Hartford City Passed a Smoking Ban

City Council in Hartford, Connecticut, on August 11 with the majority of votes (19-2) passed an ordinance prohibiting smoking in city’s parks and recreational areas. However, this may be not last word on the subject, because there do exist questions on the ordinance enforcement. Resident Ed Burdick considers that the ordinance is poorly drafted, because

A Smoking Ban in Pub Beer Gardens? Stop Persecuting Smokers

It should now be clear to anyone who still needs confirmation that secondhand smoke was only ever the excuse, rather than the reason, for the 2007 smoking ban. Its real objective, indeed the objective of all anti-smoking policies, was to harass, stigmatise and inconvenience smokers.

This is a system known as ‘denormalisation’ in the field of tobacco control and as ‘fat-shaming’ in the field of obesity. Since passive smoking was only ever a cover story, it should be no surprise that the smoke-free crusade has continued long after nonsmokers were given the whole of the country’s interior.

Anti-smoking campaigners get annoyed when people accuse them of being prohibitionists. They don’t want smoking banned completely, they will protest, and in a way this is true. There are only two places they want smoking banned: indoors and outdoors. Apart from that, smokers can do whatever they want.

It was in this spirit of tolerance and liberalism that the Royal Society for Public Health yesterday called for parks, beer gardens and other outdoor places to be turned into ‘smoking exclusion zones’. They made no claims about passive smoking and nonsmokers’ health to justify this quest for lebensraum, but they did describe smoking as an 'abnormal activity' that people shouldn’t engage in if another person might see them, ie. nearly anywhere.

This is a profoundly worrying rationale. If you have a belief in anything approaching a free society, you will understand that it is not the job of government to decide what is normal, nor is it the job of the police to arrest those who deviate from the norm.

With one in five people still smoking OK black online, it is debatable whether smokers are more ‘abnormal’ than any other minority, such as people who join anti-smoking groups, but even if they were, being a member of a harmless, if self-harming, minority does not justify state persecution.

The Royal Society for Public Health is suggesting that unusual, unhealthy or minority pursuits should be criminalised in order to set a good example to others. They want people to be arrested, fined and possibly even imprisoned for being poor role models. In a liberal society, the only appropriate response can be made with two words or two fingers.

87% Hookah Tweets are in Positive Context

Researchers found that daily young people mention 12,000  times hookah use in a positive context on Twitter. It means that hookah becomes more popular among teenagers due to belief that hookah is less harmful than cigarettes. However, researchers say that hookah is not safe. The author of the study is Melissa Krauss who is a

Smoking Rooms in Airport in Salt Lake City

Joshua Lewis is a smoker who buys Prima Non-Filter says when he is at Salt Lake City International Airport he normally smokers cigarettes in the smoking room. He says that sometimes air travel is hard and it is a real crack-up when there is no smoking room in the airport and there is no possibility

The Borough Saw a 2.5% Fall with Only 6.7% of Pregnant Women Still Smoking

 The number of pregnant smokers in Bracknell has had the sharpest drop in the south east, new figures show.

Bracknell Forest saw a 2.5 per cent drop in the number of women smoking while pregnant in just one year, the biggest reduction out of all boroughs in the south east, something the council health team puts down to a general trend towards quitting and successful stop-smoking schemes.

Only 6.7 per cent of pregnant women in the borough are still smoking, down from 9.2 per cent in 2013/14.  Dr Lisa McNally, leader of the council’s public health team, said the drop in pregnant smokers was welcome news but more work was needed to reassure women they wouldn’t be judged if they asked for help. It was found that most pregnant women choose to smoke cheap Karelia cigarettes http://www.mydiscountcigarette.net/buy/karelia

She said: “It’s part of an overall trend. People are quitting at a faster rate in Bracknell Forest than they are in the rest of the south east.

"For every one person quitting in the region there are two people quitting in Bracknell Forest – twice as many.

“The second reason is our smoking cessation schemes. It’s surprising how many people aren’t aware of the effect smoking in pregnancy has on unborn babies.

"You think it’s common knowledge but in fact, nationally, only half of women who smoke quit when they’re pregnant.

 “A lot of it is done in private. I can’t remember the last time I saw a pregnant woman in public with a cigarette, so I think a lot of it is done in secret if they are finding it difficult to quit.

"Ironically, society’s distaste for smoking when you’re pregnant is maintaining it because it stops women coming forward for support because they’re worried they’ll be judged.

“We want to reassure women that they won’t be judged or told off if they come to us.”

Bracknell Forest also has twice as many people quitting smoking in total. For every one person quitting in the south east, two people are quitting in Bracknell according to Dr McNally who said there was "something different" happening in the borough.

She said: “I think it’s just a local culture.  "There’s something happening in Bracknell Forest where people are taking control of their health. I can’t completely explain it but there’s something different going on.”

UK: Smoe-Free Campaign Launched in Merseyside

Officials in Merseyside county, UK, will prohibit use of tobacco on most outdoor events in the course of smoke-free campaign that was launched this week. The campaign was launched by Tobacco Free Futures, a local social enterprise. The campaign targets youth in Merseyside and Cheshire and aims to discourage them from taking up the smoking