Non-smoker explains why he has "zero sympathy" for smokers
Tuesday, January 15, 2013 at 9:15 I'm driving to Birmingham this morning so I'll leave you to comment on an email that was sent to Forest:
I just came across your website by chance. I agree with you when you say that adults who wish to smoke have a right to do so, albeit knowing the health dangers. However I would make the following comments, as a non-smoker.
1. I wish that legislation to ban smoking in a room (not just a car) with children had been in force when I was a child. My mother, as an adult, had a right to smoke, but I as an asthmatic child had to suffer the inhalation of second-hand smoke which aggravated my asthma. In those days children were supposed to be "seen and not heard", so my right to breath in clean air was not even considered.
2. When I was about nine I was brought in to a hospital to visit a dying uncle - I think he was dying of lung cancer - and even at that age I couldn't believe that other patients in the ward were allowed to smoke. Even a man dying from the poison of cigarettes couldn't get away from second hand smoke on his deathbed.
3. For some years I worked in a small office with a smoker and his right to smoke took precedence over my right to breath clean air. If I went home for lunch he had other colleagues in at lunchtime ands they all smoked so I came back to an office with the disgusting stench of smoke. Whenever I complained I was laughed at - again non-smokers had no right to breath clean air. The smokers didn't care about me or my asthma. Even a simple request to open the window while they were smoking was refused. When I came home from work my wife could smell the smoke on my clothes.
4. For years going into a restaurant for meals meant risking second hand smoke as the cigarette smoke didn't understand the concept of a no-smoking area. Now with the smoking ban we can go into a restaurant without our evening (and meal) being spoiled by smoke drifting over our table and poisoning our air.
5. As a taxpayer I also have an interest in this because there is a huge drain on scarce health resources which could be much reduced of smoking could be eradicated. Smoking and alcohol related illnesses (and accidents in the case of alcohol) are a huge cost to the taxpayer and waste healthcare resources which should be available to treat people who are ill due to no fault of their own. (I am not anti-alcohol, only the abuse of it - alcohol in moderation is fine, whereas every cigarette is harmful.)
6. Smokers also tend to litter the streets - look at all the cigarette butts lying around. A sweet wrapper can be put in your pocket until you find a bin, but who wants to put a dirty cigarette butt in their pocket, so it ends up in the gutter.
He finishes by writing:
I am all for the smoking ban - the more restrictions placed on smoking the better. In any situation where second hand smoke is being forced upon non-smokers then a ban is appropriate. For years the smokers had it all their own way - they could pollute the air around them and anyone complaining was seen as a crank. In the last few years non-smokers have at last won the right to breathe in clean air. As a non-smoker who for years had to suffer the inconsiderate attitude of smokers I have zero sympathy for them now.
Over to you.
Update: The email was sent to Forest Eireann. On behalf of FE, John Mallon has sent a reply which I have also posted in the comments.
Reader Comments (16)
You ask for comments, and my response is he seems to have eloquently expressed a great many of the problems with smoking that I have encountered as well. I have to say his characterisation of the arrogance and insensitivity of smokers not that long ago is extremely accurate in my experience, although smokers did generally become much more sensitive to non-smokers towards the end.
The only slight quibble I have is that he sets out expressing support for the right to smoke:
"I agree with you when you say that adults who wish to smoke have a right to do so, albeit knowing the health dangers."
But he ends up dead against:
"I am all for the smoking ban - the more restrictions placed on smoking the better."
He must have talked himself round as he was typing up his comments. :-)
As a life-long non-smoker myself, I can totally identify with his experiences. He might have added more, for example, in the days before there were smoking and non-smoking hotel rooms, it was purgatory to walk into a hotel room you were meant to occupy for the night and be overcome with the stench of stale cigarette smoke, with all the soft furnishings reeking of it. It would literally take my breath away. The smoker had long since enjoyed his right to smoke in privacy, but the next day I was paying the penalty for it. No fair.
In conclusion? It's a well-argued contribution to a reasoned debate.
As a non-smoker I would like to disagree with most of what my fellow "non-smoker" says.
Points 1-3 are nothing to do with rights. It's all to do with consideration. So just because a few smokers were not considerate does not mean that all smokers have to be penalised.
Point 4 is usually covered by extractors. In fact with no smoking in restaurants, air quality has deteriorated with too much cooking smells now.
5 is totally wrong as smokers pay more in tax then they take out in health care costs. Cigarettes in moderation is like alcohol in moderation, not a problem. The myth that 15 cigarettes is a death sentence is just that, a myth.
6 is just stupid. There is more litter from bags and food wrappings and other junk than from tiny little stubs.
Three points in response:
It was never illegal to open a non smoking restaurant. On the Eighth Day, a Manchester vegetarian restaurant, has been non smoking for at least three decades. Some of the Manchester curry restaurants were non smoking ten years before the ban. By the year 2000, there was no shortage of non smoking restaurants. I know this, because I smoke, and I needed to find out before I went in. The Laurel Pub Company had a no smoking policy in all its pubs before the ban.
Second, it has been repeatedly shown that smokers cost less in health resources over a life time - even without tobacco tax and saved pension contributions. This is because smokers die shorter, cheaper deaths than non smokers. Remember, everyone dies eventually. The anti tobaco industry counts on your not realising this when it puts out its health resource propaganda.
I do have sympathy with your childhood and workplace experiences. If I were forced to agree to just one smoking ban law, it would be a ban on smoking in cars with children; although I think the problem could be better addressed with a few public information TV adverts - the less aggressive and antagonistic and the more light-hearted, the more effective - something like the litter adverts in the 1960s.
Well, I would of thought that the a clear difference between now and when smokers were in a voting majority is that smokers did not ban any public or private place from going smoke-free.
As far as I know it has never been illegal to open a smoke-free restaurant and at no point in time has a publican ever gone to prison for failing to put ash trays on tables and providing 100% of inside space for people to smoke in. It was simply a case of supply and demand. The more smoke-free places people wanted the more they got.
Before the smoking ban I could go to any number of smoke-free restaurants and pubs every night of the year and I didn't mind coming back with my clothes stinking of (carcinogenic) alcohol and other air borne pollutants from selfish drinkers.
I think the writer was broadly speaking right about the years when acceptance of smoking was regarded as the default social position. Looking back I remember that those of us who smoked could be inconsiderate of, and we did lack sym-pathy, with those who disliked or objected to the practice. But the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme now. I don't think smokers were by nature intolerant. Rather, we were unimaginative. That has changed. It's time for magnanimity and a bit of live and let live all round. Maybe the initiative lies with the tolerant non-smoker. Sadly tolerance seems to be a forgotten virtue in this area.
"Rather, we were unimaginative."
Very well put Norman. I'd classify myself as that back in the 1980s and 90s. We were encouraged by the seeming lack of demand for nonsmoking pubs and restaurants from people who didn't like smoke. The market would have responded, as it always does. If someone's desire to enjoy the company of others overcomes their dislike of smoking, we concluded they weren't that bothered about the smoke.
Strikes me that the writer of the email had a truly ghastly mother who didn't give a damn about him, and this has probably set his back up against smokers in general ever since. If I had a son or daughter who suffered from asthma I certainly would not smoke near them or cause them to suffer from any of the thousands of other inhalation problems which might cause them breathing difficulties.
The rest of his email is of course just the usual drivel - taken direct from the ASH handbook of anti-smokers' rights.
He craves fresh air? And he expects to find such in a pub or a restaurant? Fresh air is only to be found in open countryside - not in cities - not in cars - not in ordinary homes - and certainly not in ale houses and burger joints.
Think again Mr Anonymous - you want smoke free air? Go and seek it in the countryside and live it to your heart's content - but you must also allow for those who seek a different lifestyle to you and want to smoke tobacco in an environment free from the likes of you and your kind!
I don't really see the point of the email. It simply repeats the common mantras of ASH propaganda. We have heard them all before thousands of times. So, very briefly:
1. Persons with congenital diseases like asthma should avoid triggers which cause asthma attacks. It is not for society to remove all possible triggers from every place.
2. There is no law which forbids persons who are allergic to airborne particulates from wearing suitable masks.
3. It is a myth that children are harmed by ambient smoke, whether tobacco smoke of other smoke, such as cooking smoke, in the sort of quantities normally experienced. This is a particularly vicious myth put about by Tobacco Control Zealots.
4. Human beings smell. Animals smell. Air cleaners smell. Some people find these smells unpleasant. Others find them fragrant and aromatic. Do not go to places where the smell is not to you liking.
Other matters have already been dealt with.
Usual indoctrinated propaganda by a non smoker.If it was 60-70 years ago,he would consider the blacks and the gays to aggrevate his asthma
But let's see:
If his mother was cooking in front of him and the fumes were aggrevating his asthma,would he be looking to ban the kitchens?No.We should also introduce him some asthmatics that say smoking alleviates asthma (true)
Most smokers are considerate human beings sameway as non smokers.We do take account special circumstances and requests,we are not 'creatures of the evil'
It is very strange that he had the most incosiderate mother,the most incosiderate relatives and the most incosiderate colleagues
As for the restaurants,one air purifier and the problem is solved.Besides, there were smoking and non smoking restaurants even before the ban
As for the financial cost and the littering,this is just for laughter
They want us because of our habit dead fast,but miraculously we cost more! The litter?First they kick us out ,they dont even make designated outside areas and then they blame us!Now that's an evil plan! And ofcourse for the rest of the litter that most of it is produced by non smokers,silence..
This e-mail has all the hallmarks of LilacHamster (crumbs, how many people on here remember her??) I wonder if it’s her? She doesn’t seem to have been very vocal of late.
Except that I can’t believe that she’d lower herself to admit that smokers had any rights at all – even in a few short (and swiftly contradicted) words at the start of one of her comments. If it is her, then maybe she’s mellowing in her old age! Well, a bit, anyway.
The email was sent to Forest Eireann by someone called Tom. (We have his full name but wish to protect his identity.) He is perfectly entitled to his views (which are shared by many non-smokers, as Mark Griffin's comment suggests). Norman's response sums up the situation very well.
I disagree Simon. I think Norman is referring to a minority of smokers of old. I'm in my 60s and I've smoked all my life, apart from a couple of breaks of a year or so each. When I was young and in the company of non-smokers, I would make an effort to keep my smoke away from them as a matter of course. I didn't even think about it. In a restaurant or at a communal table, I would never dream of lighting up if people were still eating. I considered it most impolite to do so, regardless of whether those at the table were smokers or not.
With regards the asthma thing, as Dimi points out, that is a very personal reaction to tobacco smoke, and for many it provides relief. I know this for a fact because a very old friend of mine is asthmatic. About 15 years ago under pressure from his doctor, he gave up smoking, but after a year of suffering far more attacks (three or four times as frequent, apparently) than previously, he started smoking again. The frequency of his attacks immediately dropped to their former level of a few a year. This of course would not apply to everyone, but I have read that it is known to ease asthma in many cases.
I also disagree with JB who says smoking in cars with children should be banned. Quite apart from the fact that it is an unworkable law, it also makes no sense at all. Have you never watched what happens to your exhaled smoke when you are driving, Jonathan? The window needs to be open just a inch, and while in motion you can exhale a cloud of smoke and watch as it is immediately whipped out of the gap at the top of the window. Even that fact is academic, given that the "science" of passive smoking is suspect, to say the least.
No, the little diatribe from "Tom" reminds me of the comment I see repeated ad nauseam in all comments about the subject which generally goes along the lines of "My dad died a lingering death from emphysema and my mum died from lung cancer and my uncle had a heart attack from smoking and my aunt maude got cancer of the mouth and all my friends who smoked died horrible deaths because they smoked...." etc etc. All obviously bollocks, because in reality very few of us know anybody, even vaguely, who has died of a disease directly as a result of smoking. Personally, I know of nobody. The only people I've known who died of cancer were never smokers.
So in summary, I think it's just another anti-smoker rant dressed up as a sympathetic, dispassionate statement.
Come on, guys. The email is a standard propaganda piece.
Here’s a person who happens to have asthma, had a “relative” dying of lung cancer, at age 9 was already reflecting on the “poison” of SHS, pushes the standard “smokers cost the health system” drivel, and then, of course the end point is always those dreadful, terrible butts. It’s the typical structure of a propaganda comment.
Others have well made the points. There are asthmatics who smoke. There are some asthmatics that are highly prone to psychogenic effects; it is their irrational fear about ambient tobacco smoke that can trigger an asthma attack. And the inflammatory propaganda of the last few decades feeds such irrational belief/fear in the gullible.
Until the current antismoking crusade, with all its inflammatory rhetoric, smoke that was typically encountered – cooking, heating, tobacco – was not even considered as a trigger for asthma. This “ambient tobacco smoke is so terrible for [all] asthmatics” is just some of that inflammatory rhetoric of the time; it’s a contrivance. So, too, is the other manufactured “ailment” of “allergy” to tobacco smoke: There are no allergens (proteins) in tobacco smoke to be allergic to. The author of the email doesn’t seem to have a problem with cooking or heating smoke. Why? He would be hard pressed to pick the differences between those and ambient tobacco smoke in terms of chemistry. His “disgust” is selective, which suggests that his problem is psychogenic.
Inflammatory propaganda produces mental dysfunction. There are many, particularly nonsmokers, that have all sorts of incoherent beliefs and irrational fear about SHS. Unfortunately that’s how the antismoking agenda gets advanced. You put people into irrational belief/fear who then demand “protection” through legislation, i.e., the fear shifts to bigotry. This is exactly what the brainwashers are after.
The fact of the matter is that, at the beginning of this latest crusade, antismokers were few and far between. Antismokers have a selective problem with smoke/smoking/smokers. They claim they hate the smell, they hate the habit. But there is better reason to believe that it’s a masquerade; smoking has become a projection point for minds in turmoil. The antismokers were at least aware that they could hardly have smoking banned purely on the basis that they didn’t like the smell or disapproving of the habit. No, smoking would have to pose a far greater problem to nonsmokers for their deranged crusade to proceed. And so SHS “danger” was born and is what holds the whole antismoking house-of-cards together.
The only question remaining is whether the author of the email is one of the brainwashers or one of the brainwashed.
1. “Smoking is a filthy, disgusting habit, and why do (smokers) feel they have the right to ruin someone else's meal?"
2. “The use of tobacco, in any form, is a dirty, filthy, disgusting, degrading habit….
You have no more right to pollute with tobacco smoke the atmosphere which clean people have to breathe than you have to spit in the water which they have to drink.
…… use of the filthy, nasty, stinking stuff [tobacco]”
…….
These sorts of statements are typical of what we hear from antismoking. However, one of the statements is from 2013, the other from 1915.
The first quote is from:
http://www.whig.com/story/20512454/five-years-later-no-smoking-law-seems-to-be-working-for-both-sides
The second quote is from an anti-tobacco billboard (photo circa 1915) on the road leading into Zion, Illinois, USA. When considering the sentiments appearing on the billboard, it must be remembered that this was many, many decades before the concoction of secondhand smoke “danger”. Zion City was a “utopian” community established in the early-1900s by John Alexander Dowie representing a so-called (questionable) “Christian” sect (Christian Catholic Church). Tobacco, alcohol, and gambling were banned within Zion.
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/fullimage.asp?id=55422
http://yeskarthi.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/1915-anti-smoking-sign-zion-illinois/
……
Serious, dangerous fanaticism/extremism was rife in America right up to WWII. The Temperance (religious leanings) and Eugenics (physicians, physicalists) Movements, both having dictatorial tendencies and a delusional emphasis on and obsession with physical health, wreaked considerable damage in America. The EM was by far the most influential in America and eventually produced catastrophe in Nazi Germany with global consequences. The Temperance and Eugenics Movements shared the anti-tobacco sentiments in the quote above. While they attempted to change society with destructive consequences, Dowie chose to create his own “protected”, albeit highly dysfunctional, community.
Some background on Dowie’s sect and how anti-tobacco/alcohol can masquerade as “rectitude” for highly dysfunctional minds:
http://churchmousec.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/john-alexander-dowie-a-prohibitionist-masterclass/
We’re now seeing this same sort of fanaticism/zealotry masquerading as morally “superior” all over again, and with America the main exporter of the derangement.
On behalf of Forest Eireann, I have replied to Tom as follows:
1. Like you, my son had asthma, still does at 20, and I never smoke around him. While I do not believe that smoking causes asthma, I do know that it can aggravate it. But I too am of an age to remember the 'good old days' and, as an observation, the big difference in the relationship I have with my son as opposed to that I had with my father is I sit down and talk to my boy. My father would never have seen the necessity of that way back then.
2. In terms of smoking-related illness, it is a fact that smokers do not suffer from any unique condition and every condition that is associated with smoking is also present in non-smokers. There are many cancers that have no connection with smoking also. However, this is not to deny the danger of smoking and I admit also that my two children chose for their own reasons not to smoke.
3. You refer to "my right to breath clean air" and while this may appear intuitive to you, there is no such right in our constitution nor in Irish law. Recently, the International Agency on Research and Cancer (IARC) designated diesel fumes as carcinogenic. The quantities involved are more dense and larger than that of a lighted cigarette.
If your right to breath clean air were to be in force all diesel cars should be banned immediately. And before you say these are outdoors, smokers are now being banned from smoking in parks, beaches, hospital grounds and near the entrances of public buildings.
You make the point that in the past, smokers seemed to have all the rights. Is it your solution then that they should have no rights instead? Since a third of the population smoke it might be reasonable to expect that a third of pubs should be allowed to permit smoking. I was in a pub last Tuesday, was the only customer, and there was a single barman. Both he and I went out in the cold twice to have a smoke, bringing home to us the extreme nature of the law.
4. Even 25 years ago it did seem wrong to smoke around food. Mind you, I have seen people sneezing around food also. But I see no reason why a restaurant cannot provide a roofed room for smokers to go for a cigarette/cigar after their meal. Instead the vindictive law states that a smoking room must be open to the elements. Is it your opinion that smokers should never be catered for, albeit separately? It is called courtesy and good manners and should always be used before the law, in my opinion.
5. As regards the official figures from the Health and Safety Executive, the Irish Examiner last week quoted the figure of €1bn a year to treat smoking-related illness. (Remember also that 70 per cent of their budget goes on salaries and wages.) But the combined revenue in excise and VAT on tobacco products comes to €1.5bn a year. This shows that smokers contribute an extra €500,000,000 a year above what they cost. Remember also that smokers are just ordinary citizens who pay taxes, both direct and indirect. Incidently, the HSE figure for treating drink related injuries is €2bn and apparently obesity costs them €4bn.
6. As regards litter on the streets, it is something I hate (the dirty Irish, as my aunt would say). However, in the past, smokers were indoors with ashtrays provided. Being forced outside they are relying on the provision of ashtrays. You cannot put a lighted cigarette in your pocket and take it home. I have noticed in my own City of Cork that there are less and less of the large street ashtrays now than there were five years ago. While Christmas shopping I stopped for coffee at a place with eight tables outside. There was no ashtray on my table so I went back in and asked for one. A grumpy waitress said to me, "Someone else is using it". So, don't just blame the smoker.
7. Forest represents adults who want the right to choose how they live their own lives. I could argue all day with you on the tortured figures produced on ETS to justify these restrictions. Suffice it to say, you could apply the same technique to almost anything and make a compelling case to have it banned. It is conjecture built on conjecture. But one fact shines clearly through. Not a single death certificate, either here or in any other country, has listed exposure to tobacco smoke as either the primary or secondary cause of death. Not one.
In terms of known carcinogens, your kitchen at any given time will contain hundreds of them. A cup of coffee contains over 2,000 chemicals but the issue is, in what quantities. The first law of toxicology states that "The dose is the poison". One US study found that an hour in front of a barbecue is the equivalent of smoking 1,000 cigarettes.
However, most of the complaints against smoking revolve around the smell of it, and this is a personal preference. I happen to like the smell of smoke, whether from a cigarette, a turf fire, a barbecue and even petrol fumes. However, there are many perfumes that I find overpowering. But for society to operate peacefully we need to be tolerant and empathetic with each other.
I recall being horrified when my (young) daughter said she hated the smell of old people. My wife loathes the smell of roasting lamb, while I love it. But your preferences in odours should not dictate legislation to ban the ones you don't like. Those who complain about smokers huddled at the door of the pub leading to smell of smoke on their clothing are simply intolerant individuals. In my opinion, they are drawn from the 'hang 'em and flog 'em' brigade.
There are rights and wrongs on both sides but my wider concern is that, having established a precedent on tobacco, the prohibitionists will find it easy to apply the same strategy and tactics to anything they desire and control us in our own homes. We Irish talk a lot about freedom but I suggest a new and most insidious master is emerging, cheer-led by the blind among us.
"One US study found that an hour in front of a barbecue is the equivalent of smoking 1,000 cigarettes."
They were being very conservative, John. The BBC reported a lot more than that.
"A study by the French environmental campaigning group Robin des Bois found that a typical two-hour barbecue can release the same level of dioxins as up to 220,000 cigarettes".