Jack wants to stay in power another 8 years! No chance. Ban it altogether and I would have more respect and would even vote for Labour again, but the hypocrisy sticks in my throat that the government still want your money. I am just waiting to hear if the European Court judges say that you can buy on the internet tax free, what are they going to do about that - Ban the internet for under 18's?

You can buy them online and if the ruling goes the smokers way, they will be able to buy 200 fags from Poland for £7. It's a nonsense in todays age of t'internet purchasing.

Is britain the only country in the EU who,s people are denied the benefits of being in the EU?.

Afraid some of you numpties are missing the point:SMOKING KILLS. So in my book if any measure introduced by anyone leads to one less youngster from polluting his/her lungs with this filth then so much the better. Another positive consequence is that the shareholders of death will lose out - even a little bit.

Whatever the arguments over legal ages, NO SMOKING has to be good for the nation's health. Look at past stories of our being the country with poorest health in Europe.

I stopped two years ago and my brothers and sister all stopped within the last year. Our parents both died from smoking related illnesses.

Time to add it to the substance abuse list and make it illegal ... and go after the people who supply it at any level!

Scotwebb are slavering again the guy must have a sore neck lookig at plane trails

Hang on a minute. I am Scottish living in Scotland, a smoker (not proud of it) who agrees with the ban on smoking in public places. Yes it can be a pain in the ass but there you go. We used to be able to smoke on planes and all other form of public transport, this was stopped years ago and we adapt to it and move on.

In my opinion Scotland is heading for independence and we don’t want law suits flying about all over the place because they will.

A government allows the sale of a product or service which they know (since they put a warning on the packet) is going to shorten our lives or at best give us a serious illness later on in life. It allows this while (and this is the important bit) taking profit from it in the form of TAX.

If a motor car were produced which was know to be unsafe i.e. fair chance it would kill you early and the government said ok we will let you produce and sell these cars as long as we get some tax from it.

As far as lowering the age of kids buying cigarettes…I never touched a cigarette till I was 18 anyway because my parents (smokers at the time) explained it all to me and as a child I listened. At 18 I thought I would try it and as smokers know it is very addictive. So non smokers shut up about something you know nothing about.

In school there was the odd smoker being discreet but today in any high school in the country there are kids smoking all over the place in school in full view of teachers who I am afraid to say turn a blind eye to it. (Its not part of their job) Ha

To the righteous out there, while their all for forcing more laws on to smoking, you may be interested to know their actually handing out free heroin http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2466584,00.html

Oh and please remember that we were being told that cancer cases will increase by about 50% by 2020.....work it out

Great timing. On the day 16-18 year olds cannot buy ciggies from the corner shop, they may be able to buy/order from Lithuania

I am a smoker and I cannot doubt that it is bad for me. Theres millions of deaths to testify for that.

Nobody is talking about making smoking illegal. 30% of our population is dependant on a potentially legal drug if you want me to spell it out.

Making it illegal is political suicide, and things are not that black and white in politics. Is there anything here you cannot understand?

Smoking Kills!! Wow, some news. Would like to see all the health freaks faces when they realise they too are gonny die. And as for having the toughest anti-smoking laws in the world, I would be more impressed if we had the toughest child care laws in the world. They should just ban smoking entirely, though they aint gonny do that are they? Far too much lose of revenue for the tax man, buncha hippocrites.

Wonderful if we can prevent children even starting to smoke. However how do we enforce this law? I, at present see children Less than 16 on their way to school smoking like chimneys. Young girls seem to be the worst. Its almost like an act of defiance.

Yeah, why not go the whole road and make nicotine a controlled substance? But wait a minute..........wouldn't the London government just supply ciggies to addicts, the way they're proposing doling out heroin? So, how much power does the Scottish Executive have anyway?

I wish someone would put a restriction on scottweb's comments!

Re: comment 25. I smoke two or three cigarettes a month, and wouldn't call myself addicted. Is it not more a question of weak will?

To be honest, people who smoke when they are 16 dont just wait till their 16th birthday and light up, many have been smoking for 2 or 3 years previously. What is to happen to everyone under 18 if this new legislation is passed? Many will be addicted already? Maybe if they concentrated on trying to implement the legal age we already have in place that would be a start. I for one have been happily buying fags since I was 14. The warnings are on the packets as it is. Anymore and its just gonna turn into a dictatorship. What next.....

Firstly, some of the above posters mention being able to go to war at 16. This is not true; you can join the military at 16 but are not allowed to serve in combat at this age.

Secondly, the main reason teenagers smoke is because they think it's adult to do so. Raising the age limit may perversely make cigarettes more attractive to them.

It makes sense to raise the smoking age limit to the accepted legal age of adult responsibility.

When will they raise the marriage age from 16?

They have the power to bully the people of scotland,
into doing what ever they want them to do.
Sad pathetic little hitlers.

Listen guys , you can make smarmy little comments and pick holes in this like you can everything else.

But you have to be an idiot not to agree its a step in the right direction.

Of course it's an act of defiance, grannie. No self-respecting teenager would ever want themselves to be aligned with the stupid, politically correct rubbish that is force fed today.

I am long past being a teenager but even I get a mild feeling of defiance when I smoke in my large engined, uneconomical car, with my son as a passenger, whilst breaking the speed limit by a small margin, then tossing the fag-end out of the window (having first made sure that there are no bikers around).

I get the feeling of defiance for a different reason. I am b******d if I am going to change the way I have always done things because some idiot politicians say that I should, without giving a proper reason why.

The arguement about passive smoking is not valid and is merely the result of the Labour party giving a platform to cranks and idiots with an axe to grind.

Roll on the next election, then we can reverse the hunting ban, the smoking ban and Lord knows however many other bans and restrictions that McConnell is so proud of.

Scotweb is entitled to his opinion, as you are too.

What a bunch of moaners.At least we`re doing something which is better than nothing.One step at a time.We`ve got to start somewhere to get the message accross that smoking kills.My dad died a horrible death from smoking 60 a day.Any measures that controls smoking is for the good of the population.

Dougie (36) is wrong.

You may not be able to go out in the field with the Army at 16, but you can still be drafted to a ship that is on operational deployment in the Navy whilst under 18.

FOR DUNCAN OF EDINBURGH. 16 17 YEAR OLDS ARE NOT ALLOWED INTO COMBAT, MILITARY LAW. FACT. SMOKING CAN KILL, FACT, SO DOES CAR FUMES, RADIATION, BUGS, AND MILLIONS OF OTHER THINGS.PROHIBITION IN THE USA BANNED ALCHOHOL, AL CAPONE MADE MILLIONS, AND THEY JAILED HIM FOR THE TAX HE DID NOT PAY ON THE BANNED ALCHOHOL. THE MIND BOGGLES

Shame on you Petrol Head! Your Mammy's needing tae gie you the belt!!!

While this proposed legislation may be well meaning, it will make absolutely no difference to youngsters getting hold of cigarettes. At the moment, the law states that no one under the age of 16 can buy cigarettes, yet you only have to ask any 14 or 15 year old who smokes if they find it difficult to buy them. They have no problem. The shopkeepers who sell to under 16s will continue to sell to under 18s, unless the government, police and trading standards really back this up with severe fines to shopkeepers who sell them to children, and also penalise the parents (and there are many), who GIVE cigarettes to children.

If brought in, this legislation will also have to provide smoking cessation services and NRT to children who are addicted to nicotine. It is the most addictive substance our society uses. More so than heroin, or any of our other illegal substances. The purpose of any such legislation should be to HELP youngsters to stop, not simply penalise them for doing it. After all, if they continue to smoke, they will not be breaking the law (unless they do it in a public place), as the tobacco laws currently cover only the SALE of cigarettes, and not the act of smoking. It's the same with alcohol. Young people drinking alcohol are only breakig the law if they do it outside where there is a byelaw in place. The legal age to consume alcohol in Scotland is 5 years old, not 18, as many people think.

Im sorry but when I die, whenever that may be (as a smoker I am not GUARANTEED to die a smoking related death) I would like to die in the knowledge that I have lived my life the way I wanted to live it, been able to make decisions for myself etc etc. I dont want to die with a list of politician's dos and donts beside my bed.

It won't stop Scotland sucking. I'm off ootside fir a fag.

yolanda, NR treatment is actually very very ineffective. Very low success rate of around 10% (if that much) Your right though that the problem lies with the shopkeepers and the police. If they cannot even manage at the moment to stop under 16s getting smokes, what difference will there be when the limit is 18.

I always thought life was about choices and freedom of choice? It's certainly something we hear from loads of whingers and whiners ( I'll have an abortion as it's my choice, I'll drink all I want, it's my choice, I'll sleep with whoever, it's my choice, I'll wear whatever, it's my choice etc etc)

This may be misleading, as a Canadian we have had stricter laws with regard to smoking than here for some time now.

I have never understood how it is legal for a minor to buy a drug here in Scotland (and that is what tobacco is)

12# well said.
What a farce.
Yesterday we are told they may start enforcing the law on underage sales of tobacco by giving them a right talking to.
What a load of hot air or was it smoke?
Can a 16yr old stand for Holyrood?
If yes and they were elected could they smoke there?

Comment@41 Dave, thank you mate.......il put in a good work for you with Tony Basil ;)

#49, I take your point that statistically NRT does not get great results in many cases, but when combined with other methods, this does increase. Even if the success rate was no more than 10% though, this has to be a good result if it cuts the proportion of smokers in future generations by 10%.

Research shows that the younger someone starts, the more likely they are to become addicted, and smoking is most prevalent in deprived areas where people to not often consider that purchasing patches etc is a good use of their money (fags are though, unfortunately!), so it may be a good place to start. I think that as long as these things are being done for the right reasons, that can only be a good thing. Sometimes though, there is a tendency to demonise people rather than try to help them. It shouldn't be a case of just telling someone they're not allowed to do something, regardless of their age. It should be about facts, evidence, and helping them to quit. This can only happen if they WANT to though.

Back to the unscrupulous shopkeepers though. They will really have to be hammered for non compliance if this is to have any effect at all.

Aye, what a joke, Im off out to murder someone so I can get locked up for a couple of years. At least then Ill be able to smoke inside.

51 It's always been illegal to sell cigs to under 16's
It doesn't stop under 16's tricking retailers into selling them, it doesn't stop unscrupulous retailers selling them
I bought my first packet of 10 picadilly in 1960 when I was 10, I got the belt for it at school, and din't start again till I was 20

56 Dinnae go murderin folk, become a westminster
politician ye can smoke in the bars o the hooses o hypocricy

55

Yes they did! In fact. you can get a license from the government, plus grant to grow the dam stuff! and do you know their main market? America, who is currently waging war on cannabis. It's a jobs for the boys thing.

Scotweb, hehehe, don't think the wife would like that but cheers anyway!!

55. BC . I dont think its as straightfoward as legalisation though BC homegrown is acknowledged as on of the worlds best.

Again, its not a prefect drug, but to have alcohol and fags legal i dont see why Cannabis shouldnt be legal too.

Petrolhead (40)- You brought something into the discussion that our 'great & good' are incapable of understanding - Human Nature.
However incompetent they have been with their anti-smoking stuff in the past it was working and smoking prevalence was on a steady decline. A more subtle approach much like that of 'the patch people' might have had even better results.
The smoking bill is a bullying bill offering no respect at all for the smoker nor the majority of people using traditional Scottish social meeting places and is seen as such by the many smokers and non-smokers who believe in a true democracy respecting all the needs of all its citizens.
As usual the proposals came from an inept committee of tobacco control 'experts' (an excuse for paying out more cash to reward anti-smoker activists) incapable of thinking beyond rules and punishments.
Tobacco sales have already increased and we can be sure the Scottish Rulers have put the battle against smoking back by years - again.

Never fails to amaze me how ridiculous and often irrelevant comments on this site are.

I think most people would agree that smoking isn't any less harmful as drinking, and therefore the age at which you buy them should be the same.

Also, what formal ID do you have at 16? I suppose that a few of the better off may have passports, but apart from that there's very little.

There was an article recently about proposing 18 as a "rite of passage" age and setting that as pretty much the age for everything. Sounded fairly sensible to me.

Also, on the BBC site it says that Forest are in support of this, not what it reads in this article.

Scottwebb, are you saying that as there are other harmful chemicals about we shouldn't bother trying anything to improve people's health? Might as well legalise crack and heroin while we're at it then eh?

All of you on both isdes seem to be missing the main point. "They" pass laws by the dozen - but most of them are never enforced except against easy targets like working taxpayers of fixed abode.
Sit at a road junction and see what percentage of drivers have a mobile stuck to their ear; go to a gipsy site and look at the tax discs (or at least look at the windscreens); see if Sikhs wear a crash helmet when on a motor bike or carry a blade above legal length; have a look at youngsters buzzing about on mini motor bikes, on the footpath, with no helmet, tax, insurance, lights etc. etc.
The answer is LESS government. Treat people as adults, responsible for the results of their own actions - but remove the right to have the taxpayer to subsidise treatment for stupidity (like smoking).

Porky, UK Adults have proved themselves - by and large- not to be responsible.

THAT is why the UK has a Nanny State. Listen to all the little whingers on here .

At Nursery, you get told not to put your face up against the radiator because it will hurt you. Some people still go ahead and do it.

The fact is, the anti smoking stance of holyrood is the best thing they have done.

I think only the most hard line pro smoker will disagree with the fact it will save lives and generally raise quality of life in Scotland.

Also watched a bit of scottwebs chemtrails video and I have to say I just love all this crazy conspiracy stuff.

Keep it up, its very entertaining (I would also recommend the videos of David Icke on youtube. They are priceless)

I started smoking when I was 13,during the war ,cigarettes were rationed and in short supply,but my friends and I had no problem getting them.What our problem was -money! but this is not a problem for todays youngsters

Never heard of teenage rebellion. Smoking will become an act of defiance to teenagers now. Everything you ban backfires on you, you sanctimonous bunch of idiots, it wont go away, it just becomes more attractive, to hell with the health consequences, somebodys telling me not to do it, well they can stick it where the sun dont shine, i'll do it because it annoys people, pure and simple. Fag sales will go up, again....

# 65 I think only the most hard line pro smoker will disagree with the fact it will save lives and generally raise quality of life in Scotland

No it wont you idiot, cavity wall insulation will though

Good idea.

Why are the exclusive not making smoking illegal.
Stop the use, buying or selling, production or transportation of tobacco products in Scotland.
If this means billions lost in taxes 10s of thousands of people out of work and claiming benefits then so be it.
Also stop investing politicians pension funds in the tobacco industry.
I don't suppose they will make it illegal, they are happy to restricts people rights to participate in a perfectly legal act by insisting they are concerned about their health yet they are happy for these same people to inflict that same ill health on themselves and to ensure that the unemployment figure don't go through the roof, to ensure they have the money coming in to finance their projects
including their wages, perks and worst of all pensions.
The exclusive are the biggest bunch of hypocrites I have seen.

Anyone interested in a puff!

easiest thing would be to ban them completely , that way the nhs will have more money as less people will get cancer from smoking

kids will rebel, weed dealers will end up selling fags cheaper than shops.

then in another 5 years time some political figure will call for a reclassing of the age to buy fags

yadda yadda yadda

I wish these people lived in the real world

ok 73 , tell us what we should do.

This is how debate works , if you dont like what is proposed, come up with another solution.

"Its all sh"te" isnt very constructive.

All smokers should be able to indulge in their habit.......... in a laboratory with masks on their faces to see how it affects humans. Then that way the inconsiderate bas****s won't be able to flick them oot the car windee so they land in my open top sports car!

Here you go, #74.

It will make your head spin. Once it has settled, I think you may have a new direction to look in, and a new "bad boy" to blame.

http://www.vialls.com/transpositions/smoking.html

I am not one for conspiracy theories. This explanation uses logic, common sense and offers an interesting, and utterly believable new dimension to this tired old tirade.

I predict that the anti smokers on here will reject it out of hand. I doubt that they will read beyond the third sentence.

Grab a coffee, (complete with its 19 rat carcinogens) and have a read.

Dont think we should be raising the age limit on smoking.

Think we should ban Nicotine instead.

This is rubbish #77 Colin.
extract;
Nowadays we look back on American prohibition with justifiable astonishment. Is it really true that an entire nation allowed itself to be denied a beer or scotch by a tiny group of tambourine-bashing fanatics? Sadly, yes it is, despite a total lack of evidence that alcohol causes any harm to humans, unless consumed in truly astronomical quantities.

Astronomical quantities? Rubbish! My Grannie deid after just one whisky. She fell into the barrel.

76. Pete McClelland / How can any one smoke a cig ,a pipe, or a cigar with a mask on their face.
Does, make sence.Very stupid comment.

#80. I meant like the beagles

Absolute Crap , Colin. Three pages of rant. If you click on the home page its not even there.

makes sence now? :o)

despite a total lack of evidence that alcohol causes any harm to humans, unless consumed in truly astronomical quantities.

Im not even going to start on this. Some of you had more brains when you popped out your mother.

how about reading the World Health Organistion website rather than assuming the whole world is a conspiracy and posting links to dead websites by nameless faceless individuals?

http://www.who.int/tobacco/en/

Which part do you not understand?

Astro, you will never convince the idiots no matter what you show them. My mother in law (I worship the ground she's gonna be buried in) smokes 'safe' menthol fags.

The only people who should be able to get the vote are those who pay tax.

This includes 16/17 year old people who are working.

Students, dole/benefit scroungers, people who cant be @rsed to work- why should they get the decision of how our money is spent and lets be honest folks, that is 99% of what the role of government is. A group of people deciding where and how the money is spent.

Then you maybe would keep getting these fools in Glasgow ensuring the Labour party get in every time. As a famous trade unionist once said "you could pin a red rossette on a sheepdog and they would still vote for it"

Nae point smoking if ye canny enjoy a pint at the same time.

#85,

Its not about my understanding, its about belief.

You might want to look for the money. When you discover who funds the WHO, things will become clearer.

When you discover that the WHO arent saints you will understand. They buried their 1998 SHS study because the numbers didnt crunch. It even showed that SHS provides a protective effect.

And is this the same WHO that condemned 53 MILLION people to a slow and painful death by banning the use of DDT as the most effective weapon in the fight against malaria?

You need to read more. You need to read different. You need to allow for more than one point of view.

The truth you know is a lie. Find another truth.

These proposals won't make a blind bit of difference to a youngster who has a desire to smoke. I'm more intrigued to see if the smoking in public places law will be accepted south of the border next year.

Right enough of the baccy, the race is on for anither hunner!

#86,

You might want to stop tarring everyone with the same brush.

The only venomous anti smoker I ever met face to face was jailed (six months after he told me how disgusting I was) for 15 years for molesting children.

I guess, using your technique, that means that all anti smokers are paedophiles?

This smoking lark seems to be a bit of a cloudy issue!!

72 Charlotte so you would rather the NHS treated
stabbings, and gunshot wounds from all the rival
blackmarketeers and gangsters. What am I talking about? Look up prohibition and believe it does not work.

Is the race on?

It's too easy

A'll jist saunter up and grab the hunner

nae ither takers?

it's nae fun like this!

81. Pete McClelland, NO.just a silly rant.

gotcha!

Whit!?! Whaur did you spring fae rab?

100 mine ,my first yippee

I didnae mean it ,it wis a fluke, but still counts,

104. Pete McClelland /An even more silly childish rant.

#106,

Very constructive. Is how you usually debate?

When people try and put words into my mouth , yes. I never mentioned anything about paedophiles. This is typical of the idiot smoker that refuses to see sense. Whilst coughing their last, they will still refuse to acknowledge that fags is wot did it

I think it's a shame that these comment boards are progressively moving away from their purpose. It's supposed to be a place for people to debate, inform, share opinions and provide a bit of humour and banter even about the subject that's being discussed. This particular one is about raising the age of cigarette sales. Nowadays people seem to be unable to debate or accept other people's points of view without branding them "idiots" or worse. I thought no one was supposed to be offensive!
Does anyone else think it would be more informative, and entertaining even, if everyone could use the board for the purpose for which it's intended, with everyone having the right not to be insulted for expressing their view, even if it doesn't correspond to that of the majority? I'm finding it all a bit tedious. No doubt the people who are being ridiculed and insulted are too.

Any chance of intelligent discussion and debate without the nonsense?

I should add that humans have been inhaling the smoke from tobacco leaves for over 65,000 years for medicinal purposes.

Beyond breathing and eating, you would be hard pushed to find another human activity with such a long track record.

You need to learn that cancers only found a niche from the early 20th century onwards. You need to ask yourselves why this is so.

Try and join the dots. To get you started you could start with radon, radiation, pollution, and the baddest of them all, diesel exhaust.

If you want to continue to live in ignorance, keep believing that tobacco causes all the worlds ills.

Repeating the lies of the SE, HMG, ASH, Cancer Research et al do not do you any credit.

109. Pete McClelland /I know of plenty idiots that dont smoke,wee jackboot,Kerr,jamieson,etc,etc.

#109,

There you go again with the "idiots" statement.

When last tested, my IQ was 147. This puts me in the top 2% of Britains population.

Which even you could work out was a very long way from being an idiot.

I have no issue with raising the age, but if we can have a different law than the rest of the UK for this then there are no practical reasons for having different anti terror laws, different laws on Narcotics etc. Yet Drugs and Anti Terror remain a reserved Westminster power, where is the logic in that. Nicotine is after all a drug.
I guess the kids in Coldstream will be busy heading across the bridge to buy fags in England where 16 will still be legal. Will the have to smoke them on the English side of the border too?
This highlights the ridiculousness of reserved powers, and non reserved powers. Time to dispense with reserved powers and move to Independance folks!

114. MadJockMacMad/ The executive are unclear as usual, I think you can smoke at any age, but not buy cigs if you are under 18,
which makes the numpty,s new law a complete waste of time and money.
Buy them in england, smoke them in nannyland.

This is excellent news. I have noticed that Scotland is shockingly short of new laws, regulations, and government bureaucrats telling people what to do.

Well done the Executive!

#87 - If you want more people to pay tax, then perhaps you should campaign for a rise in VAT, which is in many ways a fairer tax since everyone buys things whereas, as you correctly mention, not everyone works.

Also, just so you know, many students have to take a part-time job in addition to their studies in order to be able to get by. Also, I suspect that many students have better ideas about how to spend money effectively (though there are some who drink all of their money) since most have a small budget to live on. I certainly did. Don't be so small minded.

Are Colin and Scottweb the same person? They both seem to love their conspiracy theories.
I can't wait for the tobacco industry puppets that post on here to start blaming Scottweb's chemtrails for all the ills caused by tobacco.

And while I'm on, why do all the people against the smoking ban always come on here demanding we go and look at their websites (including the crazy ones posted in this thread) but they never go and read the ones that support the stance that smoking is harmful?

Wouldn't it be refreshing if Colin and his cronies went here http://www.shdir.no/tobakk/english/media_campaigns/campai... then came back and said how informative and enlightening they'd found the films about the tobacco industry?

Go on Colin, give it a try. You might realise how you're being used as a tool of a cynical and manipulative industry. And Scottweb, I'm sure you can see some aircraft trails in the sky on one of the videos.

Regarding the change in age for cigarette purchases, I can't see that it will do much. I remember when I was working in a supermarket, saw I kid that I knew from school that was 3 or 4 years younger than me at the time (I was 18 then) buying some booze. I told the supervisor, the kid had a fake I.D. and the supervisor did nothing.

Can't see that things will change much. Raise the tax on cigarettes and the kids won't be able to afford them.

What's crazy about this is that it will soon apparently be legal for teenage Scots to have homosexual affairs, but verboten to enjoy a post-coital cigarette.

What a world.

PS - Message 119

Tax on cigarettes is already ridiculously unfair. Booze is a much greater cause of ill health, violence, and broken homes - why not tax that till the plebs can't afford it?

We smokers are just easy targets for persecution. They'll be making us wear yellow patches next.

Colin , anyone of reasonable intelligence knows that an IQ test is a pretty insignificant judge of intelligence.

You like to question and that is good, however the reason cancer didnt rear its head before the 20th century is cause we hadnt discovered it yet.

WHO are run by humans who are as fallible as the rest of us, sure they make mistakes but I take it you dont know anyone who died of lung cancer after a life time of smoking.

You are a joke.

Oliver can back me up on this one, in bars and cafes in Belgium anyone who wants to buy cigarettes from a vending machine has to get a token from behind the bar to put in the machine first , or it no work.

We could put this in place quite easily.

121 - "Colin , anyone of reasonable intelligence knows that an IQ test is a pretty insignificant judge of intelligence."

Oh really? I know IQ and IQ researchers have been roundly smeared, attacked, and suppressed in recent years because of the politically incorrect conclusions of their work, but I hadn't heard that they had been proven wrong.

#50 Dave

You said "I always thought life was about choices and freedom of choice? "

You're right Dave it is, sadly, the anti smoking lobby are exercising their freedom of choice, to choose to prevent the rest of us exercising our freedom of choice to smoke.

But that's different, because we're clearly not adult enough to make sensible choices. Unlike the lentilistas and NHS schoolmasters who obviously are, which is why they're right and we're wrong.

Great news that Scotland is trying to save young childrens lives, but in reality the only way to stop under age smoking is to crack down on all the small shops right across Britain to stop selling cigs to kids.

"Comment 104 Yolanda"

The reason why these smoking debates descend into a tirade of abuse between contributors is actually a measure of how divisive this smoking ban has become.

All that most smokers wanted was a choice of designated smoking areas in enclosed spaces (i.e. pubs or bars) and with the wonders of modern technology - ventilation.

But oh no, the SE decides there will be no choice, no debate....just toe the line and up yours.

People have given way on this issue and the politicians/ health fanatics smell blood....watch out you overweight, alcohol swilling, gas guzzling drivers
your next on the target list. Luckily I do not fall into any of the forementioned categories, but do not expect any comforting words from me to your plight when they attack your lifestyle choice.

Where were you when I was advocating some choice in the smoking ban issue?

121. Astro Turf / So people who dont smoke dont get lung cancer. yer erse.

#124 - Ironically some of the more rabid anti-nicotine types are also the sort of wet Guardian readers who also want to legalise cannabis.

Personally, I think all drugs should be legal. I despise anyone who claims the right to tell other adults what substances they can and cannot put into their bodies.

#125 - "Great news that Scotland is trying to save young childrens lives, but in reality the only way to stop under age smoking is to crack down on all the small shops right across Britain to stop selling cigs to kids."

Indeed. Let's put Mr Latif out of business because he couldn't tell whether or not the aggressive, plooky faced ned trying to buy fags was the age he claimed to be!

In fact, could we not just ban cigarettes altogether and impose compulsory random nicotine tests on the general population, with offenders being dragged off to reeducation camps when caught?

It would be harsh, admittedly, but surely Public Health trumps the pretence of being in a free society anytime?

Roger, I don't believe that there are any sites that could claim realistically that cigaratte smoke is as dangerous as anything that comes out of a rear end of a jumbo jet or any number of other industrial pollutants.

I have never been a smoker but have been driven to smoke outside by the sterile atmosphere in pubs brought about since the ban.

Reading that tobacco is dangerous doesn't really add anything to the debate. It isn't dangerous to everybody and that is why there are smokers who live to advanced ages. Knowing that tobacco is bad for some people doesn't mean that withholding it from 16 to 18 year olds will stop them from wanting to smoke it or from getting hold of it. Since it is getting pushed under the counter anyway, the young will do what their parents do and find a cheaper source of supply.

Expecting me to believe that industrial pollutants are less dangerous than tobacco smoke does smack very strongly of a conspiracy.

There is somebody using a comma as instead of an apostrophe where there shouldn't even be an apostrophe and it's making my heid nip! Gaunny no dae that, Rab?

Bill, #126..... You have completely misunderstood and misrepresented what I said. I don't happen to believe that differing points of view are an excuse for someone to call people idiots for disagreeing with their point of view, or for smoking.

What I was asking was is it possible for people to have constructive debate without resorting to making assumptions about other people's intelligence or parentage based on their opinions or lifestyle choice.

I don't expect words of comfort from you when my lifestyle choice is being attacked. You have incorrectly assumed that I am a non smoker. Wrong! I am one of those smokers who knows it is bad for my health, knows it is a contentious issue, knows that the nanny state is not a good thing, knows that a complete smoking ban was not the only option, and also knows that the majority of the population do not smoke, therefore should not be involuntarily subjected to my, or anyone else's smoke. It is my addiction. I am under no illusions that it is a lifestyle choice. Addiction doesn't provide choice. It only enslaves people, so I recognise my habit and addiction for what it is, and I know that until I make a conscious effort to quit, it wont happen. I am not, and never have been anti-smoking.

You see Bill, I have what I believe is a balanced view, and try to look at all sides before judging or condemning people.

Where was I when you were advocating some choice in the smoking ban issue? I was probably doing the same thing somewhere else.... or outside in the freezing cold having a fag!

131. johnny gorbals,I can hardly see the keyboard
fur the smoke.

Rab , do you want to read 121 again and get back to me ?

Belinda 130
Thank you for your comments, which are a wonderful illustration of why we should trust the medical profession on this issue, and not people like yourself who, with respect, either can't or don't want to understand some of the simpler science around the issue.
Ask anyone with basic medical knowledge to respond to your statement "It isn't dangerous to everybody and that is why there are smokers who live to advanced ages." and you should get a fairly consistent and logical response. You won't like what they tell you as it doesn't confirm that smoking is safe, or that exposing staff in pubs to cigarette smoke is safe.
You could also ask your local Enviromental Health people about the levels of pollutants in the air in Edinburgh's busier streets. They'll also give you an answer that you won't like, as the outdoor pollution is nowhere near as high a concentration as that which used to be found in pubs before the ban.
And nobody is asking you to believe that industrial pollutants are less harmful than tobacco smoke - some are and some aren't. What you will find if you approach this with an open mind is that you will rarely find anyone exposed to atmospheres at work that were anywhere near as harmful as our bar staff used to face.
Remember, your organisation Big Debate only has 2 uk doctors willing to argue your case, and one of these smokes 30 a day. There are roughly 120,000 doctors out there who don't agree with you. It is really hard to have a conspiracy with people in those numbers.

123 .
In my opinion :-

It just proves that people are good at tests Phil.

In the real world we seldom have to carry out the tasks you have to do in an IQ test.

Obviously Colin couldnt work out that the reason cancer was not a problem before the 20th century was due to the fact it hadnt been discovered.

Charlotte #72 Actually smokers pay some £8 billion annually to the Treasury while "costing" the NHS about £1.7 billion. This leaves a surplus of over £6 billion which is used for the benefit of non smokers as well as smokers. In fact, that £6 billion might actually go towards shoring up the NHS.

136 - nonsense!

I often find myself wondering if, "brothers and sisters have I none, but that man's father is my fathers son" who is in the painting...

Also, while smoking may not make you more intelligent, scientific studies have shown that it makes you at least 33% cooler.

What a heap of garbage saying that our smoking laws are one of the most restrictive. The ban only started this year! In the states you must already be 18 to purchase cigarettes, 21 in some of them!
Not a problem with me.

How is it then that ventilation is an acceptable answer in industrial settings dealing with paint sprays, toxic fumes from welding processes and yet supposedly can't move tobacco smoke?

I don't know what you can prove by your claim that only two doctors support us. They are people who are committed to an issue and prepared to speak about it. I know from personal experience how peer pressure can make it very difficult to listen to patients on specific issues regarding their own personal health.

As for toxin levels I am not professionally competent to argue about the levels. I believe the safe pollutant levels set by OHSA demonstrate the weakness of tobacco smoke toxicity. I also believe that nobody has demonstrated that tobacco smoke increases risks to non-smokers. But you are still insisting that smoking and passive smoking are dangerous without showing how banning smoking and penalising under 16s from buying tobacco is going to solve the problem.

Tobacco smoking is well established in many communities as a social activity. If you insist on making it difficult for smokers they won't conform, they will just lose respect for the law, as I have in this aspect of law, because the law has lost respect for those people who choose smoking.

140 fao Roger 135

Really, is this a case for govt. interferance, or rather a job for parents? My wife and i both smoke(outside the house), but neither of my kids do...They're pretty smart, and we told them of the dangers. By legislating/outlawing smoking,you will just create a new black market. Just get parents involved, stand back, and let the freedom of choice take hold. P.S. although i do not always agree with Mr.Scottwebb, he is always interesting.

"Comment 132 Yolanda"

Yolanda - you appear to have misinterpreted by comments; it was certainly not meant as an attack on you. Indeed, I entirely agree with your sentiments about having civilised debate on smoking issues, unfortunately a minority do not. My main point was how divisive the issue has become.

It's because we have too many politicians with not enough real work to do. They have to come up with something so they just try to ban everything!!!

Been away shopping, having a life etc. Yeah my IQ is 300 trillion zillion. Now prove me wrong.
Smokers = idiots.

Come on everyone, our nation is the boil on the but of the developed world when it comes to health, it's embarrassing. If we can't educate the young especially to not smoke then lets take this hard change in lifestyle for some and get through it. years from now it will be so worth it.

Dave 50. I also believe in freedom of choice. But I also know that one persons freedom can affect the life of others., ie the pregnant teenager, the single mother who takes in another boyfriend, the child who starts drugs I'm sure there are many more which can cause heartache to a whole family. No man is an Island!

Phil , now youre talking.

Smoking is damned cool.

at the end of the day everyone is going to die, every single one of us.... unless they have discovered the aging gene and kept it to themselves.

i would be more worried about the fact that they are passing an awful lot of laws in this country without the people having a say... (is this called a dictatorship)... i am not big on politics!!! the thing i worry for more and more is what is the next law they will pass and the one after that and so on, we are being told our security is at risk then they pass a law to add more cctv to the country (20% of the worlds cctv is in britain)... we have known for years smoking is bad for you so why the big drive now. should we not be more worried about going to hospital for whatever and coming out with MRSA....... as is promoted by the scotsman we will not be able to cross the forth soon unless we go to stirling crushing the economic fabric of scotland...... isn't it about time that there was some laws passed on the MSP's. you no laws that say you need to run your dept within budget. a law for the amount of jollies they can go on in any given year, a law thats says THEY have to smoke outside, after all Hollyrood has a smoking room..... whats that all about? one rule for us another rule for them. when the pinch comes from the cigarette revenue disappearing, what will they tax us on next, the amount of air we breathe? my grandad always said they would tax your arsehole if they could get away with it and slowly but surely we'll have a jobby tax! and that will have everything to do with saving the environment as we will be producing to much methane. sorry i know i have digressed here however the point i make is a valid one. gordon brown is to be watched as well. he will just keep introducing laws that suit him, recently and i cannot remember exactly the context anyway, someone got off with something, gordon brown decided he should have been charged and went about creating a new law.......

smoking, security

JG, you surely cannot rationally argue that a smoking ban is not good for this country and its people. Never mind adults now having to deal with not smoking over a pint, think to the future for the kids growing up in a society and social environment that isn't cancerous!

138 .

I often find myself wondering if, "brothers and sisters have I none, but that man's father is my fathers son" who is in the painting...

I dunno. Its either you or me or someone else. Do I win a family bag of Smokes?

#149. we already have a jobby tax! It's called water rates :o)

well i think that the smoking ban is a good idea because it makes the pubs/clubs smelling abit cleaner for everyone and you dont come home after a night out sinking of smoke! however as far as bringing the age to but tobacco to 18, I dont think that will work. if people are going to smoke then they will!

Roger (135)

Can you back up anything you say? How do you know 120 000 doctors agree passive smoke is harmful? This conspiricy you talk of; do you mean the handful of bigots who have been campaigning for 40 years to rid the world of a smell? The ones that have in the last few years bought 150 statistical studies that makes their entire case. None of which shows passive smoke to be more harmful than olive oil. The anti-smoking movement who pays doctors thousands of pounds to testify on their behalf.

Since you mistakenly think that bar workers now enjoy better air and if you truly believe that the government would not lie to us for its own ends, perhaps you would like to ask your MP why the government refuses to back an indoor air quality policy to reduce the 400 known indoor airborne carcinogens that have nothing to do with smoke. Could it just be that they won't because they would have to ban cooking before they could ban smoking under such a policy?

Perhaps you could aslo explain to us non-believers why passive smoke is harmful when all of the particles in smoke are thousands of times below recognised and published safe levels. Do the tobacco companies add magical particles that make them more harmful?

Can you explain these things away Roger and make us all believers?

Astro turf 151'
He's looking at a picture of himself

pete do you see my point though? this is very dangerous ground. if they can get away with telling us what to do and telling us what we can and cannot say then where does it stop?

they will be telling us what time to be in bed at next and then there will be a nookie tax, not that i would pay much ;-P..... but if they are not stopping us from doing something they are taking money from us for doing something else. think about the amount of money gordon brown gets from us. 17.5% of every single legitimate purchase in the UK, stamp duty on property, capital gains, income, council tax, duty on fags and booze and petrol. they are not making it any easier for us to live our lives, they want us to be slaves to them and they will decide what quality of life we should have. this whole thing stinks of ...... let them eat cake........

they hit you hardest on the things we perhaps like to do in life, rather than tax large companies whom are making obsene profits and allowing that into the NHS, they are allowing people who do not even live in this country health treatment while all the time you and i are paying. when the realise cancer is still rife and it perhaps wasn't all smokings' fault then where will they find the money to treat the patients then. thats right you and me, more taxes! we'll end up paying tax tax soon.

some people pay nookie tax too

lol, yeah i suppose they do

#55 Canada has not yet legalized pot. We have excellent anti-smoking laws here precipitated by the demand on healthcare. I dont blame smokers, they should be offered patches, therapy, counselling etc. to aid them in kicking the habit. Even if you enjoy your smoke and know it ruins your health just think about the cash you will save. I am an ex-smoker and am particularly allergic to "light" cigarettes. It is v. noticeable when on vacation that the Brits smoke v. heavily - we are dying out as a race anyway why hurry it along?

Ok, What gets wetter the more it dries.

any of the political parties care to declare that they are against making arbitary decisions while in power that affect the lives of significant portions of the public's, infringe on personal liberty and choice and generally treat people as if they can't possibly survive without the great wisdom(?) of the scottish executive to steer their lives? if so you will have my vote (absenteee thank god) immediately.

it seems to me scotland managed just fine before "benefiting" from yet another layer of incompetent, greedy and ethically challenged political parasites.

i enjoy coming back to visit family and friends but i have to say that after 15 yrs in the far east and now canada i have no intention of ever returning to live in the "best" parochial, bigoted, racist, violent and generally mediocre small country in the world

The experts tell us that these various measures are needed to cut down the number of under-age smokers but there is no proof that this will happen.
“If the law states that you have to be 16 to purchase tobacco, and 30% of 15-year-old girls are smoking, it suggests that the law is not working at the moment. Why would shifting the age limit to 18 make it any more effective?” (ASH Scotland Chief Executive, Maureen Moore, Sunday Herald, 12 June 2005) from the SPICe Briefing June 2005. An interesting read at www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/research/briefings-05... .
What I cannot accept is that self-interest groups should 100% impose their views upon 100% of us and destroy our traditions.
Pubs were created for adults and kept a lot of less desirable adult behaviour from the eyes of impressionable young people. The lack of compromise in the smoking bill removed the benefits of such places and advertised the camerarderie of smoking outside of the pub.
Social activity will strive to overcome the unacceptable and some of us have responded by creating our own 'pubs' where ex-customers meet. This is not as comfortable as the pub (but it's cheaper).
More smoking at home was an anticipated response to the smoking bill but anti-smokers claimed there was no evidence to suggest this would happen.
Will there be unexpected responses to these latest suggestions?

# 3 What a pratt that we have here. Full of sound and fury but with nothing to say to a real debate.

#120 Phil. Smokers don't need to wear yellow patches. Non-smokers can smell them at 50 paces even if they haven't had a fag for hours.

#43 petrol Head. Why do you think they allow young boys aboard Navy Ships?

#4 Statsman. How is poverty a number one cause of smoking? Sure, the statistics show a close correlation between smoking and poverty, but the only logical conclusion is that, at over £4 a packet, smoking is a number one contributor to poverty! A 40 fags + 2 bottles of Buckie a day down and out is going to be nearly £140 a week better off by kicking both habits.

#111 Colin. Sex as a human activity has almost certainly been around a helluva lot longer than smoking.

But back to topic. #128 Phil, nobody (at the moment) is proposing telling adults what they can and cannot put into their bodies. The proposal is about not allowing KIDS to buy fags, same as they are not allowed to buy booze, until they ARE adults and free to make that decision for themselves.

Frankly, I have always found the inconsistency between the laws governing the sale of our two legal social drugs, well, inconsistent. Its about time the two were brought onto line. Why all this hysterical clap-trap about prohibition? Even the tobacco manufacturers (always now wanting to be seen as the good guys) are in favour of raising the age limit.

Of course it won't stop young kids smoking. But it is a positive measure, and it can only help others like parents, teachers, social & health workers etc who try to keep at least some kids away from drugs, legal or otherwise.

It should be 18 at least to be able to smoke. 16 year olds shouldnt be smoking, shouldnt be able to get their hands on tobacco and even though it wont stop them all at least it is a start against something that kills so many each year. If we were to drop the age of legal drinking to 16 there would be hell to pay so why not raise the level of another drunk causing just as much damage.

i mean drug not drunk. whoops

The SALSUS report, which is conducted every two years, surveys drug and alcohol use among young people in Scotland aged 13 and 15 years One of the questions the children are asked is "Where do you obtain your cigarettes?". The 2004 survey reported that 86% of 15 year olds and 62% of 13 year olds bought them from shops, with the majority being corner shops, newsagents etc. Surely this is a clear indication that unless there is a real tightening up of EXISTING age restrictions, with shopkeepers being dealt with very severely, there is absolutely no point in raising the age to 18.

If legislation is changed without it being supported by harsh penalties to the sellers with immediate effect, all this new legislation will do is cost the taxpayer a fortune....again! There is no point in just giving it lip service. It has to be rigorously enforced. The figures show that it is currently being completely ignored.

wow no smoking?? don't come to new jersey. one town near us has banned smoking within a 300m radius of schools. you can get a fine for smoking outside in your own yard. what's the next ban?? chip shops to protect ya from high colesterol?? it all comes down to this.. scotland and the u.s we voted the politicos in. if ya don't like what they've done vote them out.

I cannot see the problem here. This is a posionous product which is very alluring to young people.
How this could be seen as puritanical is beyond me. No one is talking about an outright ban on smoking for adults, simply ideas to better protect the young.
So it will affect the poor hardest; Not fair, but life isn't.
No step like this will be popular but implemented with common sense and with supporting policy it's a more sensible move than anything anyone else has suggested.

#153:

Pubs smelling cleaner?! I don't know where you've been drinking, but my local smells like an old man's wank sock since the ban! Clubs are even worse!

~161 expat scot

It's taken you 15 years to work out all that?!
Take another 15 years to work out this issue and you might again begin to see the obvious.

There are so many deadly and infectious alternatives for rebellious 16-year-olds, other than cigarettes. They are addictive and society frowns upon them, but no one says a word about detrimental music or caustic video games creating a void of consideration in young minds. I would rather see a youth smoking a cigarette, than assaulting a poor blighter. Thank you.

I'm all for giving kids the vote from 14. I think it'd give the political system and all those within a long overdue kick up the arse.

Sadly we will never have a reasoned discussion on this issue because on one side of the debate we have addicts.

200 cigs – the price is wrong.
What ever the price it won't cut down the number of under-age smokers - they'll find the £'s.

Brian

That is bigotry. Those opposing you are a) not all smokers; b) not all addicted to tobacco (which as an addiction is not strong enough to drive kids to crime in order to pay for it).

#174 Brian.... Many nicotine addicts can indeed have reasoned discussion on the issue. Although a stimulant substance, and a highly addictive one, nicotine is not a mind altering substance. A smoker, providing they have a balanced view, is just as capable of having reasoned debate on the topic as non smokers who have a balanced view. The nicotine addiction itself is neither here nor there. Both smokers and non smokers can be capable, or indeed incapable of having reasoned discussion.

Can I just point out that the smoking ban in Scotland has worked very effectively for one reason - smokers. All the abuse of smokers is quite unreasonable. Frankly they could teach most other sectors of society a thing or two about civic virtues. Many of the people who are most hysterical about how awful the smoking ban is are not actually smokers in my opinion. As a smoker myself I do not have any problem with it. While it is up to me to decide whether or not I smoke I do not have the right to impose my smoke on others. I just wish other polluters felt the same way!

Comment@160 ASStro.....a towel :)

Belinda 140
If you want to see what people wear to spray paint containg harmful chemicals, go to www.arco.co.uk and have a look at pages 118 - 135 for the facemasks people have to wear, on top of having very powerful extraction ventilation within the spray booth.

For you and Steve 154 I have no proof that only 2 doctors support your pro smoking stance and 120,000 disagree.

I do have first hand experience of 3 doctors that I do know laughing at the Big Debate's attempt at disproving the evidence that passive smoking is harmful.

You need 4 A level grade A to get into medical school these days followed by 5 years of academic and professional study, so that is the sort of intellectual level our GPs operate at these days.

So from a very limited pool of acquaintances I can summon up 3 doctors who think your organisation's attempt at interpreting medical science is woefully amateur, and your whole organisation has 2 doctors willing to support them, one of whom is presumably addicted to nicotine, (unless you follow the tobacco industry line and believe that nicotine isn't addictive of course)

Right, you lot. That's enough "debate". From now on all active and passive discussion is illegal for citizens of all ages. Henceforth the first minister will reveal his will as and when he sees fit and you will all submit to his personal ambitions. A law will soon be passed making all undesirable behaviour illegal (details to be announced long after it is passed). This long overdue law will be a catch-all for all thoughtcrime, sexcrime, smokecrime (but will not include warcrime, which will remain the preserve of the Labour Party and its puppetmasters).
Do not complain. This is what you voted for.

What Brian is really saying is that we will never have a reasoned discussion until we agree with his point of view.

And just for your information Brian: the word addiction is never used by scientists. Not ever.

You, of course, use it as a slur.

You need 4 A level grade A to get into medical school these days followed by 5 years of academic and professional study, so that is the sort of intellectual level our GPs operate at these days.-from Clever Roger.

Are these the same super intelligent super educated people that kill over 5000 patients a year through negligence and incompetence?

They arent always right, Einstein.

The problem with 'booze and fags' appears to be that both are too easily available, too many outlets making availability convenient. Firstly remove the sale of cigs in pubs and restore accredited licencees for the sale of tobacco products, next tighten up drinking hours and the sale of alcohol in supermarkets, limit purchasing hours to sensible times and also the opening hours of clubs and pubs. Freedom to consume alcohol around the clock has been a total failure and has caused a decline in British society which is an embarrassment
to all reasonable people.

Roger (180)

Thank you for your admission that your 120 000 figure was made up.

I myself have completed 7 years of university education over two degrees. Perhaps your laughing doctors would be good enough to join me on the big debate to enlighten me about the magic particles in tobacco smoke. While they are at it I would be glad to learn why real scientific research couldn't find a link between passive smoke and disease.

Finally could they stop laughing for a second and educate me about the anti-smoking funded statistical studies that ask relations of dead people how much smoke that person was exposed to 30 years ago, completely ignoring known confounders. Why is it that these "studies" are touted as proof of causation from RR's of 1.2 with widths that contain 1?

I look forward to it.

184. Old Roy, You are not being very reasonable.
Is your real name wee joke the dictator mconnell?.

I stopped smoking some years ago when the cost became prohibitive. However I wonder if other non-smokers agree with me that for some reason cig smoke certainly does not smell the same as it used to thirty or so years ago. Can it be that the methods of curing tobacco leaves has changed, smoke appears to have a bitter smell and not at all quite pleasant as it appeared to be in the past?

186 Mr Chips It is unreasonable for drunken and rowdy behaviour in the 'wee sma' hours any night of the week when working people are trying to get a good night's sleep!

#185 steve - well said

Roger # 180: I studied medicine for a couple of years . I got the grades you tout. I passed my classes. I can read these studies, and not one of them presents convincing results.

I can tell you however that the people on my course were the dreariest bunch of prannocks I've ever had the misfortune to have had to associate with. Intellectual? They wouldn't know Dostoevsky if they caught him lighting up in a non-conforming bus shelter. They know everything about preserving life but nothing about what makes it precious.

Don't mistake IQ for intellect.

188. Old Roy. Call the police.Im sure they could do something.

190 Mr Chips. The police make even more noise if and when they turn up.

#184 Old boy - Your spot on, they are to easy to get hold of but what do you suggest?

Scotland to have the toughest anti-smoking laws in the Western world
If we are indeed a United Kingdom then why don’t the English & Welsh have the same policy?

191. Old Roy,Stop moaning, write to your msp.
Write to your msp.Im sure he, she,it, can help you.

no 193 Jocky

Er perhaps because there is devolution old chap.

Just a wee note. Here in N.Z we can no longer smoke in public places . We can no longer smoke in bars and our govt is now talking about making it illegal to smoke in your own home!! You have to be 18 to purchase your smokes.They dropped the drinking age to 18 as well. But it hasnt done a thing they said it would. Our teens are smoking and drinking far earlier than 18. Governments like to think they know best the world over. But here theyve got it all wrong. Our teens still do as they like and cause huge problems while theyre at it.

A hundred years from now people will look back and wonder how people could be so stupid to inhale smoke into their body.

it is amazing that globaly there is not one person showing off a death certificate that states passive smoking was the cause of death or led to the cause of death. could it be that there are none? if so, where do the 1000 scots deaths from passive smoking come from?

surely its not lie?

I AGREE

Oh merry me, I can join the hundred club now!!

I agree with you all and I love you all!!

196. winnie, How do they plan to police people smoking in their own home, the same way as they police truck drivers in scotland,they dont cause they cant,

200. Henrietta Carruthers/congratulations,have a cigar.

Many of the posts here are slamming the Government about this issue and moaning about the 'Nanny State' thing - what a load of UTTER CRAP these people are spouting.

I think it's definitely the right thing to do to raise the age for smoking in Scotland to 18 years of age.

It's one of the saddest sights in this Country to see kids smoking ciggies on their way to school in the morning. If only these kids knew what harm they are doing to themselves and how un-cool it actually makes them look.

Unfortunately youngsters are always going to smoke, but making it harder for them to buy tobacco products has to be a good thing.

Retailers caught selling tobacco to underage buyers should feel the full force of the law.

For goodness sake, at least the Executive, for all their failings in other areas, is trying to make this nation a bit healthier, what on earth is the wrong in doing that?!!

You have to wonder where they get them from?!?

Hooray for Holyrood!

Never mind the poverty,
The drugs and deprivation.
Ignore the damp and squalid homes
That stigmatise our nation.
Cast aside the unemployed,
The classrooms and their chaos,
The beggars, homeless, and their like.
For we’re on form, here’s tae us!
Holyrood’s collapsing roof,
Its millions notwithstanding;
Suppress from thought, now, if you please
Our imminent crashlanding.
Pensions crisis leave behind,
Obese kids too forsaking;
The courtrooms crammed to breaking point,
Jam-packed and no mistaking.
City centres, traffic-jammed,
Polluted, filthy, choking,
Forget the nation’s social ills,
For we’ve made pubs non-smoking!

Scotland is the most violent nation in Western Europe...But GUESS what! They have the toughest smoking laws in the western world.

You may get stabbed, you may be murdered, you be the victim of racial,secterian or anti social abuse, you may find that rapists and murderers are offered better facilities than school children, you may be attacked by a ned, you may notice that our kids can be disrespectful......BUT GUESS WHAT? all of this can be experienced in a smoke free zone.

The world has gone mad and we have allowed it...

HAVING LOST 3 GOOD FRIENDS ALL WITHIN THE LAST THREE MONTHS TO LUNG CANCER - THEY WERE 60 AND 61 AND SMOKERS MOST OF THEIR LIVES - I SUPPORT ALL BANS ON SMOKING EVERWHERE AND ESPECIALLY WHERE THE YOUNG ARE CONCERNED - THE AGES 14 TO 21 ARE VERY VULNERABLE -IT IS TOUGH LOVE BUT A BAN HAS TO BE INTRDUCED TO PROTECT THEM - THEY MAY NOT UNDERSTAND OR AGREE -BUT WE DO AND THAT SHOUL BE ENOUGH.

Canuck: I sympathise with your position in relation to your friends. Lung cancer is a terrible thing.

But here is the thing, there are many people out there who lost friends who were murdered, attacked, stabbed.

There is problems with the education system and Scotland's children are among the most disruptive in Europe.

There is many other more pressing issues and therefore, whilst a ban on smoking is probably not a bad thing, there is far more pressing issues to be dealt with..

But guess what? The government do not have a clue, hence the energy spent on anti smoking and the lack of energy in every other area.

So this is what Scotland wants to be famous for - it bans things. Ban this, ban that, ban whatever some nutcase doesn't like. I think the mentality behind the bans - the heart and soul of the thought process - is far more dangerous than any tobacco product every consumed. I be sure to tell my mom, who's 87, that the experts say she should be dead. Sure, Mom will die someday - as will everyone - including the non-smokers.

210. Hunter, Columbus USA Well said, my wee aunty is 92 and she is still smokin like a lumb.

208. CANUCK, CANADA /Stop shouting.

#180 Roger

You state "I do have first hand experience of 3 doctors that I do know laughing at the Big Debate's attempt at disproving the evidence that passive smoking is harmful."

It's actually irrelevant what medical doctors think about STATISTICAL evidence. All evidence in this area is statistical. There is no other evidence.

Passive smoking has a Relative Risk of 1.16 for lung cancer which is laughably low. Drinking whole milk, for example, has a relative risk to lung cancer of 2.4. We are dealing with relative risks that are completely meaningless.

I am a doctor of statistics for your information. The reason we got into this mess is that epidemiologists, who aren't trained statisticians, are doing the statistical analysis.

Bad science is bad science. MDs aren't scientists.

I hope that clears things up for you.

Aw man Statsman! Keep that to yourself in case they try to ban milk for fear of passive milk drinking!

So Scotland is finaly going to catch up on Canada
ALMOST and about time too.

Relative Risk of 1.16 for passive smoking remember:

"As a general rule of thumb, we are looking for a relative risk of 3 or more before accepting a paper for publication." - Marcia Angell, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine"

"My basic rule is if the relative risk isn't at least 3 or 4, forget it." - Robert Temple, director of drug evaluation at the Food and Drug Administration.

"An association is generally considered weak if the odds ratio [relative risk] is under 3.0 and particularly when it is under 2.0, as is the case in the relationship of ETS and lung cancer." - Dr. Kabat, IAQC epidemiologist

#215 jimaiv

Are we in a race to see what country can usurp the most rights from its citizens first?

Oh dear. What an era this is!

215. jimaiv, Canada /Please elaborate on your comment.

#199
Roy Castle

#164
re:#43 petrol Head. Why do you think they allow young boys aboard Navy Ships?

Don't answer that !!

#111 Colin. Sex as a human activity has almost certainly been around a helluva lot longer than smoking.

You should come to my home. I'm still amoking.

Calabasas (just outside LA) has,I believe, banned smoking anywhere in the entire city. I understand that in Santa Barbara you are not supposed to smoke within 30 ft of any building which means you theoreticallly have to carry a measuring tape around with you or stand in the centre(er) line of the road. However, my local coffee shop, located next to the court building, is regularly frequented by city officialdom, judges, attorneys, the mayor,the chief of police etc etc and the shop provides ashtrays for those who must smoke.

#160 --Ok, What gets wetter the more it dries.
Go on --surprise me.

219. Pete McClelland/ Wrong again,pal.

Doctors aren't always right. I know my body better than anyone. If I say my ribs hurt and the doc says, 'but there's nothing I can find' my ribs still hurt!

ok chips prove it

I am sick to the back teeth of the smoking kills debate
so I am only going to say this once so listen very carefully
XXXXXX can kill
let's see how many things we can put instead of XXXXXX and then ban them all. then we can all live to a ripe old "healthy" age. If the NHS survives the loss of income from all the lost tax.
I'll start It's my idea, and it will help the 100 clubbers get ther all the more quickly.

1) Smoking
2) Cars
3) Guns
4) Boxing
5) Mountaineering
6) Pollution
7) Homocidal Lunatics
8) Drinking
9) Overeating
10) Illegal Drugs
11) Military Service
12) Life (It is at present a terminal condition)
13) Religion
14) Sex (You might get aids)
15) The Bomb It kills (though it hasn't done so since
1945)
16) Overwork
17) Euthanasia
18) Suicide
19) Going to the seaside
20) Too much Chocolate
21) Control Freaks (Hitler was very successful at
this)

Any more feel free to add.

# 200.
A towel

hi Arthur.
#22 Fitba
Jeff Astle died of brain damage due to heading a heavy old leather fitba

You smoking people cost the NHS far too much and I am fed up paying excess tax just for the likes of you to indulge your dirty filthy habits. I am aware however, of the huge tax on cigarettes etc that is snatched up by the government but in the long run we must do what we can to end this madness, and protect the generations to come. Get tougher thats what I say!

223. Pete McClelland /Mr Roy Castle died of lung cancer, death due to passive smoking does not appear on anyone in the worlds death certificate.
Prove me wrong.

Henry thingy 227 Are you prepared to pay an extra 10p in the pound income tax. Which is pretty near the total
dues levied on tobacco per annum.
Do I object to the extra taxes I pay to maintain your health. No you are welcome, accept it gracefully, and get out of my face, as they say in another place.

224. Arthur / Aye , good post, pal.

I only go by the newspaper reports of the day. Keep on puffing chips, pal

227. Henrietta Carruthers /Read the facts that have been posted earlier, before commenting, it will help
you, honest.

231. Pete McClelland /Thinkin of chuckin it ,gettin to expensive,might to on to coke, its,gettin cheaper under this numpty mob.

#227

"You smoking people cost the NHS far too much and I am fed up paying excess tax just for the likes of you to indulge your dirty filthy habits."

Wow. This is incredible ignorance.

It costs £2bn to treat smokers on the NHS per year but smokers get taxed nearly £10bn in cigrette taxes.

Cigarette smokers are actually paying for the treatment of themselves nearly five times over and massively subsidising the NHS for non-smokers.

I smoked for 25 years. Gave up when I was 40. At 40 I looked 50, couldn't walk more than a couple of hundred yards. I'm now nearly 50 look younger than 40 and feel great. Someone please tell me the chest pains I was suffering, the disguting muck I was coughing up and the loss of feeling in my arms and legs was due to fresh air.

chips, yeah I know what you mean! I think that sort of thing will get cheaper. But Hey! aren't they gonna give it away in England?

Only during the elections,I heard.

lol! sound like a decent policy. Better than joke comes out wi anyway

Joke keeps it for him and the rest of the numpty,s
why do you think he has control over them.

If everything else was brought into line with the age, then maybe it would be right.
But how would that effect the law abiding 16 year olds now who smoke legally. What happens to their rights to go from doing something that is legal to then be a criminal?

Cocaine and other hard drugs are on the increase, no age limit on them. Also they have just found out that cocaine is being mixed with cancer causing painkillers, one of the causes being cancer of the bladder. Goodness me, I thought smokers were the only cause, we will be getting some lovely graphic, expensive adverts telling us so soon as well.
Smoking was on the decrease and ASH have never made it so appealling to kids as they have now.
Nice to see not everyone has been brainwashed.
Some great posts on here, and Scotwebb, you are allowed a voice, so do not let the nasty ones get to you.

240. Mandy, UK / Well said mandy.

In view of an article banning motorised caravans and now with the pending smoking ban we decided to forgo our 6-week vacation in Scotland and vacation on the continent instead.

When i was 18 cigarettes cost £1. Since then annual price hikes have resulted in the growth of soft drugs such as marijuana. Now its better to stay at home rather than go out.

Since the mid 1980's alcohol prices have followed the same pattern and extasy is the main choice of drug for youth rather than alcohol. It allows to stay up all night spending more money and is easier to avoid police detection.

The biggest sufferer is the community with the decline of pubs and restaurants.

The biggest beneficiary is the drug smuggler and dealers. Are they funding the MSP and other MPS in other states to produce this restictive legisation as they are the only gainers?

Meanwhile we are forced to stupify ourselves at home, instead of pubs and with relationships based upon computers, whilst the rebel youth end up even more ridiculous and hopeless than before in a society where all the work is in China....

So ask you MP who is funding him (her) and his party and if they can be sure that the money is not laundered?

242. Oskar, Canada / Have a nice pc numpty nannyland free holiday, enjoy your time on the mconnell free continent.

243. Richard Walker,I will ask John Reid. I think he might know what you are talking about.lol

What a common sense posting 243 well said, and as for the drugs, where are they coming from and what do they fund.
Afganistan, Columbia. Not much we can do about Columbia, we are not at war with them, but while we have our military in Afganistan, it would make sense to tak plane loads of agent orange or napalm over the poppy fields and cut off the supply at source. The blood money flowing into the Talibans coffers to buy weapons to kill our servicemen must be stopped, it is a scandal that this is allowed to continue, and far more important an issue than draconian law at home

i think the change in the age for soking is far to low even at 18, here in B.C.Canada the law is you have to 19 , both drinking and smoking, and any shops selling to minors can loose their licence, and it at the stage now where there is very little places you can smoke in public, its banned in all public buildings and has been in the majority of pubs for several years now

does anyone remember what freedom is about?
why do i feel more and more trapped by the stalinist and fascist. does anyone remember the excuse:'i was only doing my duty, i was only obeying orders.'?

247. Well I was in canada last year,you can get a puff in at least three bars in toronto airport, you can also smoke on first nation land ,ie pubs ,clubs and casinos, the canadians have a choice. The first nation people in scotland dont have a choice.

As a person who has been addicted to smoking for the last 25years, I am glad to see any measures which will make it more difficult and less attractive for young people to start smoking.
Smoking is a tax on the poor to subsidise the rich in the same way as the national lottery.
Scotland is worst in the world Health Tables for Lung Cancer and Heart Disease and I wholeheartedly support all the anti-smoking legislation.
I've been off the filthy things for 3weeks now and hope that I'll never go back to them. Anyone who thinks that the proposed legislation is too extreme is living up their own arse.

Henrietta Carruthers - welcome to the club

The anti smoking scottish executive have their pension funds invested in tobacco comany,s,just like glasgow city council and the rest of the hypocrites, to the tune of one billion quid.
Do as we say, not as we do.

Freedom, you say young man, do youknow what you ask, I will take a chance, I care not now if the thought
and future crime police pay me a visit, my time is short
and I will be gone before they can get me to the top of the case list in the court of subversity and perversion.
You would be well advised to delete this message if it ever gets to you.
I remember this from my youth, freedom, that is, fredom to choose, freedom to think, freedom to talk,
freedom to act with reason and responsibility, a time when we cared, a time when everything was real not virtual, a time of free love and tolerance when there was one world not 8 billion individual little virtual worlds, a time when we did not need individual excursion suits, and could move without fear of attack, fear of being watched everywhere, when we grew and ate our own fresh cooked food, a time when..... oh I could go on..... but I shouldn't bore you, you shouldn't ask it's not safe for you you have placed us both in danger.... ah the bells are sounding now I must don my pleasure suit....goodbye my young inquisitive friend, take care and try to banish these dangerous thoughts it will get you .......

Well done
Anything that will deter young Scots from smoking tobacco is a welcome move

I had to search and locate the meaning of “numpty” which appears here quite often.
(Interestingly, the Google search for “numpty” turned up a Wickipedia article on Tommy Sheridan)

numpty

Numpty first surfaced on the terraces of west of Scotland football grounds, many many years ago. A player who couldn't hit a cow's arse with a shovel would be a f***ing numpty.
"Awww Jimmy you f************ing numpty!! You couldnae score wi' ma' sister!"

For more examples of Glasgow patter, I was directed to ---- The Complete Patter (1996) by Michael Munro:

And ……………………..
Smoking ban's good side effects
From Times wire reports

A Colorado city ban on smoking at workplaces and in public buildings may account for a steep decline in heart attacks.

In the 18 months after a no-smoking ordinance took effect in Pueblo in 2003, hospital admissions for heart attacks for city residents dropped 27%, according to the study led by Dr. Carl Bartecchi, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver.

"Heart attack hospitalizations did not change significantly for residents of surrounding Pueblo County or in the comparison city of Colorado Springs, neither of which have non-smoking ordinances," said the American Heart Assn., which published the study online Sept. 25 ahead of print in its journal Circulation.

The association said the researchers had taken into account other variables such as air pollution and community-wide changes in preventive care.

253/ mr chips
Utter Lies Mr Chips.
There is no pension fund. Pensions are paid from a combination of the contributions of those still working and council tax revenue.
There is no money invested in Tobacco Companies.
It's these sorts of urban myths and lies that idiots like you depend on for your arguments.

The superannuation funds of the working are invested by fund managers on the market and none of us can know where these investments go.

Pensions in the public Sector are paid by the contributions of those who are still working.
Local authority pensions are topped up through council tax contributions and Civil Service pensions are topped up through National Insurance Contibutions.
THERE IS NO FUND!!
Funds only exist for private pensions.

Belinda #176

Hello Belinda! You really are "hooked" on this smoking debate :) You should get yourself some other interests. It's not good to get so focused on just one thing :) I had a look at your "Big Debate" site but unfortunately it seems those in favour of the smoking restrictions are not welcome :( It kind of makes the title "Big Debate" a bit redundant as it appears debate is not actually allowed :(

Having said that, these new proposals are pretty redundant themselves. It appears the lobbyists who got the excellent legislation on smoking restrictions through have found themselves at a bit of a loose end and, like many campaigners whose main raison d'etre has been accomplished, have decided to carry on for the sake of something to do. Raising the age at which you can buy tobacco to 18 is not such a bad idea (as far as I'm concerned we should standardise all these 16-18 issues at 18). The rest is just pointless.

I'm more than happy with what we've got :) The anti-smoking lobbyists should be too.

A highly commendable act indeed. I am sorry some people are objecting to the government policy to reform the society in a modest way.Smoking (with due respect to smokers) is a curse and the sooner we take measures not only to contain it but also prevent the youngsters from falling prey to this curse the better. The NHS is spending huge amount of money on the treatment of smoking-related diseases. It is high time that government and non government agencies coordinate their efforts to create more awareness among the masses against the smoking.I hope this ban is introduced in other parts of the united kingdom sooner than later.

257. Paranoid Underachiever, Leith /I can hardly
beleive your ignorance, wake up smell the coffee.
Contact the FOI, before you cant afford to.

Here in Manitoba we've had the laws against smoking that you are only now getting for two years. Not only does a person have to be 18 but shop keepers are to keep the cigarettes out of sight, no smoking anywhere near schools, in public places or in private places where there will be children. I don't smoke but I wonder what has happened to the rights of the people who do.

Here in Manitoba we've had the laws against smoking that you are only now getting for two years. Not only does a person have to be 18 but shop keepers are to keep the cigarettes out of sight, no smoking anywhere near schools, in public places or in private places where there will be children. I don't smoke but I wonder what has happened to the rights of the people who do.

Abdul, I don't think there can be any more awareness of smoking if they tried! :-)

How about they just shut up about it all and start getting some real work done in that fools paradise in Hollyrood?

Toni#256
That Pueblo "study" never even made it through peer review, it was just released to the press. Here's what Dr Siegel has to say on it.

"When advocates cite this kind of data, that is so clearly inadequate, it's only a matter of time before the public takes a look at it, and can see there's absolutely no substance to these claims.

"I'm afraid that it's going to undermine our credibility once people see we're stretching the science."

All of this reminds me of the early days of the smoking debate in Canada - lots of rants about freedom, fascism, rights from the smokers. Lots of counter arguments about freedom, rights and health from the non-smokers. A few years on and everyone has adjusted, it's just part of life now. You will too.

Restaurants, pubs, buses, taxis, work places, shopping malls and all public places are now free of smoke so that all can enjoy them, not just the smokers. As smokers are in the minority in Canada, it was determined that holding the majority hostage for the supposed rights of the minority just didn't make sense. I don't know any smokers who don't think it was a good and timely idea.

Gordon # 55: it is legal to smoke pot if you have a painful medical condition which is helped by smoking it. You have to pass pretty strict medical requirements though. (And we don't have states, we have provinces. It's a bit of a touchy thing with some of us, who don't like being called the 52nd state of the US.)

To cocur with #247.
Here in British Columbia the restriction is on any person under the age of 19 from purchasing tobacco in any form. Stores must clearly post this Government Regulation. This however does not negate the use of cigarettes by minors. The old adage applies, "where there is a will there is a way".

259 Utter nonsense go and ask employers what happens to superannuation deductions. I have been in one such scheme all my working life.

#267 above, please read concur for cocur.

262/ mr chips

I work in the private sector.
I know how the pensions are funded.
If you think that there's some kind of fund for local authority or civil service pensions then you're sadly mistaken.

It is also a common misconception that National Insurance contributions go into some special fund which is invested. This is simply not the case. That's why we are having a pensions crisis. There are simply not enough people in work paying contributions to fund those who are retired and living longer and longer. That's why the government is trying to push back the retirement age.

Correction to 270
Should have read "I work in the public sector"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4273515.stm

its the usa it is 18 in most states and 21 in others. there is no state that allows anyone under 18 to buy cigarettes. I still think that there should be more of a crackdown on booze than cigarettes. alcohol kills more.

270. Paranoid Underachiever, Leith / So wher do the the numpy t,s get their public financed pensions
from, mconnell is now a millonaire due to tax payers hard work'. hiv ye checked oot FOI yet?.

203 mr chips. Well obviously they havent decided how theyre going to police smoking in your own home. There had been talk of legalising dope and making tobacco illegal. Go figure. It simply cant be done. But hey, you think your govt's daft. Ours is way over the top. Supposedly the word is 'forward thinking' Its really stupidity and for the most part its about control. By the way is prostitution legal there? It is here 18yrs. Just another dumb thing... Recruiting now at the govt job centers!!!

It's 19 here in Ontario, Canada. Not sure what it is in the other Provinces.

#250 Mr. Chips: you can't smoke in airports now as they are a public space. The final phasing out took place recently, sometime within the last year. I can't speak to the situation on the indigenous people's lands - just don't have that info.

268. Arthur

ps... Arthur, enjoyed the stuff you wrote in defence of the guy from Muirhouse that the council were trying to evict. Well done

#265 Thank you Iain (ref 256)
Does that make me a "numpty"?

From: The rest of the story
Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary
Dr. Michael Siegel, a leading advocate of bans on smoking in the workplace because of the harm from daily exposure to secondhand smoke, says the 20 or 30 minute claims are ridiculous.
"If someone is just exposed for 30 minutes, it's completely reversible, and it's not gonna cause hardening of the arteries," Siegel said.
Siegel, who helped ban smoking in restaurants and bars, now says his movement is distorting science.
"It has turned into more of a crusade," Siegel said. "The cause has kind of taken over."

Additional debunking
Steven Milloy debunks claims that Pueblo's smoking ban helped
Colorado Springs Business Journal, Nov 25, 2005 by Marylou Doehrman

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4190/is_20051...

I believe this one is more up to date Paranoid,
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=471562006

So now we all have so many druggies who are unemployable, we need to add all the 16 year olds who do not want to give up smoking just because you have moved the goal posts, so next year or whenever it is decided to raise the age, we will have a few more criminals overnight.

Antis are just so good for the kids. Science of course does not matter anymore it seems.
You will get no respect from anyone ( only the Antis ) with the lies that freely flow.
Smoking was already on the decline, before millions were wasted.
Donations from myself were stopped 6 months ago, I do not call propaganda research. Foundations are out too.
Small charities seem to put the money into better use.

We have so many people hiding behind ridiculous names yet what we have is a major problem. Not even smokers promote smoking but our legislators have ignored human nature and acceeded to the demands of extreemists. These self-interest groups demand legislation and promise immediate results but live in a well paid dream world. We are not obedient robots.
Have patience and smoking prevelence will continue to decline due to effective education. Shame the ban in Ireland has failed to deliver and the trend has reversed.
Legislate wisely and the people will go with you. Act like the Scottish Executive and you can still get a yearly pension larger than the most of us can earn through dilligence. Get real the people are not mugs.

281. Mandy

I stand corrected. I had no idea that MSPs had a separate pension scheme from the rest of the public sector. I bet they won't be having to work 'til they're 68.

Yes Kris283 they seem to think humans are robots which were not!! The antismokers and the SE HAVE some thinking to do!!
'

Bungo260 thebigdebate only dosent allow brainwashed bigots on its forums!!!!

Told you things would not end there and before you know it will go for alcohol and fatty foods!!!! So why dont you support the owners deciding an establishment's smoking policy??????????

Toughest in the Western World? While I applaud these moves in SCotland, I think the reporter erred in his geography. Last I knew, Canada was part of the Western World and we've had an 18+ smoking age in Ontario for ages!

#282 Chips: here's a description of Bill 164 in Ontario, found with a quick google:

Since its introduction, the Bill has been amended. However, the Bill still prohibits smoking in any enclosed public place or enclosed workplace as of May 31, 2006, as well as in schools or school grounds, legion halls, private clubs, restaurants, bars and casinos, vehicles used for work (such as taxis and delivery trucks), daycare centers and private homes where daycare services are provided. The prohibition also applies to reserved seating areas in sport arenas or entertainment venues.

I certainly make mistakes about things but I never knowingly lie. Having never met me, you just have to take my word for it that you're off about the control freak bit too. The bravery of cyberspace, I guess.

Having worked in various gas stations that sell both booze and cigs, I can say with a reasonable amount of authority that if the kid wants a cig or a drink he/she's gonna get it someway. They get an older person to buy it for them, they look old enough to fool the clerk even though you're supposed to ask for ID here in Illinois if you don't look 27 years old, or their own parents buy it for them with the stipulation that the kid has to use their own money to pay for the cigs and booze. I've had kids aged 9 come in waiting for their parents to get gas and come in to pay and while they're waiting they'll look over the displays. When the parents come in they'll ask, "What do you want?" "I'll take the Skoal wintergreen long cut." Yeah, a 9 year old wanting chewing tobacco. My grandfather kept his chew in the basement in the freezer and when my male cousins came over as young as 10 they'd go down and get a chew or too to take along with them. I've been told that this part of Illinois has more smokeless tobacco users per capita under the age of 18 than anywhere else in the US. I might be wrong now, that was over 19 years ago when I was told that. Here parents have alcohol available in the home in a cabinet or a bar area. Kids drink that without a second thought and parents either don't care or don't know. We drink to get drunk in America. I don't drink at all so I've never been one of those 'in' people. I don't smoke but I associate with smokers and they don't bother me. If they want to light up that's their business. Just when they die from some potentially cigarette caused disease don't bitch at me cause they suffered till the end.

yea now we got to stop junk food booze and driving till you reach 25 etc or why not go the whole hog and say you can do nothing till 25 except learning the bible of course,
no sex till 40 (why bother)
I think we should just get rid of this loony labour party before they take away all our fun, our rights, and our love.

#276- Any relation to a Bruce Cavers?

#287- You have to make a better argument than that. As far as I know Canada is the India of the Western World. ;)

Out with the Labour Party! We want our country back.

fags are bad for ye

its a fact

They can make ye impotent!

gie ye stinky breath

make yer gums shrink

know whit ah mean?

dont smoke eh!

Ye'l save money as well 300?

Sorry....sorry sorry ahm seein the Doctor this eftirnin aboot this, its ruinin mah life noo...cannae git oot the hoose...might hiv tae ask fir a home visit.

Aye wee dochin Doreen goat hersel an addictive habit
ken whit ah mean. There's nae hope fir ye hen, an noo
ye cannae get at ithers wi habits, so ah'm haen nun o it
onymare richt!

Longbranchlady, whit a handle hen, ah dinnae want tae
hae tae type thon oot everytime ah wanttae address ye. See yoos wurks in a fillin station, did ye ken that
there is a learned professor o the environment whit has
stated that he would rather smoke 20 a day than
inhale petrol an deisel fumes at a fillin station when
fillin his car up. Much mair dangerous tae the health an
much mair carcinogenic too.

yawn ...

Chuckles #286
If only one side of the argument is heard, by definition, it's not a debate :)

Is smoking the only subject yourself and Belinda care about? How's Claire by the way? Is she still banging on about this subject too :) You really need to move on. The restrictions are here to stay because the vast majority of the population like them. The lobbyists that came up with these new proposals should have just moved on themselves, after they they got the popular restrictions in place :)

Take care, and find a new interest .... seriously :)

304 being infantile again I see, whats up too much for your short attenyion span Reiver.

Me Bungo (305)

Debate is welcome at the big debate and anyone who wishes to add constructive discussion can do so; what is not welcome is the meaningless rantings about stinks, laundry bills and human rights to smells of choice in someone else's pub which unfortunately rules out the entire anti-smoking argument.

What other subjects would you expect to see Claire or Belinda talking about on a smoking thread? Whether the restrictions are here to stay or not remains to be seen but democracy wouldn't be worth much if everyone took your advice, accepted it and stopped talking about it.

Who is this "vast majority of the population" that wanted a ban and where were they when non-smoking pubs tried and failed before the ban? and even if it were a majority does that mean the minority have no say or choice, is that how your version of democracy works?

If your "popular restriction" are indeed so popular; why are you on here trying to convince people of the fact and why was there a need for restrictions in the first place?

Steve,

The line which includes the words "find a new interest" is the giveaway. What he/she means is "stop interfering with our interfering".

On a happier note, I can report that smokers chalk up yet another longevity record. We were really happy that Jeanne Calment lived to 123, but, just to seal the deal, I learnt today of Fulla Nayak who smoked "ganja and cigars" departed us recently aged 125.

I am sure there are several lessons in there for the anti smoker brigade.

MOST states in the US have anti-smoking laws for ALL public places, and all public transportation as well. A federal non-smoking law applies to airplanes in US airspace.

Most restaurants have gone over to non-smoking, except for bars where people go to drink. Bars are considered more or less "low-life" here, and are not family-friendly as they are in Britain where children are allowed to come inside. This practice may have something to do with the alcoholism that is frequently mentioned on these forums.

The age of citizenship is 18 in the USA. At that age, a person may vote, marry without parental consent, join the armed forces, and also at that age he/she can own, buy, and sell property. However, in many states people must be at least 21 to buy and consume alcoholic beverages.

Your new non-smoking laws will at the minimum bring down your heart attack statistics, and not a minute too soon.

Smokers usually don't realize how obnoxious their habit is to non-smokers. We dont' want our clothing and hair reeking of somebody else's cigarettes and polluted lungs. That's reason enough to ban the noxious practice in public places, isn't it? I mean, for example, you aren't allowed to come into a public building and spray people with garden hoses, so why should you be allowed to spray them with your tobacco smoke and disgusting cigarette breath? Second-hand smoke is also very unhealthy. I had the opportunity this weekend to see a 75 year old man suffering from emphysema; he could barely breathe and his labored breath was nothing more than a gurgle. He smoked only one pack of cigarettes a day-- that was enough to send him into a fatal disease. If you want to die a slow, tortuous, terrifying death of suffocation, then keep on smoking and your wish will come true. But the rest of us don't want that, so if you must indulge your habit, then do it where there are no other people around.

-Steve- #307
It would appear "constructive discussion" is welcome at The Big Debate .... so long as it's pro-smoking :) Like I say, that's not a debate. The fact that pro-restriction folk are effectively barred from the site tends to give the impression of hiding in a corner, talking among yourselves because you've lost the argument, but don't want to admit it :)

It's not that Belinda and Claire (or anybody) shouldn't be talking about this subject. Its just that it seems to be all they have to talk about :( They should broaden their horizons a little and find something else to discuss as well (IMO) :) Belinda especially seems to have turned this subject into her "cause celebre".

I never said a vast majority of the population "wanted" restrictions. I said a vast majority "like" them. Which every poll on the subject has borne out. Indeed, the number of people in favour has increased each time.

-Steve- #307
"If your "popular restriction" are indeed so popular; why are you on here trying to convince people of the fact "

I'm not on here trying to convince anyone of any such thing. I was more or less talking to Belinda and Chuckles personally. I know from many weeks experience of debate on another site that to try and convince them of anything on this subject is like trying to take six cats for a walk .... impossible :) Since those heady days though, I've moved on and am more interested in other more important things (IMO). This is my first foray back into the smoking debate for months and I see it has moved on not one jot :( Oh well, feel free to go on discussing the same old stale arguments again .... and again .... and again .... etc.

Just for the record: For as long as I can remember, 18 has been the legal age one could buy tobacco products in Wisconsin, although it wasn't well-enforced until the last few years (and in some areas of the state where that might be the primary source of income for some stores, it still isn't). When I was growing up, there were cigarette vending machines in the shops and pizza parlors near my high school, and there was never any enforcement of the law then. I personally prefer being able to go to Wonders Pub on the first Saturday of the month to see my girlfriend's bluegrass band, and being able to breathe, and not come home smelling like everyone else's stale cigarette smoke.

in the USA the smoking age has been 18 forever.
a health warning from the "Surgeon General" since the '50's was on every pack of cig's ; "cigarette smoking may cause cancer". it has since changed.
the late '80's, mandatory that all restaurants have non-smoking sections, in California. the early '90's,
no smoking in all gov't. & public bldg's, in Calif.
the mid-'90's, ALL businesses mandatory non- smoking in Calif. we owned our own business & my husband, the owner & boss, was told by the state of Calif. that he just lost the right to smoke in his private office, in his privately owned business. what i'm indicating is once the anti-smoking crowd gets a foot in the door w/restrictions on a small scale, there is no stopping them, for it just gets easier. personal responsibility no longer exists here, for the "nanny" PC crowd has taken over, & it's only the beginning. we're now in a non-PC area in Pa.
the only way to stop this is to become aware of & or
participate in your local gov't. policies.

good luck to all in Scotland. BTW--it's all about the money(taxes). many, like us get our cig's from the Indians --no state taxes. $18 less a carton. we are not in the national data-base that says less smokers now.

#310--Martha--if i own a "bar" or "restaurant" that allows smoking, you have the right to GO SOMEWHERE ELSE, or stay home & cook.

Martha Just because you don't like the smell of something, is not a good reason to ban it for everybody else.
The passive smoking issue has never been proved and
to my knowledge no one has yet been diagnosed as having contracted cancer from it.
I don't like the smell of bull**** but You grow some wonderful mushrooms in it.
I don't like the rubbish you spout on here, but I wouldn't even if I could ban you from posting on here.

Me Bungo (311)

You seem to like to make things up. TBD is not a "pro-smoking" forum. Do you see people in there demanding smoking on busses or calls to ban no smoking sections in public places? "Pro-restriction folk" nor anyone else for that matter are barred from the site. Only non-constructive insults are removed.

Belinda and Claire have many other things to talk about but as previously pointed out what would you expect them to be talking about on a smoking thread?

Ok so if a "vast majority LIKE restrictions" we can safely lift the ban as no publican would want to allow smoking again and lose the "vast majority" of his/her custom. It is also interesting that the trade in England hasn't cottoned on to this "vast majority" claim and rushed to remove smoking before the ban comes; surely they want the "vast majority" of their customers to be happy and would like to gain an advantage over the competition by catering for the "vast majority" early.

So if you are tired of trying to convince Belinda and Claire that these are "popular restrictions" perhaps you could take a couple of seconds to convince me by answering my original question: If the ristrictions are indeed so popular why was there a need for restrictions in the first place and why didn't we see thousands of non-smoking pubs before the restrictions?

I'd say that people being extremely annoyed and even made ill by second-hand cigarette smoke is more than enough reason to ban it in public places. Similar, we don't allow people to defecate in the streets-- it's obnoxious and very unhealthy.

If that's rubbish in your opinion, then maybe you need to re-analyze your position.

You make me extremely annoyed and sometimes
physically ill, ban your stupid self and stop anoying others and making them feel ill.

-Steve- #316
I wasn't making stuff up :) I went to the site and saw it was locked and no posts were available for viewing. Others on smoking threads had mentioned pro-restriction folk weren't welcome on the site (from both sides of the argument) so it seemed natural to assume that that was the case. If it's not, I apologise for the error.

I'm not going into the whys and wherefors of this subject again as, to be honest, I'm sick to death of them. The discussions are so circular that it is not worth it :(

As for the popularity of the restrictions. Here is an article from the Tobacco Information Scotland site ....

http://www.tobaccoinscotland.com/page.cfm?pageid=2&se...

.... 74% are either like the current situation or want it to go further. Pretty conclusive :) That's up from 60% when they were introduced. I would say that was increasing popularity :)

Martha: My smoke offends you, your ill informed scatological nonsense offends me. Why can't there just be some smoking premises so I don't have to encounter the likes of you, or you of me?

'Scotland to have the toughest anti-smoking laws in the Western world'
That's good and NZ has had tough laws for a while but by reading your crime rates (UK murder rate has doubled in twenty years) when are you going to consider, 'Scotland to have the toughest anti-VIOLENCE laws in the Western world'

317 Martha what a gross obnoxious person you are were you born like it or did you take lessons. The only person that needs to defecate is you, you are full of it and need to shed a load. just because you dislike the smell of something does not give you the right to ban it or be offensive to those that use it. Increasing the age to 18 for buying cigarettes will not make one jot of difference have you been on the park recently 13, 14 15 yr olds chuffing away. Get into the real world. Personally I would have no hesitation in doing to McConnel, Blair and Brown what John Prescot did to his diary secretary.

Hi Bungo - nice to know you're missing me. See you have alot of fellow anti-smokers posting at the moment. Nice to see you using the name we all know and love. David from New Mills wasn't a very good alias! You appear to be going easy on the insults at the moment and not using your usual derogatory terms specially reserved for us smokers. I realise you must have taken your medication today. I guess it's all "sunshine and lollipops" in the magical world of Me Bungo Pony for today anyway!

Me Bungo (319)

The site is not 'locked' and your apology is accepted.

If you truly believe those figures, will you join me in calling for a lifting of the ban on the basis that we don't need one? Perhaps you could come to the big debate and sign the petition.

Perhaps we go about discouraging the young from smoking the wrong way. Why not (with media help) just tell the truth. Any one who takes up smoking is STUPID. They are so ignorant that they believe that they are DIFFERENT - other people will get addicted but not them -- Other people will get smoking related diseases but not them. Why not tell the randy youth that smoking is not only stupid and a complete waste of money but highly UNSEXY. I still remember about 45 years ago after I had stopped smoking kissing a girl friend who still smoked - bl***y h**l. It was disgusting. How can kids put up with kissing smokers when there are so many non-smokers about and whose skin will, not turn into parchment like so many female smokers does. Girls - one can pick out a woman who smokes by looking at hers facial skin.
Smoking is simply daft. But kids just like to rebel.

Hi Claire! Gosh, the gangs all here now :) Whatever happened to Angela? Again though, I'm not David of New Mills. The reason I looked at this thread initially was because I was on a thread on another site talking about the "surveilance society". Some-one suggested "googling yourself" (ooh err missus) to see what you got, so I did and discovered my alias being taken in vain on threads I'd had nothing to do with. It turned out you and Chuckles were insisting this David guy was me on smoking threads. That got me wondering what my old muckers were getting up to and discovered you were all still banging on about smoking and nothing else :( So when I saw the "Scotsman" had another smoking story I reckoned you all couldn't be far away :) And I was right :)

I always reckoned I was remarkably restrained on filthysmokers.com. Especially considering the multitude of baseless personal attacks I had to endure :) I only remember getting annoyed twice, and even then I only attacked what I could see in the posts rather than make up stuff for the abuse of it :) What derogatory terms did I use? Apart from "addicts" I can't remember being too harsh :) Oh well, nice to see your still kicking about the boards, even if you seem to be stuck on one subject :(

-Steve- #324
"If you truly believe those figures, will you join me in calling for a lifting of the ban on the basis that we don't need one? Perhaps you could come to the big debate and sign the petition."

What's not to believe, the figures appear to come from a neutral site giving both Forest and ASH's points of view? But no, I wont be signing your petition as any lifting of the restrictions would just see pubs and restaurants filling up with smoke again and I'm enjoying the smoke/stink free atmosphere of pubs right now. As, it would seem, do three quarters of the Scottish population :)

#22: Yes, smoking is terrible and it can kill you but the people who supply it "farmers" make their living off of it. It's what they know and what they do best. What do you want to happen, to BAN farmers from farming?!? GOD! Scotland is one messed up country and I am seriously reconsidering moving there.

327/ Alisha

I suppose that's all the poppy farmers in Afghanistan are doing... trying to make a living from farming.

#328,

If you cant tell the fundamental difference between an illegal product, and a legal one, you really ought to get busy learning the difference.

Heroin kills people. Daily. To date, there is not one death certificate anywhere on this planet with tobacco listed as a cause of death.

Shocking for you, I know, but absolutely true.

Prove me wrong.

Me Bungo (326)

Both Forest and Ash are extreme organisations, Forest are a front for tobacco companies who have said and done very little about the bans because profits and smokers rise wherever a ban is introduced. Ash are a group of obsessive bigots that lie through their teeth and have publicly admitted so and who pay doctors and researchers thousands of pounds to say ridiculous things.

Your argument doesn't quite stack up; you boast of "vast majority's" and "popular restrictions" but then say lifting the restrictions "would just see pubs and restaurants filling up with smoke again". How could this possibly be the case if "three quarters of the Scottish population" don't want it?. It would be commercial suicide.

I think you know the reason; Around 10% of the population are responsible for 85% of pub trade. If you surveyed these 'regular' pub goers you would get a very different result than the one provided by two extreme groups with vested interests, on a survey of 1000 people (who were telephoned at home).

I'm glad you like the smoke free pubs; don't you think however that the owner of the pub should have some say in the sort of entertainment provided? or are you in favour of laws to allow customers to impose blanket bans on anything they don't like on other people's premises?

332 PDT your are wrong about the lungs.

"A common myth about smoking assert that the lungs of smokers become brown or even black from years of accumulation of tars and goo. Not true, according to Wray Kephart. Mr. Kephart presently works as an engineer but he previously worked in a hospital, performing autopsies, most of which were paid for by insurance companies, seeking to determine whether the deceased committed suicide, or died from "natural causes". Kephart tells me that he's done approximately 1560 autopsies, and he's seen some strange things, such as the lungs of auto painters, which were "effectively sealed with catalyzed lacquers".

Kephart insists, however, that it is normally impossible to tell, from autopsy, whether the deceased was or was not a smoker. Upon resection, the lungs are always clear, unless the deceased lived in a large city where there was significant industrial pollution. In that event, carbon deposits may be found, but these are unrelated to smoking. So the "brown lungs" myth is exactly that: a myth. "

Worry about

http://news.scotsman.com/health.cfm?id=1178382006

http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/diesel_lung_cancer.html

PDT (331 & 332)

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Firstly the "colour" of a smokers lungs are no different to a non-smoker; in fact a pathologist is unable to say definitively whether someone was a smoker or not from an inspection of the lungs.

Secondly; it is not "a proven fact that tobacco causes lung cancer" Cancer specialists don't know what 'causes' cancer. The best they can say at the moment is that the causes are multifactoral and that direct smoking is a risk factor as are hundreds of other things.

As for the yellow stains and your claim that tobacco causes skin cancer, why don't we see millions of smokers with amputated fingers?

You really should educate yourself on the subject before you call other people "stupid"

Thank you Steve. I would have said the same thing, just not as well as you did.

The major difference, when debating on here, is that anti smokers use rhetoric, mostly. I have spent hundreds of hours reading thousands of documents, reports and studies, and I have a colossal library on my hard drive. When responding to anti smokers claims (which are almost always fallacious) I am able to find the relevant document, refresh my memory, and comment using a fact or two. The anti smokers, however, stop discussing the science, (either because they are ignorant of the facts, or the debate is not going well for them), so they first call smokers stupid, then we get to what really bothers them, which is of course, the smell.

The problem being that the science does not support their argument, despite a raft of studies.

The irony is that while they call us stupid, none of them appear able to read an epidemiological study if their lives depended on it.

Luckily for them, it doesnt.

335 Colin, PDT carnt help being ignorant and probably doesnt know that Sir Richard Doll said smoking was only one of the many links not the cause of lung cancer. Some people dont know the difference between a link and a cause.

I guess you’re right, smokers are all stupid:

Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt, John F Kennedy, Albert Einstein, George Simenon, J J R Tolkien, Theo van Gogh, Ed Murrow, George Pompidou, Jean-Paul Sartre, Humphrey Bogart, Socrates (not the Greek one) George Gershwin, Ulysses S Grant, George Patton, Douglas McArthur, P J O’Rourke, Pope Pius X, Mark Twain, Edwin Hubble, C S Lewis, Robert Oppenheimer, etc etc etc.

And you can always tell women who smoke by their looks:

Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Audrey Hepburn, Margrethw ll Queen of Denmark, Madonna, Monica Belluci, Demo Moore, Nocole Kidman, Britney Spears, Marilyn Munro, etc etc etc.

Get the point? Need I go on?

By the way I don't smoke but have a multitude of friends who do and I don't mind being with them, in fact, I'm thinking of starting but don't feel that I would fit in with "stupids" and "uglies" mentioned above.

Steady on, GrahamB, steady on.

This is a serious discussion. We dont want your kind on here using logic, reason, and common sense.

Shame on you.

There is so much wrong with the glib little arguments you lot put forward it really is laughable.

1. Smokers lungs can "brown up" if their lung function is impaired. I've seen it. I've worked with it. Clear lungs is not proof of a non-smoker but brown sputum can be indicative of a heavy smoker with lung impairment. Heavy smoking CAN cause lung impairment.

2. Smoking IS a proven cause of lung cancer. It is not the only cause but when 85-90% of patients are smokers you would have to be "stupid" to deny the link. Smokers deny the CRUK figures which say 85-90% of lung cancer sufferers are smokers and then cite the Canadian studies which show an increase in patients who are non-smokers. Apparently it has reached 10-15% .... which means 85-90% are smokers .... doh!! Pro-smokers always go on about a link not being proven because no-one knows the mechanism by which a tumour is initiated. But when a smoker is 27x more likely to develop lung cancer than a non-smoker, you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to spot the link. By the way, before you mention it, the reason non-smokers are making an increasing number of lung cancer patients is because the number of smokers is falling so the other causes of lung cancer will inevitably make up a higher percentage of cases.

3. Pro-smokers arguments are usually based on studies they LIKE. Usually ones that fly in the face of a multitude of other studies. They ignore the fact that EVERY study into the effects of passive smoking has found a 20-40% increase in the chances of a non-smoker contracting a smoking related fatal illness. They dismiss it as statistically insignificant. That only works as an argument if it alludes to one or two studies. Not EVERY study. Studies I was given a link to on "filthysmokers" which were supposed to back the pro-smoking argument were laughable, based on flawed data and easily discredited. "Lone gunman" sites, disgruntled researchers and studies wh

No me Bungo, every study saying that the sicknesses rise by 20 to 40 per cent only confirms that they ALL state an increase widely held (by the New England Journal of Medicine amonst others) to be significant – to be significant you would have to at least treble the risk. The figures you state (I have yet to see many go over 25 per cent) would not be considered causal evidence of anything except in the debates about smoking.

Regards your earlier comments, I appreciate your concern but you only see what I contribute to the tobacco debate, as that is the only bit of my activities that is public. Just like an anti-smoker to see one side of the question and assume that's the whole story.

I think it much more a sign of obsession that council officers are refusing to allow a Somerset couple to adopt a child unless the prospective foster father gives up smoking. Perhaps you would agree that this is over the top?

As far as resorting to personal attacks and ignoring the other side of the argument, that happens on both sides and is not relevant to the argument anyway.

#339,

Please provide a link to any study that shows causation. Making up numbers is a well known strategy for anti smokers. Hard evidence, please.

I'll wait.

Colin, my thanks for your words of wisdom.

How could I have been so foolish? I apologize profusely; I fall on my sword; I bow and quiver at the intellect of so many others, mind you, Mungo Balony does have me stymied at times. I don’t think he really digested what was apparent in his link in 319. But, however, I shall indeed attempt to improve.

Me Bungo (339)

Hope you're having fun laughing after repeating the made up junk from the Anti-Smoking Hate group site.

1. Non-smokers lungs can discolour "if their lung function is impaired". What's your point?

2. Please provide the scientific study that "proves" smoking "causes" lung cancer; I'm sure cancer specialists around the world would love to see it and I'm certain ASH would pay you a million for it. In addition, 85 to 90% of lung cancer patients are not smokers; In one study 85 to 90% were smokers or former smokers, this does not mean as is claimed that 85 to 90% of lung cancers are "caused" by smoking. To deduce that you would have to know how many people WITHOUT lung cancer were smokers or former smokers and be able to effectively illiminate all of the hundreds of other known confounders. By that same logic that is used to invent these anti-smoking lies it could be argued that 80% of lung cancers are caused by coffee.

3. What is a pro-smoker? I've never seen anyone trying to convince people to smoke. On the contrary, my arguments are based on the lies, like some of the ones you have just repeated, that come from the 150 anti-smoking epidemiology studies that ignore scientific standard. If you want to talk about the cumalitive results of the studies you need a meta analysis like the one the EPA carried out on ETS where they cherry picked the studies and data to use, used data from an unfinished study, released the results before they finished collecting the data, altered scientific standards and still only came up with an RR of 1.19. From this they declared ETS as a class A carcinogen despite the fact that many other things with much higher risk do not have that classification. As a comparison the risk of colorectal cancer from red meat is 1.5. Should we ban meat? it's more than twice as harmful as smoke and oddly it hasn't been classified as a class A carcinogen.

4. Who is this pro-

Me Bungo (cont.)

A couple of other things you should know about that 85 to 90% figure.

According to epidemiology radon gas is responsible for up to 30% of lung cancer, 40% are due to occupation. 20% are due to diesel (although this has now been claimed to be much higher), then we have the other big risk factors such as radiation, diet and asbestos not to mention hundreds of other lesser risks. To top it all off a recent study has found that almost 50% of lung cancer 'runs in the family' suggesting that genetics plays a much bigger part than was first thought.

Then along come the anti-smokers and claim 85 to 90% is caused by smoking. I think they need a lesson in mathematics.

Well said steve, I think it's time ash started trying to ban diesal, red meat and barbacues - they seem to have the political clout to get anything banned "for our own good". I think the "war on transfats" is gearing up. They won't have much trouble with that one as there is definite proof there. Alcohol is also on the list. No trouble there either. I personally will be looking to find a different country to live in once I am in the position to move. I can't believe that the government are stripping us of pleasures and turning us into a police state and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. The smoking ban is something that has been orchestrated on very very flimsy evidence to turn the public against each other by putting the blame for everything on the smoker. Its manipulation of the population on a grand scale and our freedoms are being stripped from us a layer at a time. It's time the public realised that the smoking ban is only the beginning and there is much much more to come. I see the traffic police are now carrying mobile finger-print machines, the results of which can be with them in 5 minutes. If you get stopped for anything they will have your fingerprints and you will have had a database check out so fast your feet won't touch the ground. Im sure they will link that up to other databases and they'll know your NI number, blood group and if you've paid your council tax this month. We are the most observed country in the world apart from US. Once the new passport rules come in, we will have to give our fingerprints and iris images just to get out of the country. The police state is making us all prisoners in our own homes. See how easy its been to demonise the smokers - the biggest lies are yet to come.

Bungo - I would like to put you on my christmas card list, you've earned it! I think you should also be consdering having words with David from New Mills, his imitation of you is nothing short of crimin

#331 PDT
I can testify to that. Just sniff the paper towel after cleaning the smoke residue coated surfaces even after soaking with diluted ammonia.
add the burn marks on the bar/restaurant etc floors. Remember the burn holes on the back of cinema seats not to mention your clothes from stray embers.
“Not filthy? Scrape away some of the tobacco and nicotine on your walls and check the colour of your walls underneath, then go to your car (if you have one) and check out the inside of the windows, especially the windscreen, disgusting, and if that's not enough, check out the colour of your own teeth and the yellow stain on your fingers and lips where you hold the cigarettes. Not to mention the butts on the ground”
I was in Edinburgh during winter in the mid 70s and what scared me more was the cloud of sticky cloying diesel fumes pouring out of the exhausts of the rail-cars and drifting down to be absorbed by one and all at Waverly station.
#344 Steve
ah yes..the big scare of the sixties.
plus some recent comment related to the recent event bringing Polonium 210 some notoriety.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Radon (chemical symbol Rn) is a naturally occurring radioactive gas found in soils, rock, and water throughout the U.S. It has numerous different isotopes, but radon-220, and -222 are the most common. Radon causes lung cancer, and is a threat to health because it tends to collect in homes, sometimes to very high concentrations. As a result, radon is the largest source of exposure to naturally occurring radiation...People may ingest trace amounts of radon with food and water, However, inhalation is the main route of entry into the body for radon and its decay products. Radon decay products may attach to particulates and aerosols in the air we breathe (for example, cooking oil vapors). When they are inhaled, some of these particles are retained in the lungs. Radon decay products also cling to tobacco leaves, w

Fond Memories:
There was also a town in Fife (Burntisland) where after any rain (not an infrequent occurrence) the streets would turn and run red from the particles spewed out from the cooling towers, associated with the nearby conversion of bauxite ore into alumina. The air would be extremely acrid, irritating, foul and I presume somewhat unhealthy for days on end. Is it still so? I had to risk it because the best fish and chip shop I have ever located was on the high street.
Re:observations of cigarette addictions.
During the winter of 77, I lived in Aberdour (Fife) and at the weekends we would hold 2-3 day sessions of “3 card brag” and “Risk”(which generally deteriorated into some form of confrontation when either a brag player would wnat to leave after winning a large pot or all the risk pacts were broken and the armies launched). When the players ran out of “fags” they would draw cards to see who had to traipse (no cars) in the wee sma’ oors into Burntisland on foot (6 mile round trip) to the only cigarette machine (an architecturally challenged device made of wood with pull-out drawers). Sometimes after braving what must be some of the most hellish weather on this planet, they would arrive to find the machine empty (or jammed or it wouldn’t accept the coins), presumably by other weekend players in neighbor(u)ring towns and villages.
Others, after raking around fruitlessly in the ashtrays (cigs were smoked right down to the fingers), would go out (for real!!!!) and scour the gutters to retrieve the discarded fag-ends to try and assemble enough tobacco to put together enough to puff on until the local newsagent opened at 5am.
Does that remind you of anyone? or was that before your time? (1977)

#331 - what planet are you on sounds like your smoking cannabis to me or just took an ecstacy pill -come down of the trip - never read such a load of clap trap. You would have to smoke 750,000 cigarettes in one go, at once, altogether to even reach a dangerous level of polonium - thick or what

Toni

Thanks for the EPA scare story about calcium phosphate fertilizers, they do neglect to mention the fact that this is a widely used fertilizer throughout the food industry.

#348 Donnie:
Polonium is 2.5 x 10 to the 11th as toxic as Hydrogen Cyanide (weight for weight).
It only has a half life of approx 40 days (I can't remember exactly)

sounds like you could fit 750,000 cigarettes into your mouth

#348 Donnie
From the Los Alamos National Lab (remember the other big bang)
The maximum allowable body burden for ingested polonium is only 1100 becquerels (0.03 microcurie), which is equivalent to a particle weighing only 6.8 × 10-12 gram. Weight for weight polonium is approximately 2.5 × 1011 times as toxic as hydrogen cyanide. The maximum permissible concentration for airborne soluble polonium compounds is about 7,500 Bq/m3 (2 × 10-11 µCi/cm3).
Polonium has been found in tobacco smoke from tobacco leaves grown at some specific places, as a contaminant and in uranium ores.
Use as a poison
At a committed effective dose equivalent (CEDE) of 5.14×10-7 Sieverts per Becquerel (1.9×103 mrem/microcurie) for ingested 210Po and a specific activity of 1.66×1014 Bq/gram (4.49×103 Curies/gram)[4] the amount of material required to produce a lethal dose of 10 Sieverts would be only 0.12 micrograms (1.17×10-7g). The biological halflife is 50 to 30 days in humans.[5]
Due to its scarcity, polonium is usually produced by bombarding bismuth-209 with neutrons in a nuclear reactor. This forms bismuth-210, which has a half-life of 5 days. Bismuth-210 decays into polonium-210 through beta decay. Milligram amounts of polonium-210 have been produced by this method.
Polonium-210 is a very strong emitter of alpha particles. A single gram of polonium-210 creates 140 Watts of heat energy and is being considered as a lightweight heat source for thermoelectric power for spacecraft. Polonium-210 has a half-life of 138.39 days.

#349 Steve
not to worry: This is the NESHAP (natural emissions standards for hazardous air pollutants)from the EPA --the same people that gave us murderous levels of deaths among the Navajo in New Mexico long after the uraniam mines closed down. A series of articles recently appeared in the latimes.com
The agriculture industry uses large amounts of chemical fertilizers to replenish and supplement the nutrients that growing plants take up from the soil. The demand for fertilizers and animal feed additives accounts for about 95% of the 8-10 million metric tons of phosphoric acid that is made each year. The production of each ton of phosphoric acid is accompanied by the production of 4½ tons of the by-product calcium sulfate, also known as phosphogypsum. How does the phosphogypsum become radioactive? Phosphate rock, which is processed to make phosphoric acid, contains relatively high concentrations of naturally occurring radioactive impurities (radionuclides). Even high grade ores, which contain about 70% calcium phosphate, also contain a large number of impurities, such as calcium fluoride, chlorides, chromium, rare earths, and radionuclides. At the end of the production process, the radionuclides end up in the phosphogypsum.
The main deposits of phosphate rock are in Florida, Tennessee, and North Carolina. There are also deposits that can be mined in Idaho. How is phosphate rock mined and processed? The phosphate rock, which eventually yields the phosphogypsum, is recovered by open pit mining. The rock is transported to a washing facility, where it is separated from accompanying soil, stones, etc. and processed. The desired phosphorus content of the phosphate rock is in a form (calcium phosphate) that will not dissolve in water and so cannot be taken up by crops. As a result, phosphate processors must solve the problem of getting it into a water-soluble form.
The most common solution to the problem is converting the calcium phosphate to pho

Amazing; it's been widely reported today on every TV station that Polonium can only be made in a nuclear reactor therefore the russian government must have murdered the man in London. The good old EPA however tell us that all you need is a pack of benny's (maybe his assassin flicked some ash on him). Let's hope the bad people in the world don't find out.

Mind you, with the same fertilizer being sprayed over our carrots it looks like we're all on borrowed time.

Fact is, radioactive particles are everywhere; thousands of radioactive atoms have decayed in your body while you've read this.

It seems to be fine to cover our food in carcinogens so it looks nice on the supermarket shelf while blaming the worlds ills on smoke and publishing silly 'radioactive cigarette' stories.

#353 Steve
Polonium occurs naturally in the approx qty of 100 micrograms per metric ton of uranium ore.
or 1:10 to the 10th
The isotopes are produced in the reactors and in the case of polonium 210 --it decays to lead.

Maybe it's the internal glow from munching on your "irradiated" carrots that give legend to the idea of helping you see better: I've never tried to walk around using one as a flashlight.

What's a "benny"? is that our "stogie"?

#353 Steve
ok got it --
"bennies" slang for an amphetamine tablet.

I must have led a sheltered life.

#353 Steve
Since you brought the subject up –here’s an utterly irresponsible piece of reporting in the current online edition of a so-called national newspaper ; The Independent

“Meanwhile, nuclear scientists are frantically trying to establish just how radioactive was the dose of polonium-210 that killed Mr Litvinenko. Traces of the material - powerful enough to trigger a nuclear warhead - were found on tables at the Itsu sushi restaurant in Piccadilly, a London hotel, and his home in Muswell Hill.”

Where’s the beryllium?…and the C4; and this is not 1942.

Polonium-210 was vital to this program, because it was to be used in a neutron source that would ensure initiation of a chain reaction. An initiator is a device that produces a timed burst of neutrons to initiate a fission chain reaction in a nuclear weapon. Initiators made of polonium-210 and beryllium were located at the center of the fissile cores of early atomic weapons. The highly radioactive isotope of Polonium (Po-210) is a strong alpha emitter. Beryllium will absorb alphas and emit neutrons. This isotope of polonium has a half life of almost 140 days, and a neutron initiator using this material needs to have the polonium, which is generated in a nuclear reactor, to be replaced frequently. To supply the initiation pulse of neutrons at the right time, the polonium and the beryllium need to be kept apart until the appropriate moment and then thoroughly and rapidly mixed by the implosion of the weapon.

good night

Toni,

Thank you for the neutron bomb explanation.

A 'benny' is a coloquial term here for a popular brand of cigarette.

It is true that polonium is radon progeny but Uranium ore is relatively rare (almost 3 quarters of it is in Australia so maybe we should avoid carrots from there), it would take a metric ton of uranium to produce just 100 micrograms of polonium (1: 100 000 000 000). Yes it can lie on the surface of the planet, be taken up in dust and be blown by the wind and deposited in the water supply, traces of polonium have even been found in tap water.

Exposure to naturally occuring and man made radiation, as I pointed out earlier, is unavoidable as it is constantly absorbed into our bodies and is present in food, including meat. Radiation 'encouraged' by fertilizer can be reduced through the use of organic farming techniques just as a reduction in carcinogens in food could be reduced by not adding sodium nitrate to it. This is a worldwide problem and of course no-one knows fully the extent of any problems it causes. It is interesting to note however, that certain people only wish to focus on its effects from smoke in a deliberate attempt to create the image of 'spent nuclear cigarette end'.

Toni my my have I ruffled your feathers, keep your wig on, if you are going to come out with a load of rubbish be prepared to be challenged, unlike you we are not brainwashed dimwits - over in this country we tend to look into things before we believe them and get the true facts. As you are in a country full of nuclear war heads aimed at God knows who I should worry about them if I was you not a wisp of tobacco smoke - talk about double standards - usual hyprocrisy. You can have nuclear bombs but watch out for natural polonium blowing on a tobacco plant - get real dumbo

-Steve- #343
Another reflex pro-smoking reaction to something they don't like. As I've said to many of your colleagues. I've never been to an ASH site. My views are my own, built up from my own experience, links given by pro-smokers (which always disappoint) and my own surfing and reading over the years. But it usually suits pro-smokers to attribute every non-smokers views to the big bug bear in their lives, ASH :)

Thanks for proving the point I made about pro-smokers burying the relevant facts in a sea of irrelevant data :) You mention all these other factors which you claim are suspicious in cases of lung cancer. You've obviously been busy. However, unless you think smokers and non-smokers do different types of jobs, live in different areas, prefer different foods and have different tastes where leisure is concerned (apart from smoking), non-smokers are equally exposed to these factors BUT are 27x less likely to develop lung cancer .... doh! To go to the great detective again, he would say "it's a f***ing cinch my dear Watson" .... or words to that effect :)

Lung cancer may be multifactorial. Fire is multifactorial. You need heat, fuel and oxygen. Neither causes fire on it's own but together they are a huge risk. It would seem, whatever other factors may be involved, taking smoking out of the equation reduces the risk of lung cancer by a factor of 27. No amount of pro-smoking denial or blurring of the issues will change that rock solid figure.

Colin #341
No-one knows how radiation causes cancer, only that it does. By your reckoning that must mean it is all scaremongering and radiation is an innocent victim. So you'll be happy with storing nuclear waste in your bedroom will you? No?

This is the old "creationist christian" argument where God becomes the "god of the cracks" :) Wherever they find a gap in the scientific knowledge, they declare it as proof of God's existence, only to be ousted onto ano

-Steve- #343
To continue, your non-smoking/smoking pubs "choice" argument does not hold water because it assumes smokers and non-smokers are distinct social groups who do not mix. Which is, of course, nonsense. The smokers will "have" to (being addicts) inhabit the smoking pubs and if the non-smokers want to keep the group together they will have to go there too, putting the non-smoking pubs in economic schtuk. Not because non-smokers like smoky/smelly atmospheres.

And smoking in pubs WAS killing them. But because publicans only saw what was in front of them, ie an increasing %age of smokers among their customers (despite them becoming a smaller %age of the general population), they assumed they needed smokers to remain viable. In some of the real "dens", this may have been true, but not in the decent places. Not one pub in Dundee has closed since the restrictions were brought in, but in the years leading up to the restrictions, at least 10 have closed as custom dropped off. There may be other reasons for this but certainly the major reason was non-smokers getting fed up with the smoky/smelly atmosphere and finding other things to do that didn't leave them smelling like a stale ashtray :) You may not like it, and you'll certainly ridicule it, but it wont make it any less true :) Non-smokers wont all of a sudden flood back to the pubs (they've found other things to do), but they ARE more likely to go to one, and as the years go by fewer will drift away as the atmosphere is better. In the long run, the restrictions will be good for the trade while just going on in the same smoky way would have seen it eventually die (or at least wither to a shadow of it's former self) :)

Claire #345
Still seeing the smoking restrictions as the beginning of a great global conspiracy to stop us enjoying ourselves :) I'm not that paranoid :) Govt's and societies have always banned, restricted and allowed things depending on the publi

#359,

Yet again, your ranting is meaningless. I am still waiting for your "proof".

You are a victim of that syndrome called Mistaken Certainty. Why? Because you desperately want to believe that tobacco, despite being in use for over 65,000 years is suddenly the perpetrator of all ills.

150 studies using a flawed technique does not a body of evidence make. Not one single study includes all confounders, and until they do, they are a waste of time, money and effort.

Using your thought process, my walking alongside a river hugely increases my risk of drowning, even though I dont actually enter the river.

There is a shocking fact you are going to have to come to terms with: second hand smoke is harmless to 99.99% of the population.

For what its worth, I am also coming to the conclusion that primary smoking is a lot less hazardous than we think it is. Before you reply that "doctors know best", I will tell you that I truly believe that I have read more on this subject than many of them ever will. One even said to me recently, "You know far too much". He wasnt happy about it because I didnt just swallow the myth, like I am supposed to. I dont expect any doctor in the land to tell me that smoking is good for me, but what I would like, is to get truthful advice. Smoking kills far fewer people than we are led to believe.

Non smokers have a 1% chance of contracting lung cancer. Smokers have an 8% chance. Invert the numbers for a moment-I have a 92% chance of NOT contracting lung cancer.

I can live with those numbers.

Me Bungo,

Oh dear, you are getting angry and more desperate as your argument turns more from science towards insults, slurs and temper. Are you going to tell me smokers stink and you hate washing your clothes next?

You must tell me where these pro-smokers are, it would be interesting to see their petition to allow smoking in library's. I see you are still unable to answer a single fact and prefer to regurgitate myth.

It's interesting that you think known (and unknown) confounders don't make a difference to epidemiology but once again Watson you are wrong.

Smokers and non smokers DO have different socio economic factors whether you choose to believe it or not. An accountant IS less likely to contract lung cancer than a miner whether they are smokers or non-smokers and a miner is more likely to be a smoker. Probably not coincidence then that the research you refer to doesn't bother to ask.

Japanese women are 5 times more likely to contract lung cancer when they emigrate to the US whether they smoke or not, environment, genetics and diet ARE confounders. I'm sure you would expect someone who lived on kebabs to be less healthy than someone who ate a balanced diet yet if the kebab eater smokes it gets blamed on that and you think the kebab eating suddenly becomes irrelivant and the gullable gladly tell us that this is 'the overwhelming body of scientific evidence'.

Would you like to point out any of the relevent facts? or do you mean the myths you cling to like the 85 to 90% rubbish. By the way you didn't answer the obvious flaws in that claim or was it just easier to say I was "blurring the issue"? and was my pointing out that this claim breaks the laws of mathematics my attempt to bury "the relevant facts in a sea of irrelevant data". In which case I presume you believe that smoking does kill more people than actually die.

If you admit that cancer is multifactoral why did you claim "Smoking IS a pro

Steve,

Unusually, for an anti, he/she announced beforehand that he/she was going to run away from the discussion: "Having said all that, I will now sign off this thread :) I never wanted to get this involved in what I still think is a pointless, stale debate".

I notice that the debate only gets "pointless and stale" when they are losing the argument.

Now THATS the stuff of playgrounds.

Colin (363)

You are right, Me Bungo is clinging by the last finger nail onto the myths. It's like trying to convince him that Santa doesn't exist.

It did make me laugh though that he implied publicans don't know who their best customers are and that pubs closed down because they allowed smoking, Yes, according to Bungo Pony (who can't grasp the basic fact that over 100% of people can't be dying of something unless some are dying twice) publicans must be really stupid. Not to mention the fairy tale that non-smoking pubs only failed because this vast majority of people (who dislike smoke in pubs) didn't go in them because it would upset the smokers (roflmao). It couldn't possibly be that all these 'healthy' people didn't flood the no-smoking pubs for 6 pints of lager on a Tuesday night after the gym because they never really wanted to could it?

Oh well, as soon as they figure out how nice the 400 carcinogens in indoor air are (the better atmosphere Me Bungo tells us about) I'm sure they'll skip the gym, after all Me bungo was right and almost every publican and pub chain in the land was wrong. (Given that and his repeating of the myth that passive smoke "Was killing people in pubs", he must have missed the Oak Ridge research that measured real particles in real environments and found absolutely no difference in air quality between a smoking pub and a non smoking restaurant).

#358 Donnie:
Wrong again. Re: ruffled feathers, you must be looking in a mirror again. Truth to tell I have a skin as thick as a 100 yr old rhino (and that's nothing to do with tobacco smoke). Have you ever considered that if you actually have a thought in your head, how lonely it must be? and in addition to the 750,000 cigs crammed in your mouth at the same time, seems like you have ample room to add your welly boots.

It was surprisingly cold this morning at 5am, even the palm trees were shivering.
Donnie: you have such a winning way with repeated comments along the lines of "go bile yer heid, ye dinnae ken whit yer talking aboot"
I just called the news editor of the Independent a complete numpty for allowing the simplistic notion of mushroom clouds over the sushi restaurant. I’m tempted to jokingly say that might not be such a bad thing but I’d probably get into trouble.
The UK Times got it right (and I recognize the source). My wife is a writer for the Seattle Times and other magazines so I have to tread carefully.

For the record:
A few curies (gigabecquerels) of 210Po emit a blue glow which is caused by excitation of surrounding air. Atomic Ahi

Interestingly, we were watching The Maltese Falcon and Bogart and co seemed to be permanently surrounded in most scenes by swirling wraiths of cigarette smoke.
Soon, in the warning given to viewers before watching, I expect to see: contains violence, some nudity, strong language and smoking.

I’ve learned and witnessed enough to always maintain what I hope is a healthy skepticism of crusades pro or con this and that and most certainly of anything which comes from government spokespersons.
Here in California, the home of “doing your own thing” some wit pointed out that “they love to do their own thing as long as somebody is looking”.

Referencing these issues where both sides generally retreat into the fortress mentality, you find the theory of cognitive dissonance: even if it were possible to prove facts beyond the proverbial shadow of a doubt, the team that had the”wrong” idea will eventually use this information to distort and regenerate their old disproved theories to support their original argument. Always coming back to : the earth is flat. Summed up neatly over there by “Ye cannae win”

I’m in the quote mood this morning:

An old quote from a Japanese sho

Toni,

It is clear to me that you have a brain. As a favour to me, please put it to one side for a moment and, using your common sense only, answer me this:

Following WWII there was a baby boom. Around 75% of males smoked, around 60% of females smoked, all the time, and everywhere. So did their doctors, priests, and MP's.

Why then, were there not piles of corpses from both the SHS and the primary smoking? How did the baby boom happen in the first place if smoking causes impotence? Why was asthma a rare affliction?

I have many more questions, but perhaps you could shed some light on those above, to start with.

I genuinely want to know the answers, but all anti smokers avoid these awkward questions and use misdirection to take the debate out of these murky waters.

Toni, sorry its not going to work met too many like you before, boring, boring boring, Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Heres a quote you should remember,

If you tell a lie long enough it becomes the truth - Joseph Goebells (Nazi)

I think Colin at 367 is being overly generous about your brain.

Donnie
you give up to easily, well if Colin keeps repeating the generous comments about my brain even you will come to accept it.

THERE is a certain sort of mind that revels in moral abstractions. Take an issue. Paint it in vague, amorphous terms. Then make the abstraction such that one side is clearly on the side of the angels and the other evil incarnate.
The advantage of such a way of framing issues is that disagreement is no longer characterised as being between smart, reasonable, even nice people who just happen to disagree - that being the price one pays for living in society.
Instead, disagreement is explained solely by the failings and moral weaknesses of those on one side of the debate - the other side. They will be morally blind or in need of re-education or fired wholly by self-interest.
We, on the other hand, will be remarkably altruistic. Our views will be almost by definition morally good ones. We, you see, will have a pipeline to God.
Painting difficult issues in these sort of moral abstractions has another useful side effect. It allows those who indulge in this sort of thinking to ignore complicating facts that might make an issue less straightforward.
The experience of Marian Keech led Festinger to write his famous paper A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Festinger argued that when ideas and reality collide, people do not adjust their behaviour to suit the newly understood truth. Instead they rationalise, twisting the truth around until it suits their existing behaviour.

What does Festinger’s theory tell us about politics? It tells us that when we complain about politicians getting to power and not doing what they said they would do, we are complaining about the wrong thing. The real problem with politicians is the opposite. Most of the time they do exactly what they promised to do, even if by the time they do it a bit of them knows that it doesn’t make much sense.

#367 colin
I'll come back to that teaser you posed although I used to think that my brain and common sense were somehow inseparable. Feel free if you wish to email it direct to toniia1945@hotmail.com --you too Donnie.
But back to Donnie, I freely accept that my brain is receptive to new ideas or will give them a hearing and is not yet clammed shut.
I'll be baaaaack --my wife is almost home from Sacramento and I do have to tidy a few things up.
I did have a call this morning from a friend in Broxburn (one of the brag players in Aberdour in 77 with whom I stayed in touch) and when I mentionned this forum, he quickly pointed out that the local bingo hall is suffering an attendance drop blamed on the smoking ban.
Everybody has to stand outside to take a smoking break. He also pointed out that you can't smoke in covered bus shelters anymore.

Toni,

I would prefer that you post your thoughts here. That way, you can enlighten me, and many others simultaneously at the same time together.

The reason that I asked you to answer using common sense is because I have previously found some super intelligent people with zero common sense, and people perceived to be stupid with an abundance of common sense. I accuse you of neither.

As I have oft stated, humans have been inhaling the smoke of tobacco leaves for over 65,000 years, for medicinal purposes, and I need to know why, or how, in the last twenty years, tobacco smoke has become as deadly as Sarin gas.

Your SAMMEC super-computer in the US offers no help, using, as it does, guesswork to compute deaths attributed to smoking and ETS. HMG and the SE are no better. They dont even use a computer, they simply make the numbers up as they go along. The numbers tend to escalate with every interview and TV slot that they do.

Toni,

There is some truth to the theories of Festinger but as often seems to be the case it appears to me to be over simplistic. Argument can be complex and to suggest that having one to give is simply twisting the truth to suit ones agenda is backing the philosophy that there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about anything, so what's the point in trying.
Murphys law would seem more accurate "it is impossible to argue with a fool".

I think you have misunderstood our intentions. It is not two opposite sides arguing; it is the questioning of decisions and statements made by supporters of the anti-smoking movement. We are not pro-tobacco; however, when we are accused of being child abusers or of murdering bar workers we have the right to demand the evidence. I for one embarked on this subject fully expecting to find the horrors of smoke, I was truly surprised when it just wasn't there. Once you get past the sound bites and press releases the evidence is nothing short of scandalous.

When the anti-smoking movement tells us 90% of lung cancer is caused by smoking, asking how that is possible when it breaks the laws of mathematics is not us 'twisting the truth'. Asking how the particles in passive smoke can be harmful when each one is at least 25 000 times below OSHA standards isn't twisting any truth either.

Of course no-one answers these questions; they just put adverts on the TV saying we stink.

Against my better judgment, I'm back purely to rebut a few of the more outrageous statements made in reply to my last post :)

(1) -Steve- #362
".... you are getting angry and more desperate as your argument turns more from science towards insults, slurs and temper."

I hate to spoil your stereotyping but there is no anger etc on my side. I draw your attention to the plentiful use of smilies in my post. Could you actually point to an "insult" (?) I made that wasn't tongue in cheek (ie had a smilie at the end of it)? Why do pro-smokers always assume those who don't agree with them are ranting? Or am I just stereotyping :)

Colin #361
"Because you desperately want to believe that tobacco, despite being in use for over 65,000 years is suddenly the perpetrator of all ills."

I have never, ever said or implied that. Could it be that you desperately want to believe it is not harmful :)

-Steve- #362
"I see you are still unable to answer a single fact and prefer to regurgitate myth."

I could say the very same thing to you. Your facts are my myths and vice versa. It's a very subjective statement.

Colin #363
"I notice that the debate only gets "pointless and stale" when they are losing the argument."

I believe I am winning the argument :) It becomes pointless and stale because it has been "regurgitated" over ... and over ... and over again, with neither side believing a word the other has to say.

-Steve- #362
"In which case I presume you believe that smoking does kill more people than actually die."

I think you are getting lost in your own calculations here :) The fact remains that non-smokers only make up 10-15% of lung cancer patients. How does it break the laws of mathematics? You can't just make an outrageous statement like that without actually proving it :)

-Steve- #364
"Not to mention the fai

As a 17 year old who has smoked since just after his 16th birthday, I see this tightening of Scottish smoking laws as pointless at best.

The fact is that, even as laws stand, I find it difficult to purchase cigarettes. I find it terribly unjust that I am asked to provide ID supporting my claim that I am 16 when I want to buy cigarettes and yet, when I buy the likes of a train ticket, the vendor will assume - unless otherwise stated - that I am 16. This dual-standard should not be encouraged!

As for the proposal to ban the sale of 10 packs, let's be serious here. If someone wanted to start smoking, they could save money for their first 20 pack, then - using the money they didn't spend on the 10 pack the next day - buy another 20 pack. Or the person on JSA who is struggling to get by. He smokes 10 a day. But Mr. McConnell raises the prices ahead of inflation. What of this? Does it make sense? How would you non-smokers like it if the price of a kilo of sugar (sugar being 'bad' for you too) went up ahead of inflation? Where will it end?

And if you present the argument that "well smoking is bad for you, Marc G," I have this to say: alcohol is bad for you. Why don't we raise the prices of that ahead of inflation too? My mother, a nurse, tells me that there are a higher number of admissions to hospitals with alcohol related problems than with smoking related problems.

But above all else: I have a right to choose which substances I want to put in my own body. The operative words in that sentence are 'my own'. I don't need the Scottish Executive, or anybody else for that matter, to nanny me. Not smoking in public places is PERHAPS understandable, but these new proposals are just plain silly.

If Mr. McConnell wants cleaner air in Scotland, let him ban the use of cars, motorbikes, buses, taxis, diesel powered trains, aeroplanes... the list goes on. Why would he OK the proposal of a space station in Scotland if he was s

374 Marc, well said, I absolutely agree, you are spot on. You should have the right to use a legal product wherever you want. If tobacco is doing so much harm then why dont they ban, whoops forgot they make too much money out of it. Cost of a packet of cigarettes £5.00, £4.00 goes to the government and as for these hospitals that are making smokers leave the grounds, I take it they dont want my blood, or my organs donated should I die. I have destroyed my donor card in disgust. Roll on the next election.

Me Bungo (373)

Whether your insults and slurs were tongue in cheek or no they were still insults and slurs.

The argument is not subjective. I have answered each and every one of the myhts you have repeated with evidence; you have been unable to rebutt (other than a personal opinion that all publicans are incompitent) any of them. Published measurements of real particles is not a "myth"; declaring smoking causes cancer from an RR of 1.19 is and your attempt to turn that argument around isn't proof, if you want to convince anyone tell us why the real measurements don't match the claim.

I have read your 'incompitent publican' paragraph again and yes you did say those things:- Your reason for smoking pubs closing was this -- "the major reason was non-smokers getting fed up with the smoky/smelly atmosphere and finding other things to do"

You also said this -- "The smokers will "have" to (being addicts) inhabit the smoking pubs and if the non-smokers want to keep the group together they will have to go there too" Implying that non smoking pubs fail because non-smokers don't want to upset the smokers by frequenting them. Why then in pubs with one smoking and one non-smoking room were the non-smoking rooms largely empty? I think you will find that the truth is smokers and tolerant non-smokers were enjoying themselves and the handful of anti's didn't like sitting on their own. The big point here of course is that publicans did attempt to cater for those who don't like smoke but for whatever reason it just wasn't popular.

Mathematics, firstly it is not true that "non-smokers only make up 10-15% of lung cancer patients." Do you see? this is not you providing evidence and argument this is you clinging onto and repeating a myth. One research noted that 85 to 90% of its subjects were smokers or former smokers, I know this concept is difficult for you to grasp but it does NOT follow that 85 to 90%

donnie 375.

i too have destroyed my donon card and now refuse to donate blood.

the nhs think its ok to refuse smokers treatment, so there no way they are getting my smoke addled blood etc.

oooooh great typo on my last post.

donor

Me Bungo (373 cont.d)

PS. the opposite of anti would of course be pro.

You support legislation that bans smoking in every public and social building in the land. I think this is sufficient to call you 'anti-smoking'

The opposite of that would be someone who supported every public and social building allowing smoking. I do not support that; I believe that publicly owned spaces should cater for everyone and that privately owned buildings should be left to the owners and market forces. That makes me pro-choice, we are not at opposites; I'm just not prepared to sit still and shut up while an obssesive minority tells lies to force pubs to be how they want them to be.

#367 Colin
Sorry about the delay in answering but my wife took over my Window's machine to complete an article she couldn't do on her Mac. Quite rare.
I think you answered your own question. If you accept that the information as is without question. I sense you want to agree but won't when the evidence is presented in such a ridiculous format.
I would venture that given recent evidence showing how tobacco companies have adultereated and tinkered with various additives that there could be some clue there.
I had a longer speech prepared on my WP but it seemed to ramble on. I do still feel I haven't answered that adequately.
Donnie: I would agree with you that it would be ludicrous if not criminal (it would be here) to deny you treatment based on the likely false sweeping assumption that your illness may be connected to your having smoked recently or at some time in the past. I am disappointed that you would however destroy your donor card thus and deny your blood, depriving some deserving person the possibility of life or a better quality of same. To evoke the emotional chord, it could be a child or a loved one. The organs would be thoroughly examined prior to transplantation anyway so you would never know, but at least you can be happy to think they were able to continue serving their purpose in perhaps even a non-smoker , who may have had the identical illness that you were denied tratment for. I would reconsder that.It really is a worthy cause. Come to the boil,get into a stushie but when you cool down and think of the consequences, reflect and reconsider.
Steve:
You can actually buy Polonium 210 (along with most of all the other particularly toxic radioactive materials) online. No ?s asked.
http://unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm
Now that the word is out, every crackpot from here to the Pecos will be scrambling for the latest must have. It was broadcas

Toni (380)

That's good to know; you can buy nuclear waste on the internet but all that anyone is worried about is the smell of smoke in pubs.

It about sums it up Toni.

Toni,

No apologies necessary. We live in different time zones, I expected a delay. Mind you, we may as well live in different worlds. Do you know that it was a 19 year old Californian girl that started all this? She was walking into a meeting and remarked to her Alderman, "I will get a headache tonight. Probably (!) from all the smoke". The Alderman, perhaps with an eye on her ample chest, said "Leave it to me, sweetie, I'll get smoking banned in this hall during meetings". And, much like genital warts, it spread. Fast. All over the world. All based on the possibility that a young girl "might" get a headache.

I did expect a better answer, and you disappoint me. If you had brought something of substance, I would, honestly, have set my meagre brain to work on it. I can handle the truth Toni, but I cannot abide the lies I, and millions of others have been told for the last four decades.

Perhaps this will not come as a surprise to you, but, purveyors of tobacco have the ability, right now, today, to make their products 90% safer for me, the consumer. Wonderful news, you might say, and why is this not being done, you might ask.

It is a good question, and, predictably, I have the answer.

There is a group of lobbyists, in your Gubmint, in D.C, that want tobacco manufacturers to be regulated by the FDA. If they were, the FDA would insist that manufacturing process are changed, as soon as is practicable, and the safer cigarette/cigar etc to be put on sale.

Have a wild guess at who opposes such regulation by the FDA. Yup. Got it in one. The anti smoker NGO's. Why? Well, the top ASH guy, Stanton Glantz, that corporate whore James Repace, and that fraud Joe Cherner all lose their lucrative paychecks, overnight. Why? No need for an anti smoker campaign. No need for smoker bans. No real need to stop kids as young as three smoking.

Can you imagine my shock, horror and disgust when I learnt this? It means

381 Steve
The legal verbal contortions alone on that site are symptomatic of how far weve strayed from common-sense.
So, after some nut has levelled the block or in a confused irrational state decides to lace our coffee with some of those substances.......
you just need your dad's mastercard or visa.

Quote Extract--
Everything we sell is legal to buy and own in the USA with out any licenses, etc.
Please note that assembling and even possessing EXPLODING DEVICES
such as M-80's, Cherry Bombs, Silver Salutes, etc. is illegal and considered
a very serious offense!
Just because it may be possible to make these devices with materials we sell
on our website, does not mean it is legal to do so.
This is Important
Be very careful with any pyrotechnic formulas or instructions for building devices you find on the Internet. Unfortunately, a very large portion of the information found on various websites throughout the internet is completely wrong - and extremely dangerous. Make sure you trust the source of the information if you are experimenting with chemicals - especially chemicals & pyrotechnic mixtures.
Just because you might see the same formula listed on more than one website, does not make it correct. People have a bad habit of repeating and reposting bad & incorrect information as if it were true.
Remember, anyone can post anything on the Internet, right or wrong.

Colin:
As I kindof implied, I was disappoited myself. I did have a longer version, but with my gut aversion to the tyranny of percentages & statistics, I went off in tangents. I'll look at it again this evening and see if I can keep it pure. I have to go now and spend time with an attorney having a Clintonesque moment throwing dictionnaries at each other discussing the subtleties and distinction between "allude" and "allege" framed essentially in a verbal mignon context.
Your directive to use common sense did however make me take another look at Thomas Paines very own tirade of the same title and intoduced me to the Scottish movement for CS but I need time to read and absorb. I recall in 77 my lectiures in Edi were in The John Hume Tower.
I tend to have to define everything to establish a common frame of reference.
(side bar) My wife, who is French-Canadian, did point out that they had relatives (adherents of the wee sma church --(moronic bigots she calls them in typical Gallic form) who lived in Banff (not Canada)before moving on with their puritanical beliefs to Kelvinside or so she says and who am I to ....?

No problem Toni.

You can find me here when you are ready. If this thread closes, have a look around.

If all else fails, write to me at thebigdebate@btinternet.com but I cannot promise not to share your thoughts with all and sundry.

This is a time for disclosure. Too much has been hidden from too many for far too long.

Toni (383)

That is truly a disaster waiting to happen.

It is beyond amazing to me that a nation that flatly refuses to give up its fundamental individual human rights to buy nuclear components, hand grenades and machine guns would collectively gasp in horror if someone lit up a marlboro at a disco.

The war on terror seems from the site you gave us, to be more concerned with harassing and fingerprinting tourists on the way to Disneyworld than it does with the thought of weapons grade plutonium being sold to anyone who has watched a james bond movie.

Tell me; would a vile of polonium in your jacket pocket constitute a concealed weapon or would it be covered by the right to bear arms?

Steve:
You can't legally possess a machine gun, grenade..and as a convicted felon you can't possess any weapon. The reason so many are is that they are testing to see if the authorities are doing their job.
The vial would be illegal --it would also become very hot!!!!!! According to references, 1 gram will get to 500C. The NRC and DOT strictly controls the packaging --how nice--but if you wanted to carry it around...0.03micro curies (ingested) is the min rq to kill. They sell 1 micro curie.
(The Ci or Bq is used to express the number of disintegrations of radioactive atoms in a radioactive material over a period of time. For example, one Ci is equal to 37 billion (37 X 109) disintegrations per second.)
It's an alpha emitter (ionizing radiation) (basically helium) so it wouldn't be detected.
The rad or Gy measures absorbed dose and the rem or Sv measures the biological risk.
I've a feeling we are going to hear more about this site.
As to the good old OSHA and EPA take a look at this (you too Colin)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nava...
"but I cannot promise not to share your thoughts with all and sundry.".....no worries!!! I'm good w that.
Finally allude/allege was compromised to both meanings of apparently. Trust me it's a long story.

Coming Next --the 2nd amendment