Smoking in England banned from July 1st...

[Hondo]

Cough cough...okay Thursdays!!

 

[dr greg]

my view

The recent long-awaited ban on indoor smoking in this state is a godsend to people like me who earn our living in clubs and pubs, no longer do I have to get undressed outside when I get home from a gig so that the house doesn't end up stinking like a chimneysweeper's jockstrap. The average Joe is not allowed to perform gross bodily functions on the floor of a public place...why not? Because it is DIRTY, UNHEALTHY and affects the comfort of his fellow citizens. Therefore smokers should take their outdated and obnoxious practice somewhere that doesn't impinge on the MAJORITY of the population who AREN'T ADDICTED to tobacco. The only upside of their revolting habit is that the extreme taxation on the product apparently brings in more revenue than is required to deal with all their health problems.
Nothing personal, I think heroin should be legal, just don't do it around me.

 

[jamespowers]

In lieu of Death, I'd be willing to accept a bit of totalitarianism on, say, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

.

You would.
I'll take the moral superiority of liberty---every day.

Regards,

J

 

[Marc Chevalier]

I'll take the moral superiority of liberty---every day.

Yeah, yeah. Go look at hats: http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?t=21548


.

 

[Story]

In lieu of Death, I'd be willing to accept a bit of totalitarianism on, say, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

.

You'll get nothing and like it, Spaulding!

 

[BegintheBeguine]

lol
I'm not ready to die for my principles as I'm often wrong.

 

[Feraud]

lol
I'm not ready to die for my principles as I'm often wrong.

Didn't a great man once say something like winning a war is about letting the other guy die for his principles?

 

[tinmanzzz]

Voting Dogs

Did the dogs get to vote too?

.

Actually, the SMOKERS and Property Owners Got the same chance to vote as the Dogs did. NONE

 

[JohnTheGreek]

Therefore smokers should take their outdated and obnoxious practice somewhere that doesn't impinge on the MAJORITY of the population who AREN'T ADDICTED to tobacco.

First of all, and just out of curiosity, is smoking "outdated" the way jazz is or the way wearing a fedora is? Seriously, as much as I love the "golden age", when you consider the thousands of years humans have been consuming tobbacco (and the hundreds of years "Europeans" have been using it), I find it extremely likely that people will be smoking a Dunhill cigar while recalling the near absent memory of Miles Davis or the peaked lapel. The past has shown us that we can't simply legislate away the consumption of certain substances and expect success. Further, if you have worked in bars long enough you should have little doubt that very often the majority of people there are smokers (or at least remain indifferent to smoke). Finally, I am not addicted to smoking (just don't have an addictive personality, thankfully), I just really like Dunhill's My Mixture 965. Painting all smokers as "addicts" is silly. :eusa_doh:

One more thing, just to inspire the smoking troops...remember the words of Winston Churchill who I believe said, "It requires a peculiar weakness of character in a man for him to deny himself a vice"! VIVA, VIVA, VIVA LA REVOLUCION ! DOWN WITH THE OPPRESSIVE PURITANS!

John

 

[Elaina]

To be honest, this whole thread and the attitudes is the reason I tend to not be a polite smoker anymore. When I have a pack in hand (and not smoking) I get coughed at, complained at and yelled at. Oh yes, I'm going to light up and make your life miserable.

Why don't they ban non-smokers (and heck even the smokers) from accosting me on the street to pray to Jesus with them (amen). From the rabid vegetarian groups that tell me, and my son, that we're murderers for eating meat. Or heck, just people in general that make life so very pleasant to live because they feel their "moral" rights are good and superior and everyone must cow to their desires?

I have never had a problem being nice and not smoking when people around me were not smokers. I ask, if it's a problem, I don't do it. But I am seldom given the simple curtesy of even "this is an issure we must agree to disagree on."

 

[LocktownDog]

To be honest, this whole thread and the attitudes is the reason I tend to not be a polite smoker anymore. When I have a pack in hand (and not smoking) I get coughed at, complained at and yelled at. Oh yes, I'm going to light up and make your life miserable.

lol I'm with ya. I often go about with an empty pipe in my craw, just kind of keeping it there so I don't get tempted to chew my nails again. I can't tell you how many times someone has come up to me and asked me to put out the pipe, because they're having a hard time breathing.

Yet every weekend, my neighbor can horribly burn steaks on his BBQ with all of the subsequent smoke choking me off my patio. Gotta buy that boy a cookbook.

Richard

 

[Feraud]

Yet every weekend, my neighbor can horribly burn steaks on his BBQ with all of the subsequent smoke choking me off my patio. Gotta buy that boy a cookbook.

Richard

lol talk about air pollution!

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Fantastic! Invocations of Churchill, Gandhi, the civil rights movement; comparisons to slavery, totalitarianism and fascism. This, people, is a Fedora Lounge obfuscation-fest of epic . . . and i do mean EPIC . . . proportions. And it started out so rational, too.

No-one's trying to stop you smoking. That's not the intention of the law. The legislation is intended to protect those who do not smoke. Lung cancer is a smoke (along with other toxins . . . asbestos, coal dust, etc)-related illness. If you don't smoke you are less likely to die of it. But, introduce the second-hand smoke issue, and you're in trouble. Despite Mrs Thatchers propaganda, there is such a thing as society. These laws are about reducing the impact on others of our dangerous habits. Tobacco smoke does not simply constitute a "bad smell". The stuff is actually dangerous. It's not just coloured air that's coming out of your mouth, there're tiny particles of soot which are absorbed by cells in the lungs. Just happens that they also lead to mutations in some cases. get unlucky and that mutation allows a cell to become proliferative. (i.e. cancer).

bk

 

[MudInYerEye]

Ditto what he said.

 

[Edward]

I will take cake please.

Well, they're right out of cake.

(I'll be having the chicken).

 

[RedPop4]

Actually, the second-hand smoke isn't nearly as dangerous as the anti-smoking bigots claim it is. No less an organization than the WHO has concluded this.

The Wall Street Journal, The Telegraph, The Economist have reported on this over the years; it's been over ten years since the WHO report and the EPA report. EPA fit the study to acheive the results they desired. Give the WHO credit (and I don't usually care much for UN functionaries) they had the guts to publish even though they didn't like what it found.

Smoking Out Bad Science
By Lorraine Mooney
Copyright 1998 Dow Jones & Co., Inc.
Wall Street Journal - European Edition (March 12, 1998)

For the past 15 years the anti-smoking lobby has pushed the view that cigarette smoking is a public health hazard. This was a shrewd tactic. For having failed to persuade committed smokers to save themselves, finding proof that passive smoking harmed non-smoking wives, children or workmates meant smoking could be criminalized. Last week the science fell off the campaign wagon when the definitive study on passive smoking, sponsored by the World Health Organization, reported no cancer risk at all.

But don't bet that will change the crusaders' minds. smoking, like fox hunting, is something that certain factions want to ban simply because they don't like it. It has slipped from a health crusade to a moral one. Today, National No smoking Day in Britain will be marked by demagoguery from the Department of Health, which has already set its agenda to ban smoking. The U.K. Scientific Committee on Tobacco or Health (SCOTH) report on passive smoking, due out Thursday, is headed by a known anti-tobacco crusader, Professor Nicholas Wald of the Royal London School of Medicine.

However, it is now obvious that the health hazard of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) has been knowingly overstated. The only large-scale definitive study on ETS was designed in 1988 by a WHO subgroup called the International Agency on Research on Cancer (IARC). It compared 650 lung-cancer patients with 1,542 healthy people in seven European countries. The results were expressed as "risk ratios," where the normal risk for a non-smoker of contracting lung cancer is set at one. Exposure to tobacco smoke in the home raised the risk to 1.16 and to smoke in the workplace to 1.17. This supposedly represents a 16% or 17% increase. But the admitted margin of error is so wide--0.93 to 1.44--that the true risk ratio could be less than one, making second-hand smoke a health benefit.

This is what anyone with common sense might have expected. After all, the dose makes the poison. But in 1988, IARC decreed mainstream tobacco smoke as a carcinogen, fully expecting that the second-hand product would have a similar, lower effect which would be capable of measurement by linear extrapolation. In anticipation of confirmation of this belief many countries have been adopting anti-smoking policies in the name of public health. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has confidently stated that 3,000 Americans die annually from inhaling environmental tobacco smoke, and the state of California leads the pack with a total smoking ban in all public places enacted on Jan. 1, 1998. Although Iran did enact such a ban in 1996, this was overturned as unconstitutional. The Indian city of Delhi has a smoking ban and Britain is working toward one.

Before the IARC study, no other reliable study on ETS was available. For the effect of the modestly increased risk of ETS to be detected, the number of cases in the study must be very high in order to distinguish the effect from other background noise. Acting in the most unscientific manner, the U.S. EPA decided to pool results of 11 studies, 10 of which were individually non- significant, to arrive at a risk ratio of 1.19. As is always a problem with this kind of meta-analysis, the studies were all different from each other in various ways so that they were not measuring the same thing.

Last October, the British Medical Journal ran the results of a similarly flawed study by SCOTH's Mr. Wald claiming an increased risk of lung cancer from ETS of 26%. It was supported by an editorial and timed to coincide with noise from the anti-smoking lobby and a Department of Health press release, talking of "shocking" figures and alluding to innocent victims. The Wald report has been dismissed as a "statistical trick" by Robert Nilsson, a senior toxicologist at the Swedish National Chemicals Inspectorate and a professor of toxicology at Stockholm University. He says that there are so many unacknowledged biases in Mr. Wald's analysis that the alleged risk figure is meaningless. For example, Mr. Wald relies on data from the memories of spouses as to how much their dead partner used to smoke. Survey bias is often considerable, potentially far higher than the 26% estimate of increased risk, but this is not even mentioned by the authors. Mr. Nilsson also explains that Mr. Wald's meta-analysis has pooled data from non-comparable studies. His most stinging criticism is aimed at the BMJ editorial board, who he considers must be "innocent of epidemiology" to have allowed publication of the Wald paper in its existing form. Nevertheless the U.K. SCOTH inquiry into ETS due to report on Thursday, with Mr. Wald at the helm, will probably ignore the flaws of the Wald study and brand ETS a killer.

New Labour has done a U-turn on fox hunting. Will it do one on Thursday when SCOTH reports? Or will it ignore the best evidence and press on with public smoking bans? My guess is that two climbdowns in a month is one too many. It will remind us all this week that smoking is bad for you and eventually ban it in public.
Ms. Mooney is medical demographer for the Cambridge-based European Science and Environment Forum.

Material presented on this home page constitutes opinion of the author.
Copyright © 1998 Steven J. Milloy. All rights reserved. Site developed and hosted by WestLake Solutions, Inc.

Matt No 'significant' risk in passive smoking
By Robert Matthews and Victoria Macdonald--Originally published in the Telegraph 15 March, 1998


LEADING cancer experts have conceded that the World Health Organisation's study of the link between passive smoking and lung cancer failed to find any statistically significant extra risk, as exclusively revealed by The Telegraph last week.

The experts include Prof Sir Richard Doll, the world's leading authority on the link between direct smoking and cancer, who said that the rejection was on the grounds that the results were simply yet more evidence of the kind produced by dozens of earlier studies, which have also usually failed to give conclusive results. He insisted, however, that taken together the studies point to a significant risk: "On its own, the WHO study is not definitive, but it contributes to the weight of evidence."

However, the rejection of the non-significant findings from the WHO study looks set to trigger accusations that "politically correct" scientists deliberately suppress data which fails to support their own beliefs. Despite repeated requests last week to the WHO team to put its own side of the story, and an undertaking from a senior team member to give a response to specific questions, none was given.

However, The Telegraph this week reveals the full extent of the flaws in the WHO report, including the fact the scientists appear to have over-interpreted the figures leading them to claim the risk is greater than it is.

The study, conducted by the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer, compared 650 lung-cancer patients with 1,542 healthy people. It looked at people who were married to smokers, worked with smokers, both worked and were married to smokers, and those who grew up with smokers. The WHO scientists and Ash incorrectly claim that the results show that there was a 16 per cent risk of a spouse living with a smoker developing lung cancer.

Dr Rudolfo Saracci, a senior scientist on the WHO team, yesterday declined a request to give further details of the research findings pending publication in a medical journal. However, he said the "soundest interpretation" of the results was that there is "an increase in risk related to spousal exposure".

12 March 1998: Smoking in the home 'kills babies'
19 October 1997: Cancer alert on passive smoking 'is false alarm'

Smokescreens
The World Health Organisation is showing signs of allowing politics to get in the way of the truth
Copyright 1998 The Economist
March 14-20, 1998

IS THE body that wiped out smallpox and has done so much to promote mass vaccination losing its way? In recent weeks the reputation of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has suffered a number of blows, as critics have accused it of bowing to political pressures rather than publishing unpalatable research findings.

One instance emerged this week. A controversial new study which looked for links between lung cancer and passive smoking found that non-smokers married to, working with or growing up with smokers were not at significantly more risk from lung cancer than anyone else. The research, commissioned by the WHO and co-ordinated by Rodolfo Saracci of the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, involved a seven-year-long study of 650 lung-cancer patients. Since it was one of the biggest single pieces of research conducted into the issue, its results were eagerly awaited by the medical world and lobby groups. But instead of being released with a fanfare, they were summarised in three short paragraphs and buried in a bulky WHO internal document.

Those paragraphs emerged in the British press—undoubtedly tipped off by the country’s tobacco lobby—and were accompanied by gleeful accusations that the WHO was trying to suppress the findings. Certainly, the conclusions will have been an embarrassment to the organisation. Though the WHO has long admitted that the links between lung cancer and passive smoking are weak, it has nonetheless used the perceived dangers to rally public support against the tobacco industry, particularly in pressing for a worldwide ban on smoking in public places. Surely, say its critics, if this study had supported the WHO’s anti-smoking position, it would have trumpeted the fact.

But the study not only clashes with the tenor of the WHO’s own anti-tobacco campaign, it also appears to undermine the American government’s war on public smoking. Unsurprisingly, many fear that the WHO’s agenda is no longer governed solely by scientific principles. Rather, they suspect it is influenced by its biggest paymaster—the United States. This view is reinforced by the stance the WHO has seemed to take on another awkward issue: the links between radiation and thyroid cancer.

Sources close to the organisation allege that Keith Baverstock, a leading scientist at the WHO, has been put under unrelenting internal pressure to leave the organisation following his work on the incidence of thyroid cancer after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986. This research, which found cancer rates that were more than 100 times normal in some areas of the Ukraine and Belarus, conflicts with work done by the American government in its own study of dangers to public health from nuclear testing in Nevada in the 1950s.

That study, published by the government’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) last year, was inconclusive, and failed to tackle the issue of cancer risk. Indeed, it left out a vital piece of research by the NCI’s own scientists. This had found a high incidence of thyroid cancer associated with radioactive iodine. An independent committee was set up by America’s National Academy of Sciences to look into the NCI’s conclusions about the health risks from nuclear testing. Dr Baverstock is the only WHO employee on that committee.

A smoking gun?

Why should Dr Baverstock be under such pressure? One explanation is that, if the health risks associated with nuclear tests and accidents have been underestimated or understated, the American government could face new lawsuits on everything from the Nevada tests to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.

And there is a third instance where the WHO has apparently been embarrassed by its own findings, and embarrassed America into the bargain. On February 21st New Scientist claimed that the WHOhad “caved in to political pressure” by failing to include data suggesting that cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco when it published a report on the effects of the drug. New Scientist alleged that the WHO was persuaded not to publish by warnings from America’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, and also from the United Nations, that its findings would play into the hands of groups campaigning to legalise pot.

The WHO has countered some of these accusations, though it would not comment on the case of Dr Baverstock, saying the issue is between him and his regional director. In the case of the passive smoking study, Richard Peto, an epidemiologist at Oxford University who advises the WHO, says that accusations of a cover-up are nonsense. The WHO tried to get its findings published by the British Medical Journal late last year, but they were rejected on the grounds that the BMJ had just published a much bigger “meta-analysis” study on passive smoking, collating almost 40 research papers on more than 4,000 cancer patients.

This larger study came to the conclusion that there was indeed an increased risk of lung cancer from passive smoking (25% higher than for those living in a smoke-free environment), but that it was tiny compared with the 2,000% increased risk for active smokers. The BMJ therefore decided that the WHO’s results were not noteworthy enough to print. The WHO says it is still trying to have the study published. It submitted the research to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in February and is waiting for it to be peer-reviewed.

As for the study of the impact of cannabis, the organisation denies accusations of suppressing data. Alan Lopez, who manages its substance-abuse programme, says the decision to withhold the findings on cannabis was because epidemiological data on the drug are less reliable than those for alcohol or tobacco.

There are lessons, though, in the ease with which the WHO’s motives have been impugned by sceptics. It is dangerous to become involved in campaigns that are not solidly based on scientific evidence. For instance, even the small ill-effects of passive smoking found by the meta-analysis were the result of chronic exposure at home or at work, not casual whiffs in a pub. Although passive smoking is unpleasant and irritating for non-smokers, that alone cannot justify banning it in public places.

The danger, if the WHO appears to be campaigning against passive smoking primarily for political reasons, is that it will weaken the message about the real risks of smoking (which causes 6% of all deaths and is the world’s fastest-growing killer after AIDS). The organisation ought rather to concentrate on where its research, rather than politics, leads it.

Unfortunately the structure of the WHO makes this difficult. It exists at the pleasure of its 191 member states, which finance it but demonstrate no real understanding of how to run it. Its regional directors are apponted not by the organisation’s director-general, but independently by health ministries in each country. Because the member countries pay the fees and appoint the directors, the WHO could find it difficult to resist pressure to support their political agenda. Critics claim that the result is an organisation which is dispirited, confused and lacking in vision.

The WHO needs once again to become a neutral arbiter of health information, ready to put its advice into practice, as it did in its fight to eradicate smallpox. There are hints of change. The new director-general, Gro Harlem Brundtland, who will replace Hiroshi Nakajima this summer, is considering altering the way regional directors are appointed to make them more directly answerable to the organisation. With the WHO turning 50 this year, it needs to overcome its mid-life crisis.

Material presented on this home page constitutes opinion of the author.
Copyright © 1998 Steven J. Milloy. All rights reserved. Site developed and hosted by WestLake Solutions, Inc.





The Who Study

The World Health Organization's first study on SHS is a textbook example of the right way to conduct an epidemiological study. Unfortunately for them, it yielded unexpected results. They responded by doing a second one, a meta-analysis, that allowed them to extract the results they wanted. This is an analysis of their first study.

Fact: The World Health Organization conducted a study of Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) and lung cancer in Europe.

Fact: ETS is commonly referred to as Second Hand Smoke (SHS). The two terms are interchangeable.

Fact: This was a case control study using a large sample size.

Fact: The purpose of the study was to provide a more precise estimate of risk, to discover any differences between different sources of ETS, and the effect of ETS exposure on different types of lung cancer.

Fact: The study was conducted from twelve centers in seven European countries over a period of seven years.

Fact: The participants consisted of 650 patients with lung cancer and 1542 control subjects. Patients with smoking related diseases were excluded from the control group. None of the subjects in either group had smoked more than 400 cigarettes in their lifetime.

Fact: Three of the study centers interviewed family members of the participants to confirm the subjects were not smokers.

Fact: The study found no statistically significant risk existed for non-smokers who either lived or worked with smokers.

Fact: The only statistically significant number was a decrease in the risk of lung cancer among the children of smokers.

Fact: The study found a Relative Risk (RR) for spousal exposure of 1.16, with a Confidence Interval (CI) of .93 - 1.44. In layman's terms, that means

• Exposure to the ETS from a spouse increases the risk of getting lung cancer by 16%.
• Where you'd normally find 100 cases of lung cancer, you'd find 116.
-But-

• Because the Confidence Interval includes 1.0, The Relative Risk of 1.16 number is not statistically significant.

Fact: The real RR can be any number within the CI. The CI includes 1.0, meaning that the real number could be no increase at all. It also includes numbers below 1.0, which would indicate a protective effect. This means that the RR of 1.16 is not statistically significant.

Fact: A RR of less than 2.0 is usually not considered important and, most likely to be due to error or bias. An RR of 3.0 or higher is considered desirable. (See Statistics 101 for more details.)

This rule of thumb is routinely ignored by the anti-smoker activists.

Fact: The study found no Dose/Response relationship for spousal ETS exposure. See Statistics 102 for more information.

Fact: The RR for workplace ETS was 1.17 with a CI of .94 - 1.45, well below the preferred 2.0 - 3.0, and with another CI that straddled 1.0.

Fact: The RR for exposure from both a smoking spouse and a smoky workplace was 1.14, with a CI of .88 - 1.47.

Fact: The RR for exposure during childhood was 0.78, with a CI of .64 - .96. This indicates a protective effect! Children exposed to ETS in the home during childhood are 22% less likely to get lung cancer, according to this study. Note that this was the only result in the study that did not include 1.0 in the CI.

The WHO quickly buried the report. The British press got wind of it and hounded them for weeks.

Fact: On March 8, 1998, the British newspaper The Telegraph reported "The world's leading health organization has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could have even a protective effect."
Get Smartenized®
Read the
Quick Hitts Blog.

Listen to the
Quick Hitts Podcast.

Finally, the WHO issued a press release. Although their study showed no statistically significant risk from ETS, their press release had the misleading headline "Passive Smoking Does Cause Lung Cancer - Do Not Let Them Fool You." (I say "misleading" because it would be impolite to call it an outright lie.)

Fact: In paragraph four they admitted the facts: "The study found that there was an estimated 16% increased risk of lung cancer among nonsmoking spouses of smokers. For workplace exposure the estimated increase in risk was 17%. However, due to small sample size, neither increased risk was statistically significant." (Emphasis added.)

Fact: The press release doesn't mention the one statistically significant result from the study, that children raised by smokers were 22% less likely to get lung cancer.

Fact: The WHO tried to blame the results on a small sample size. However, in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, where the results were published, the researchers clearly state: "An important aspect of our study in relation to previous studies is its size, which allowed us to obtain risk estimates with good statistical precision..."

It should also be noted that the most likely effect of a larger sample size wouldn't be a large change to the RR, but a narrowed CI.

More Information

An abstract of the study is available here. The entire study can be found here. (.pdf file)

The WHO's press release is located here.

This article, from the British Wall Street Journal, discusses this study and the EPA study.

FORCES has lots of links to articles and editorials on this subject.


© 2000 - 2007 Dave Hit

Facts are troublesome, ain't they? lol

 

[warbird]

Actually, the second-hand smoke isn't nearly as dangerous as the anti-smoking bigots claim it is. No less an organization than the WHO has concluded this.



Facts are troublesome, ain't they? lol

They sure are. :eusa_clap lol

Leave it to the researcher and librarian to come out wit da facts. Lay it on down brother Pop.

 

[TheKitschGoth]

Actually, the second-hand smoke isn't nearly as dangerous as the anti-smoking bigots claim it is.

Even if it's not dangerous, it's far from the healthiest thing.

Honestly I'm not 100% sure what I think of the ban, but I do know that I can spend an evening in a pub or club now without my throat feeling like I've swallowed sandpaper the next morning. So my health totally supports the ban.

ETA: Better ventilation could achieve the same thing, and that would be wonderful, but doesn't change the fact that other peoples smoke isn't good for me to breath

 

[RedPop4]

That's a typical emotion-laden, facts-be-damned argument if ever I heard one.

Honestly I'm not 100% sure what I think of the ban, but I do know that I can spend an evening in a pub or club now without my throat feeling like I've swallowed sandpaper the next morning.

I am quite certain, that there were places like this beforehand. But that's never good enough for most bigots. Oh no. The lack of compromise on this issue is really disheartening and scary. It's not enough to have places not allow smoking on their own, so that people can make a choice of where to spend their money that way you can go somewhere where your "throat is not feeling like you've swallowed sandpaper" [sic] and let others go where they will to pursue their past times. Nope. Sorry, can't do that. Non-smokers want to be able to go ANYWHERE THEY PLEASE, THE SMOKERS BE DAMNED.

So, should crowd participation at football matches be curtailed? I mean, the way those lads sing and enjoy themselves supporting their side, I'd bet that 95% of those chaps go home with "throats feeling like" they've "swallowed sandpaper." Imagine--non singing football grounds. I like it. I'm for banning singing at football matches. Better get that CD of "You'll Never Walk Alone" NOW, because if I have my way, it'll end. I've gone to too many gridiron matches here in the U. S., and baseball games, too, where I've yelled and screamed and given myself a sore throat. I can't take it any more. I think we need a government BAN to protect me and those around me who have to endure my ear-splitting second-hand yelling. I might hurt their hearing. And dont' forget the offensive stench of my breath after two or three hot dogs with chili, mustard and onions. That's downright foul. Better ban ball park food, too. I mean that endangers people's health, after all, all that force meat, fat in the chili, reflux causing tomato sauce and onions. Yuck.

There are a lot of things out there that aren't "the healthiest thing" but we don't go banning all of it, it's patently ridiculous to suggest it. Yet there are organizations and do-gooders out there trying to do just that. What will you do when it's YOUR favorite thing that's banned? A totally vegan diet isn't the "healthiest thing" for some people. "My health totally supports the ban" Please elaborate. This makes no sense. You health goes out and votes?

 

[TheKitschGoth]

Go to a place that doesn't allow smoking, then, that's what I do.
Oh wait, YOU CAN'T CHOOSE, that right has been taken away from you.

I never had that choice before though. [huh]

I understand both points of view in this one, I totally understand the smokers because pretty much all my friends smoke, so unless I want to sit indoors on my own, I'm out in the cold and wet with the smokers (what a wonderful English summer we're having). But I can now breath easier, and not stink of other peoples smoke. It's not an easy one to solve, and I don't exactly support peoples decisions being made for them, yet I do understand why it's swung in favour of the non-smoker. Surely breathing clear air is more essential, than breathing cigarette smoke? I know I've always felt sorry for people working in bars and clubs who don't smoke.. they don't even get the choice to stay at home that I had.