Smokers banned from adopting under fives
Thursday, June 7, 2007 
The Telegraph reports that Portsmouth Council is to ban smokers from adopting children under the age of five "in an attempt to protect young people from health risks such as asthma and lung cancer". (Full story HERE.) Dundee Council introduced a similar policy last year, which is why I was invited to speak at the Fostering Network's annual conference in Glasgow in October.
In the course of my research I discovered that the Fostering Network estimates that 10,000 extra foster carers are needed across the UK, over and above the 70,000 who already look after children and young people on any given day. By excluding foster carers who smoke, or those who smoke at home, we risk reducing the pool of carers by up to a quarter. If that happens, many children will be forced to live in institutions rather than with a loving, caring family. Is that what councils want?
I concluded my speech by saying:
Yesterday, as I travelled up to Glasgow, I heard a news report about a new campaign being launched by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). The message of their campaign is that feeding meat to children is child abuse. Does that sound familiar? Today smoking, tomorrow eating.
Finally, I was struck by a comment by journalist Mary Kenny in yesterday's Daily Telegraph (13 October 2006): "Why can't arguments about smoking be settled with sensible compromise, instead of bullying extremism?"
By all means, discourage carers from smoking in enclosed spaces around children, but it must surely be possible to find a compromise that does not automatically disqualify people who smoke from fostering children.
Full speech HERE.
Reader Comments (60)
What's worse is that the ASA is happy to allow them to continue with their meat is child abuse campaign. I can't help think about the victims of real child abuse and how they feel about this and that their suffering is being equated with being served up bangers and mash.
We're now at the stage where smoking around children is tantamount to child abuse, where serving them meat is try to reach the same status as is giving them any alcohol. I personally find these ideas offensive when you consider the number of children out there who're being sexually assaulted and/or brutalised by sick parents.
I don't buy into the idea that expanding the term abuse to ecompass smoking, drinking and meat isn't trivialising what child abuse really means.
Completely banning smokers from adopting children under the age of 5 years may be using a sledge hammer to crack a nut. However, there is an issue with children and passive smoking and I read a couple of months back that The Royal College of Physicians estimates that 17000 children are admitted to hospital each year because of passive smoking.
If I was a social worker responsible for putting a child into foster care or being adopted then I would prefer not to expose that child to passive smoking if an equally good smoke free home was available.
In the absence of that first choice, then reaching agreement with the prospective parents not to expose the child to smoke indoors should suffice. I guess that most smoking parents don't expose children to smoke in the home and yet we are left with that worrying annual figure of 17000 hospital admittances from the Royal College of Physicians
17,000 for passive smoking! How many for inhaling exhaust fumes, aeroplane emissions, fumes from factories, contamination in drinking water, delipidated school buildings, hay fever, aerosol inhalation, food additives, allergies etc? Probably the bulk of the 17,000 that the RCP are blaming smokers for.
Even those smokers who do not believe the SHS arguments do not smoke in front of young children in case there is any link so the exposure is limited. However, these same children are exposed day in and day out to all of the above but this fact is ignored by compilers of biased reports.
My 'Local' is beside a main road and when the kids are inside in bad weather the open fire burns away, while when weather is fine they play in the car park beside the road. However, according to the RCP it is us smokers that are responsible when they require treatment for respiratory problems.
Why are you so touchingly trusting of the RCP? Do you really think they arrive at statistics that are so politically powerful to their own interests in any kind of honest fashion?
Robert Evans wrote:
“The Royal College of Physicians estimates that 17000 children are admitted to hospital each year because of passive smoking.”
Bear in mind that is just speculation and not fact.
This speculation is based on preexsisting belief.
They estimate?
They should prove it.
Why they don’t’ estimate how many children contreact astma ( and not only astma) as direct cause of the absence of second hand smoke.
From the down of humans race the children was always exposed to second hand smoke whether is from fire place used for heating and cooking or from smoking tobacco. Just recently, (particularly in last 25 to 30 years) the great percentages of children’s are restrain from second hand smoke.
Breathing the smoke is what separate us from all another animals and is important factor in evolution of human’s race and human’s cognitive ability.
Breathing smoke whether is first or second hand has important role in building and maintaining immune system by humans.
Anti smoking campaigner do not care for children’s health and wellbeing. They only care for their own radical religions belief and own radical ideology.
Robert Evans, you do talk such unreflective nonsense. I'm probably a lot older than you and in the days when I grew up parents smoked heavily and I mean heavily. Now, where were all those kids with their passive smoking ailments? I'll tell you. They didn't exist. There were a few children with asthma but compared to nowadays they were a mere handful.
What you are in fact subscribing to my naive fellow is a notion of a contemporary aerian superiority: "Here I am, Robert Evans, a superior being who will sit in judgment on my fellow beings in the belief that I am fit to judge others based on my eroneous beliefs and lack of ability to relate even to my own experience."
As I've said before Robert you are pompous but added to that not to bright either - a dangerous combination which makes you an ideal foot soldier for the perpetrators of social control and manipulation.
You know, the anti smoking movement tries so hard to tell us it's not about the smoker, it's about the smoking. It rings rather hollow when you hear stories like this.
I feel the reason for trying to put smoking in front of children as a means of child abuse to improve prosecution cases for child abuse. Where I live, we were burgled systematically by a father who used his 22 year-old mentally handicapped for this purpose. this was well known to local police. What happened to the Det Sargeant working on this case. You guessed. He was promoted to take charge of Child Protect Unit. Futhermore, he became Child Protection Officer for a national First Aid Charity. What did the police do when this was reported? Nothing!! The Chief Constable just passed it over to Professional Standards and weeks later he claimed he was satisified that their CP officer had to the highest pressional standards. What a joke. No wonder the NSPCC are working overtime. What are these clowns going to use next under child protection to make their figures look impressive.
Sorry typing error. His son was 11 year old.
Robert Evans - this is a load of absolute 'bull', just like all the other statistics we have hurled at us systematically at the moment.
Why do we have so many people living well into their nineties etc. when they have smoked like troopers earlier in life and been exposed to far greater pollution from factories etc. etc. earlier in the 20th Century? as well as wars people were forced to fight in and bombs falling. Those must have caused some smoke!
Why do you suddenly feel the urge to protect children from second hand smoke? When people can't smoke inside pubs, clubs etc. (after July 1st) people will be smoking more at home anyway so you are shooting yourself in the foot.
People with your opinions are really starting to irritate me now. However, people like you are not just irritating me, but millions, yes, millions of people. You are the ones wanting the 'inclusive society', yet you are being deliberately 'exclusive' and sancimonious with your attitudes!
Just a small observation here, come the 1st July whos to say that if its a nice day that the new very expensive outdoor smoking areas in pubs wont be filled up with non smokers claiming their "right" to sit where they like.?????????
I think that a - large- section of the outdoor areas should be reserved for smokers otherwise I'm absolutely sure that the antis will be quick to complain about their "right" to enjoy fresh air. Also, if all the outdoor seating is full of non smokers, then smokers will have nowhere to sit and eat and drink.
Smoking is already banned here [N Ireland] and the weather is the best in years. The pubs that did make an effort for their smoking punters are the busiest with smokers and non smokers and those that made no effort at all are getting hammered.It is almost impossible to get a space outside but I have yet to hear any complaints from the non smokers as in truth most non smokers were against a total ban anyway.
This may not remain the case as I know from S Ireland that the antis [not non smokers and there is a difference] are now trying to get smokers removed from the smoking areas, but so far so good here as we have a reputation for rebellion and no one likes a tout.
Sorry ,my mistake!! should have put antis instead of non smokers,and you are right there is a difference between the two.A lot of my friends are tolerant non smokers.
Don't worry Carl. I wasn't slagging you off but as long as we remember that there is a distinction then we might have a chance of change. But if we start to believe that all non smokers are our enemy then we have lost from day one. There are plenty of smokers who are a bigger enemy because they are the ones that go on BBC Breakfast and say that the ban is great. They are the ones who say it will help them give up, which it won't, and do not admit that smoking is an enjoyable way to spend 5 mins and quite often the best relaxant you can get.
They are ashamed to admit that they enjoy a smoke regardless of whether it is harmful or not. Why is it O.K. to admit to being a chocoholic or addicted to caffeine but it is not acceptable to enjoy a puff? Why is fine to dole out anti depressants like smarties to suicidal people but it is wrong to light a cigarette and enjoy it when your horse wins a race?
I could go on and on.
Well I for one absolutely LOVE smoking.
Michael,
These are the ones who give up and then become antis,in my expierience theres nothing worse than an ex smoker whos seen the light!!.
One of the best cigarettes is after a meal. I disagreed with those people [including smokers] who were proposing a partial ban to include pubs where food was served. Smokers eat too. I agree with Poppy in that I love smoking and am happy to state the fact.I also love beer, gambling,Chinese and Indian Food and sausage rolls. Each may have their critics but I work hard, pay my taxes and should be able to choose how to spend my own money.
Bernie, I was merely quoting what I had read in the Observer newsaper a couple of months back. Nevertheless, the Royal College of Physicians' estimates on hospital admissions from passive smoking deserve acknowledgment and inclusion in this debate.
Blad, I don't consider myself a superior being or siting in judgement on others. I agree with Forest that "it makes sense to discourage people from smoking around children in enclosed spaces". I also agree with much of Simon's speech posted yesterday in that smokers should not automatically be barred from adopting or fostering, especially if it then meant that a child was left in some sort of institution.
On a broader note, Blad, in a few years time my own children will be old enough to go out pubbing and clubbing with their friends. If the price of protecting them from thick clouds of second hand indoor smoke every weekend was name calling and personal insults from you then it it would be a price so worth paying.
Robert, your kids may well be old enough to enjoy the hedonistic delights of what's left of the pubs and clubs in a few years... but you're reckoning without the forthcoming nu-labor de-normalisation of alchohol use. Still, there should be a few Temperance Bars by then. And there's always Starbucks.
I suppose, Robert Evans, you are 'just an ordinary sort of guy' - now where have I heard that before?!! Basil is absolutely spot on! What will there be left when your children are old enough to choose a 'hedonistic' lifestyle - only there won't be any choice. The remaining public houses will resemble public libraries - with mineral water, magazines and books for entertainment. And, of course, there shall be smoke-free coffee houses!!
My local is already beginning to change. The landlord has sold out of cigars and is not allowed to buy any more. On 30th June, the cigarette machine, matches etc. are all being taken away. The landlady has made up ashtrays for outside use out of used tuna cans and painted them. Miserable looking, boring 'new' punters are starting to filter in and regulars (like me) are starting to feel like outsiders - well, we will be literally outside, but I was meaning that we are gradually starting to feel alienated. On a lighter note, the landlady has requested one of Bernie's posters, but I don't know where she will dare to put that up because the brewery regularly sends a rep (like Herr Flick of the Gestapo - and he looks like him) who will, no doubt, be putting up the red and white stickers himself!!
Robert, I hope you are also forbidding them from all the other smoke dangers too.
I'm equally no longer impressed by what The Royal College of Physicians have to say because it's been bandwagon time for some of these medics for quite some time.
In addition,isn't it interesting that the Health and Safety Executive doesn't endorse the view that ETS, in the quantities in which we normally experience it, is a deadly toxic substance. Yes, runs counter to SCOTH, the DofH, BMA and other perpetrators of anti-smokerism.
Why doesn't the HSE follow the same line? Simple answer really. This body is the only one out of all of those that has to bring prosecutions. Following on from that it would not be wise to bring prosecutions on the back of duff evidence and that's what you have regarding the dangers of ETS.
Hopefully, by the time your kids grow up, Robert, we'll have a more tolerant society again with practical and sensible solutions to enable everyone to have choice and without all the lies that have been manufatured to make smoker bans and persecution possible. Certainly, there are some very senior medics that are going to have to be brought to book and that time is not so far away now!
Jenny, if my father was still alive today he would agree 100% with everything you and most other people have posted on this website. As to my views and arguments, dad would be spitting with rage and anger.
Dad smoked about half a million cigarettes in his life. Even at the age of 46 when diagnosed with coronary heart disease, he refused to give up the right to smoke. Doctors and consultants urged him to stop smoking,and urgently at that, but dad dismissed such advice. Beyond the heart attacks, heart bypass operation and stroke that followed, dad still wouldn't or couldn't give up smoking. He died at 58 years of age.
All the way through childhood, I was indifferent to dad's smoking and I do regret now never having a debate with him about it. My own children never knew their grandfather but I do tell them that he laid down his life for the right to smoke. I don't know if dad ever got to heaven, but if he did there would have been an almighty row at the gates as according to our vicar heaven's always been non smoking.
Even if my views on smoking cause dad to be turning in his grave, I am so glad to be now having this debate with you and everyone else. I make no apology for rocking the boat.
Robert E, I am sorry, as I always am, to hear of anyone's bereavement. I know how painful bereavement is, having had to go through more than my fair share of it. I also know that it's natural to look for something to blame because when we love someone deeply and they're taken from us, it feels so unjust, so cruel, so painful. We need to make sense of it. We need a 'reason'.
I also think that some anti-smokers become just that *because* of that deep need to find something to blame. Because they can't let go of the pain and they want some sense of revenge - or some sense of justice - for their loss.
It's a very powerful motivator, and I think it goes some way to explaining the degree of zealotry we see in the anti-smoking movement (I accept that you are not at the extremes, but I believe that you acknowledge that those extremes exist).
I am sorry for the pain of loss of all these people. Even the biggest zealots of them all. What I would wish for all of them is that they find some solace in a way that is truly meaningful and not blame-driven. Rather as putting murderers in prison and revenge killings do not bring the lost person back, neither will the 'successes' of the anti-smoking movement.
Further, banning smoking in it's entirety will not stop people from dying of cancer, lung disease, heart disease or heart attacks. These things will still happen and, in the absence of tobacco, something else will be sought out to blame.
It just is not right or rational to take one person's experience and to expect that to apply to all people. The true evidence is all around us every day. Old people who still smoke and did not die young are everywhere to be seen. Some of us get to live long and happy lives, some of us get to live long and painful lives, some of us die young, some of us die in the womb, some of us die in the process of trying to give life. Some of us die in the hands of medics who make mistakes. Some of us are murdered. Some of us die in accidents. Ultimately, though, we all die.
That's the way life is. We can't really control it - we just like the idea that we can.
I believe in living for today and loving those you have in your life now for all your worth. Remembering those who have passed with fondness and taking what we loved about them into ourselves to help us on our own journey.
I really don't care whether my life is long or not. I don't understand why that is such a signicant measurement these numbers. What matters to me is that my life is lived fully in whatever time I have.
I'm afraid that the idea of 'control' over longevity has created a fear-driven society in which life is becoming something that is dictated to us rather than lived by us.
Poppy I totally agree, I absolutely love smoking. My best fags are after a meal and with coffee. A coffee without a cig for me is like playing tennis without a racquet. I would never have met my husband if I weren't a smoker. I met the person who introduced me when a coach we were travelling on stopped for a fag break!
ps - Before I smoked I tipped the scales at 70kg, now I manage to eat healthily plus indulge in chocolate and weigh a tiny 49kg!
pps - My Dad was killed in a car crash aged 30 when I was 5, therefore I have always lived for today. I'd rather enjoy my fags and die younger than live to 100 without them. Btw my graet-aunt died of lung cancer. She never smoked or mixed with smokers. So there!
Thanks Laura :)
As you show right there - the smoking predecessors of anti-smokers are not the only people who ever succumbed to lung cancer and other (so-called) 'smoking-related diseases'. I also lost a relative to lung cancer at a very young age - she lived in the country and never socialised or smoked - so - what was the cause of her lung cancer? No-one could ever work that out.
Robert Evans - I am sincerely sorry to hear about your father. Your father was advised, but chose to continue smoking - that was his choice. However, the rest of us are not responsible for what happened to him and in this debate we are not given a choice - we are having our lives made miserable and being dictated to in a way that no previous government has ever done. This government has interfered in just about everything - made our working lives much more difficult and stressed us, taxed us up to the hilt and now wants to govern our social lives. Additionally, people like me will be criminalised. I understand your very strong feelings - but we have feelings too.
Robert,
Like yours, my father also died at the very young age of 58,and yes he did smoke,but the disease he died of had nothing to do with smoking,he had a condition called constructive restricted airways disease,which, according to our family doctor was caused by working with asbestos lagging during his time in the Royal Navy.
It was very sad when you saw him having to use a nebuliser to breathe with,but because he was fiercley indepenent,he smoked right up until the end.
Hi Jenny and all,
On a lighter note I have just got back from a long weekend in East Germany, (not a no smoking sign in sight!!!),and, talking to people there, they seem quite horrified that our ban starts on the 1st July,they said that such a thing in Germany would be unthinkable, and, against their constitution,it really is a different world over there,no cctv cameras, virtually no crime,
everything is family orientated,I had to laugh when this very dapper elderly gent (who I later found out was 93 years old) pointed his cheroot at me and said in almost perfect english "You know in my day your Tony Blair vould have been shot".Says it all really!!
Robert, I too am sorry for the loss of your father. My first husband died of lung cancer aged 51, I was 39 and our daughter 13. Yes he was a smoker, he was also a drinker and rode a motorbike for a living. Apart from coming off it a few times in the year or so before he was diagnosed, he also had a nasty experience with chemicals that were being sprayed onto fields by the motorway he was riding his motorbike along. He was quite poorly as a result and admitted to hospital then as his breathing was bad and his chest so tight. It settled down and nothing was done. A year later he was diagnosed with lung cancer after seeing the doctor for a persistent bad throat.
Of course many people will say it was the smoking that caused his cancer, but I am not convinced - I still smoke and our daughter, who could easily have gone onto University, chose to work in pubs, clubs and restaurants knowing she would be working in a smokey atmosphere, although she doesn't smoke.
Incidentally, while she was growing up the only illness she had was an ear infection a couple of times before the age of 2, after that nothing except the odd cold. We even sent her to nursery school when other children had measles and mumps, etc in the hope that she would get over it whilst she was young, however she never caught anything. She did carry the mumps and give them to her dad. She is now 24, has never had mumps or measles but did get chicken pox when she was 13, just a month before her dad died. So I don't believe that smoking in the home with children around causes any problems. Neither my brother nor I suffered and both my parents smoked as did my gran who lived with us. My parents didn't suffer either through living with their parents who all smoked. Nothing, so far, that the so called experts have come up with in terms of 'evidence' has added up and it never will. So long as fear is engendered in people who are unable for one reason or another to do some basic research for themselves, then this king of bigotry will continue to happen.
I know this is a bit long, especially after my last post, but I found this amazingly interesting, even though it is just a few paragraphs from book by Barbara Taylor Bradford and is so true.
He asked how in God’s name Hitler had persuaded so cultured a nation as the Germans to espouse his anti-Semitism, his racist policies.
He was answered with another question: What has culture got to do with anything?
You’re a Rhodes scholar, look to the history you read at Oxford. You will soon understand that hate and bigotry and prejudice are emotions all too easily engendered in people, in a nation as a whole, when evil and sinister men are their diabolical work. Those maniacal fanatics play on weakness and fear and ignorance. Look into the history books. You will find atrocities jumping out from every page. Tomás Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition, the Turks slaughtering innocent Armenians, etc.
Regrettably, lamentably, atrocity is a human crime, one that has been perpetrated for centuries by people. Shocking, when one thinks that the most heinous acts imaginable have been committed by supposedly civilised men against other men.
We’d better watch ourselves, watch the whole world, be on our guard against that kind of blind and terrible weakness, otherwise we may find ourselves facing new unholy terrors in the not too distant future. History is cyclic.
Reading the WHO 1998 report which failed to find evidence on the link between passive smoking and cancer,and which was subsequently hidden away,I have since read a number of comments from people who claim the report was incorrect,not because they understand the science behind it but because they do not like the reports conclusions.The WHO report however only confirms the findings of searches into the 150,000,000 death certificates held by the GRO on people in this country who have died since 1837.Not one certificate has ever been produced which cites passive smoking as the cause of any single death.This being the case I think it is quite likely that we can safely assume that there is no link between passive smoking and cancer and or death.If you have not read the WHO report you can read it by following this link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1998/03/08wtob08.html
Lyn - you are absolutely right - and history does move in circles/cycles. Carl - yes, East Germany - they remember the Stasi and I used to live in (West) Germany and still go over to Westphalen every year to stay and meet with friends. They will not follow this stupid legislation as they had to live with the effects of Hitler's legacy - the hatred of Germans long after the Second War ended even though, in my generation, none of them were responsible as they were mostly born in the 1960s. They also like smoking! I personally think shooting is too good for those in charge over here. They are making our lives a living hell, and I'd like to see them suffer instead of being put out of their misery quickly. Guy Fawkes was more straightforward. Although a 'traitor', his intentions were not only sincere, but obvious. We are in a situation now, where those in charge are manoevering in a way so as to pull the wool over the eyes of our people.
Bernie and Rob Simpson - I said it before and will say it again - I told you my firm belief that our premier would sign us into the EU constitution without a referendum and the consequences of this will be devasting for us, the ordinary people. Sarkozy has let the cat out of the bag. Only yesterday (11th June) the papers will full of all this, only I foresaw this months ago. We are bombarded by legislation and this will worsen. Come July 1st, if there are events planned against the ban, people should come forward and complain about other things such as this - then the crowds would be larger and more prominent!!
Sorry to get off the point of the argument about adoption of under 5s - I just thought if I wrote this here, more people would read it.
My dad died in a car crash aged 30, and when people ask me if he was a smoker I retort with "No, he was a driver!"
Great story that from Germany, I know how tolerant a country it is. On a similar note, my uncle bumped into an old acquaintance who is now 90-odd, fancy sports car, nice clothes and a picure of health, looking years younger. When my uncle asked what his secret was he said "wine, wild women and CIGARETTES"!! So put that in your pipes and smoke it, ASH!
Seriously Laura? Because your dad died at 30, people *assume* that he was a smoker?
That is really unbelievable.
Love the sound of that German 90 year old. Almost wishing I was one of his wild women! ;) Sounds as though he has more spirit than most men half his age.
I'm curious about something now, and hoping someone here might have the answer. When we hear the figures for 'smoking-related deaths' - and particulary 'smoking-related cancer deaths' - is there any indication of the AGES of people in those figures?
I just wonder because I understand that cancer has always largely been a disease of old age. So if a large proportion of those deaths occur over the age of 70 (the traditional three score years and ten), I would have thought they were pretty meaningless (I don't mean to be insensitive to people who have lost loved ones over that age, and hope my point here is understood in terms of meaningless attributions in statistics).
Anyone here ever investigated that? Simon.. does FOREST have that kind of information?
Poppy; That is a good question. You will probably find the answer here http://www.davehitt.com/facts/
Dave Hitt is very good at explaining all the tricky bits about the science and the statistics.
Thanks Bernie, I'll take a look!
Well, I actually found it at the CRUK site. Take a look:
http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/mortality/age/
So, that shows how incredibly ignorant the assumption that Laura's father must have died from cancer at THIRTY really was. The public perception and even the figures of CRUK themselves are poles apart.
Also found this on the way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_cancer_link
Jenny, every death of a smoker is considered premature,and computed as such.If they were ALL over a hundred they would still be shown as premature and smoking related.If you smoke , you are not allowed to die. What's even more perplexing is that many non smokers are on the lists of 'smoke related'deaths!
Sorry, that was mean't for Poppy's question.
..and this shows how ridiculous the idea is that a 'smoke free society' will somehow eradicate cancer:
Extract:
"Cancer has afflicted humans throughout recorded history. It is no surprise that from the dawn of history doctors have written about cancer. Some of the earliest evidence of cancer is found among fossilized bone tumors, human mummies in ancient Egypt, and ancient manuscripts. Bone remains of mummies have revealed growths suggestive of the bone cancer, osteosarcoma. In other cases, bony skull destruction as seen in cancer of the head and neck has been found.
"Our oldest description of cancer (although the term cancer was not used) was discovered in Egypt and dates back to approximately 1600 B.C. The Edwin Smith Papyrus, or writing, describes 8 cases of tumors or ulcers of the breast that were treated by cauterization, with a tool called "the fire drill." The writing says about the disease, "There is no treatment.""
Taken from:
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/content/CRI_2_6x_the_history_of_cancer_72.asp?sitearea=CRI
Oh yes Zitori... I agree. I've seen an anti argue, when confronted with details of the famous smoker Jeanne Calment's death at 122, "Imagine how much longer she would have lived if she hadn't smoked!"
It beggars belief.
Imagine two ajacent countries,one made up of smokers, and the other non smokers. If the lifespan was 110 for the smoking country, and 75 for the non smokers, the antis would still revile the smokers for living filthy lives, saying that it's better to have a shorter, cleaner life! That's how much they seem to hate.
I don't doubt it Zitori... either that or they'd probably accuse the smokers of using up too many resources by living longer.
Not sure how CRUK make up their stats, linked to above, but here's an interesting real-person enquiry into how the U.S. statistics are put together:
http://www.nycclash.com/ArticlesFolder/SAMMEC.html
I am glad to hear that are people that thing that moderate smoking not only isn’t harmful but as well have positive consequences for health.
I think it will be great to meet all of you.
Can somebody organise meeting somewhere in London.
I think together we can do something.
Yes Zitori, anti-smokers are indeed very twisted creatures. The fact that the press has bought their activities says very lttle that is encouraging for the future of democracy in the UK.
A lot of people are under the misapprehension that for many of us the primary issue is simply to smoke. It's not, at least not for me. What gets me, and the ban will not dint my perseverance in exposing them, are the incredible lies that have been used to further smoking bans. To lie about medical science to further a cause does no-one any favours at any time!
My Grandfather who smoked untipped Woodbines all his life was advised by his doctor to give up smoking at 97 which he duly did. Unluckily for him he lived another 2 years - although he was fit smoking was his only real pleasure! I too love smoking I work really hard and find it totally relaxing but I dread the thought of making it to 97 myself, every freedom that people off my granddads age fought for will be gone. With regards to Bernies poster I would love to display one in my shop but would not like to offend any of the many charming german tourists that come in as they might not understand the context of why I am displaying it, however I am intending to take a stand here, does anyone know of any others.
Hey Wendy,
In a similar way, my granny, who came from poverty and was one of those really tough ol' ladies who always wore 'frocks' and was LARGE but SOLID, who loved her food and was deeply proud of every (what would now be considered cholesterol-laden) huge meal she produced, well... she was as fit as they come. Carried extra bags of shopping home for housebound arthritic pensioners 10 to 15 years younger than herself. She took care of her disabled husband for 30 years, even carried him to bed. I've never seen anyone so strong. At the age of 88, she was up a ladder, cleaning the tops of her kitchen cupboards (!) and she had a fall. Hadn't seen a doctor for years, but now she was their beady eye, and they put her on a low cholesterol diet - which she hated, but felt 'doctor knows best'. It was extraordinary to see this woman who had previously been glowing with health six months later. She was withered, shrivelled, tiny. Something had completely gone from her. You could see that her sense of 'size' in the world had had much to do with her sense of strength. All her love and enthusiasm for life had been zapped. No spark shone from her at all. Two months after that she was dead.
I think it's obscene to take people's pleasures away from them at *any* time of life. To take them away so close to the end of their lives is positively criminal in my opinion.
Medics need to understand that we are not just the mechanics of our bodies. We are minds and spirits too. True wellbeing is being sacrificed for the sake of digital readouts and government-imposed targets.
Whatever happened to "I am not a number, I am a free (wo)man!"?