E-petition newsletter

Read our e-petition update.

Copies have been sent to the following mailing lists – Forest, The Free Society, Save Our Pubs & Clubs: Amend The Smoking Ban.

Update: Emma Boon of the TaxPayers Alliance has just tweeted:

Update on Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 11:23 by Simon Clark

Response from a subscriber to The Free Society:

Sorry but I can't in conscience support this one. Tobacco related illnesses cost me too much money each year via the NHS and it's a self-inflicted condition. Children of smokers have no choice about getting asthma and other respiratory illnesses as well as the other damage which stunts their growth and limits their futures.

Given that people at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum are amongst the heaviest smokers in the UK, the wasteage of financial resources every day (literally benefits or low wages money up in smoke) is a serious impediment to their children's future.

I support people's right to make choices but Tobacco is a soil depleting crop which wrecks the agricultural potential of under-developed nations and Tobacco products wreck the health of people who use them or live with those who do.

I think he joined the wrong group!

Update on Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 5:55 by Simon Clark

Rod Liddle has plugged AWT's petition in today's Sun while suggesting that the Government should "reverse the ban on smoking in pubs".

Comments

[Xopher]

Response from a subscriber to The Free Society:
"Sorry ............... ............do."
Where do you start!
Free Society or Closed Mind?

[Jon]

He thinks it's costing him money, but it isn't. It's the snappily named "everyone except smokers lives with perfect health until they spontaneously vapourise age 85" fallacy. Also, I can't see how smoking rooms for adults can do anything other than improve the health of children.

[Pat Nurse]

It's not about health Jon.

[Anto]

Hey, I'm all for a Free Society....until I disagree with you.

[Jon]

Can't find Rod Liddle's article. Do you have a link, Simon?

[Martin V]

Or - to put it another way:

"I support people's right to make choices, B-U-T not when it interferes with my right to tell them what their choices ought (or ought not) to be. That, at any rate, is what I call 'Freedom' "

BTW, on the cost-to-Society issue (let's pretend that it's the ONLY point that matters). Who 'costs' more: the dead 75-year-old Smoker, or the 'living' 95 year-old with rapidly accelerating dementia ?

This is a question that will become VERY germane in the years to come.