General Chat

HIya Roy,,,
It depends where you live...
USA has great success with certain drugs that are not permissible in Australia yet...
So we sit here with the methadone.....which is just a free boost to a junkies day.

I've never heard of people killed in a "person was smoking" car crash....
Seen thousands where someone was killed by drunk drivers.....

Maybe stamp out drunk drivers

Kellie

Perhaps the government should do what put me off smoking. Everytime my father ran out of fags, usually when I was watching something good on the tv,or happily playing with my friends, I had to walk up to the shop and fetch just ten woodies.

Even as a child I would have loved to have stuck them where the sun don't shine but that option wasn't available at the time when 'getting a good clout didn't do me any harm' was the more usual way of getting a point across.

Whilst it was illegal to serve a child under 16 that didn't stop my father making others flout the law until mysteriously when I got to about 15 my mother started buying them in and selling to my father as and when. In later years I realised that my mother must have been spoken to and that was why there was a change of tactics.

Many children will be addicted before they even start smoking hence the governments warning not to smoke near children, particularly in a closed environment. As little as ten years ago I was at my friends house doing some work for her and she decided to light up. The smoke made me go light headed, just the same as having the first quick puff as a teenager. My system does not like smoke.

When I caught my son, as you do, with his first lot of ciggies, I didn't go balistic. I simply said that our families were prone to heart condition brought on by smoking. My father in law had a coronary in his 40's, my father in his 40's, both died in their 50's and went on to explain that might sound very old to a fourteen year old. Six month later his auntie, a smoker, died at 48 leaving a family of 5, the youngest was just 12. At that point I told my son 'I rest my case'.-jl

Its a classic addicts argument to point at other antisocial behaviours and practices and use them to justify their own addiction. I know, been there. You look at alcohol, for instance, and say that more people die from liver problems than lung cancer and convince yourself that its then OK to carry on.

Drinking and driving is already illegal in the UK, with heavy penalties, so its hard to draw a parallel there.

to be honest i dont smoke the box
so wont make any diffrence to me x

Kellie, hear in the UK drink driving is against the law with severe penalties

But even drink drivers and drug addicts are offered plenty of help for their addiction whilst smokers are given a very limited amount of help to kick their addiction

Only last year i had a letter from the local authority with a list of (handy) help line numbers for problems that affect people today,

The list had

2 numbers for people with drink problems,

1 number for police and anti social behavior problems

1 number for citizens advice centre

and 24 numbers for drug related problems

Roy

Won't make the slightest bit of difference to me....I don't buy them from the shops ;-)

I agree with Eldrick....nanny state in action.....wish they'd but out (pardon the pun) and leave people to make their own choices...Not being able to see the box wouldn't have stopped me smoking when i first started and I can't see it doing anything except make it look even more attractive as an act of rebellion for a youngster looking to kick up a bit x

I certainly didn´t start smoking because I liked the pretty box the cigarettes came in.
When I was young, virtually everybody smoked, virtually anywhere & everywhere.
I do try to be considerate & would never smoke in another person´s presence if I knew they objected, but I don´t feel that anyone has the right to tell me I can´t, particularly the Government.
Hiding cigarettes & putting them in plain packaging won´t help.
In the days when condoms were sold in plain packages, people didn´t stop having sex.

I do agree that it's the nanny state and will not work,

But i think as i suspect all smokers will agree that smoking is bad for use smokers but thats our choice,

However, as a parent i also think that we should at least try to dissuade our children from smoking,

I have never smoked in the house or in front of my children,

My dad smoked 60 a day but never in front of use or mum

Mum never smoked but because of her working in the working men's clubs she ended up with copd and that killed her, ( it's not nice to watch )

Dad who gave up smoking in 1970 is still with us

Roy

If people are stupid enough to do it, let them , we have a surplus population in the world let the idiots off first....

lolol I feel really antagonistic today, can you tell ;-)

Looking at it another way though, I drink more cups of coffee a day than most people smoke cigarettes...if it were banned entirely on health grounds I would just have to find an alternative 'panacea to all ills' wouldn't I :-D

Re drivers who smoke, it was in the news recently though I didn't read it all, that many accidents are caused by eating at the wheel... to me that is the same as smoking ( and phones) , ie you are not paying complete attention to your driving or other people on the road.

Geeshus,,,
Soo many drugs addicts on rehab programs OR kicking in your door to steal everything you own.....and you do not agree with programmes...
I am 46yo and been working all my life....I doubt your taxes paid for anyting I did or do...
I think I paid my own taxes thanks...

Stray....then do it for alcohol too....
Never seen anyone killed by drive smoking but seen many thousands killed by drive drinking...

Kellie

im sorry but the thread is about smoking not drinking, so it was my opinion on smoking :-D altho i was jesting,

Hi Roy,,,,
Here in Aussie we have soo many options....
drink driving is against the law,,,,,,but you can get a day pass if caught,,,,to go to work and back...

Here we have a course of tablets for smokers,,,,,that were designed in the US...does have some side effects....but I am a nutter from way back and didn't get any...



Does anyone thinks some ppl overplay the side effects just to get attention???

Kellie

I tried the tablets they never worked for me but they did help about 45% of the people that tried them, I had some side effects but nothing serious

Drink driving in the UK is a total driving ban for what ever period of time the courts think is just, and most insurance companies now will only insure you after a ban if you attend a rehab course

Roy

On the question of banning the branding of cigarettes, what about the manufacturers?
can´t see them being too happy about it.

The government, rightly or wrongly, is trying to acknowledge there is a problem. For the smoker who wishes to carry on, that is fine and the right of that individual.What is harder to change is the smoker who happily smokes but doesn't accept that there is an addiction at work and that it is better that they never started in the first place. That is not the same as saying don't smoke.


Many years ago Anne Diamond lost a child to cot death and being of a high profile at the time made people sit up and take notice. One outcome was that smoking near a new baby was detrimental to that child and may contribute to a cot death. How many people smoke near a new baby now.? That is more down to education. When a baby dies in those circumstances it isn't just the immediate family who suffer. From taking the emergency call with someone screaming down the phone, to the staff collecting the dead baby or the hospital staff dealing with the aftermath it affects everyone .

Meanwhile the smoker is quite blase that they don't have a problem.

I do admire that Roy, unlike most smokers, acknowledges the problem and I hope that somehow his addiction can be helped.As he said, he was not aware of the health problems when he was young. If adults and parents don't 'acknowledge' there is a serious risk, why would a teenager even consider this as a problem of starting smoking even though it is written on the box. All they see is that it is an adult thing to do and if the adults don't behave responsibly why on earth would a teenager.

So going back to the question of plain packaging, it must make it cheaper to produce, as the ciggy companies are not paying for the services of some graphic designer to come up with a logo so I don't think the companies will be bothered either way. But if it does work, and I don't think it will, then everything that can be done is being looked at. For that they deserve a point.-jl

On a lighter note, I have a friend who owns a Newspaper/Tobaconists shop. His opinion of the new rules re having curtains etc in front of the cigarettes.They must be mad, no matter what is done if people wish to smoke they wiil.what he may do is cover the display with curtains, then install a little man who at the press of a button will rise from the front as they open playing on a little organ "Smoke gets in your eyes"

There are no cigarettes sold in the UK which are manufactured in the UK. Government saw to that and the loss of thousands of jobs.

When the book 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' became available to the great reading public, that too was only available in a plain brown wrapper. That didn't stop people rushing out to buy it. LOLOL

Julia in Derbyshire

The Cot Death campaign mainly found that lying the babies on their side rather than on their backs reduced the death rate.

Smoking during pregnancy and around children and babies was seen as a no no way before that as I recall x

When the USA brought in prohibition it did not work - they served it from a teapot and drank from cups instead!