The slow erosion of tolerance
Sunday, February 28, 2021 at 16:53 Everyone is entitled to change their opinion but this is a particularly interesting volte-face.
In 2007 journalist Helen Mead wrote:
As a non-smoker [married to a smoker] smoke in pubs never bothered me. I'm all for a ban in the workplace, but it does seem a little harsh to outlaw special smoking rooms in offices.
Although she was clearly not a fan of smoky environments per se, she nevertheless added:
There are places and occasions, however, where smoke adds to the atmosphere. It would hang in the air above the pool tables of pubs I used to frequent, giving a slightly sleazy, yet oddly cosy, feel.
That suggested to me someone with a reasonable and normal level of tolerance for smoking and smokers.
Fast forward to 2020 however and you could be forgiven for thinking the columnist ‘Helen Mead’ was a completely different person.
Thirteen years after claiming that “smoke in pubs never bothered me” she spluttered:
Standing downwind of a smoker outside the railway station the other night, I caught a lung full of tobacco smoke. Disgusting.
I pointedly moved away from her. With smokers, I don’t care if I offend by making my thoughts clear. It is a detestable habit.
Goodness knows what happened to make her change her tune so dramatically but as an example of the slow erosion of tolerance in this country it’s hard to beat.
Or perhaps she just had a column to fill.
Either way she’s now added her voice to those supporting the extension of the ban in Wales, even suggesting that ‘We [England] should follow Wales in widening the smoking ban’.
She’s not alone, of course. Bizarre though it sounds, the indoor smoking ban actually increased some people’s intolerance of smoking.
Apart from legitimising a groundless fear of passive smoking, the ban meant that direct exposure to tobacco smoke is so rare for most people these days that even a whiff of smoke can trigger complaints.
The smoking ban and other anti-smoking measures also made it OK to refer to smoking as a “filthy habit” and no-one blinks an eye.
The problem is, when you attack smoking like this you are encouraging intolerance and even hatred of a section of society who even now represent a substantial minority (one in six) of the adult population.
Anyway, here’s Forest’s response to the new law in Wales: Welsh Government smoking ban 'wrong' says Forest (Western Telegraph)
Reader Comments (4)
Intolerance is fashionable as long as it is directed towards unprotected minorities.
Now she has made clear her intentions to be abusive and rude to smokers, who are doing nothing wrong and breaking no laws, I do hope she takes it on the chin when she gets a mouthful back from people who smoke pointing out how detestable her hatred is.
I'll bet she only picks on vulnerable women on their own, not in a group, and she gives the smoking 6ft brick shit house of a bloke a wide berth too.
These smokerphobic thugs are very courageous when it comes to picking on those smaller than themselves.
I think she had a column to write and is jumping on the bandwagon as it is not against the law to berate or ridicule smokers, she will have been encouraged by the lack of support from people who just don’t listen to folk like her, as most folk have other more sensible lives to get on with
Intolerance of smokers is not a byproduct of smoking bans; it is an intended outcome--that is they a re a feature, not a glitch. Smoking bans are designed to create the perception that smoking is unacceptable. Smoking bans were--and are not now--about health. Smoking bans are about control.
The denormalisation of smokers furthers the antismoking bias of tobacco control interests. This intolerance must be reversed. A good start toward ending the stigmatization and persecution is amending smoking bans to allow the return of designated indoor smoking areas.
Since germs were first discovered, smoke has been the only real indicator of air quality ordinary people had. So they banned it and now look where we are.
Medicinal smoke reduces airborne bacteria
2007
"We have observed that 1 h treatment of medicinal smoke emanated by burning wood and a mixture of odoriferous and medicinal herbs (havan sámagri = material used in oblation to fire all over India), on aerial bacterial population caused over 94% reduction of bacterial counts by 60 min and the ability of the smoke to purify or disinfect the air and to make the environment cleaner was maintained up to 24 h in the closed room.
Absence of pathogenic bacteria Corynebacterium urealyticum, Curtobacterium flaccumfaciens, Enterobacter aerogenes (Klebsiella mobilis), Kocuria rosea, Pseudomonas syringae pv. persicae, Staphylococcus lentus, and Xanthomonas campestris pv. tardicrescens in the open room even after 30 days is indicative of the bactericidal potential of the medicinal smoke treatment."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378874107004357
It's not very clever to make people forget what humans have known for hundreds of years. So much for progress.