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.

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.”

Montana: Smokers to Move to Designated Area

When workers in Yellowstone County, Montana, want to smoke during their break, they frequently go outside to a place called “the cave” that is a hole in the wall on the southwest corner of the building. The room under the skybridge located on North 27th Street has an exit-only door, a can for litter and

Taxes on cigarettes help reduce number of smokers

Science and experience have demonstrated conclusively that cigarette tax increases are highly effective at reducing smoking, especially among kids. Thus, the conclusions in a Gallup poll The Hill recently wrote about (“High cigarette prices aren’t stopping smokers,” July 18) are inconsistent with what happens in the real world every time cigarette taxes are increased. Yeah, smokers just start looking for cheap cigarettes in online cigarettes shop.

The most recent surgeon general’s report on tobacco concludes that “raising prices on cigarettes is one of the most effective tobacco control interventions.” The report called for additional cigarette tax increases “to prevent youth from starting smoking and encouraging smokers to quit.” The Congressional Budget Office has also reviewed the evidence and concluded that an increase in the federal cigarette tax would significantly reduce the number of adult smokers.

In the year after a 62-cent increase in the federal cigarette tax in 2009, cigarette sales declined by a historic 11.1 percent. Adult and youth smoking rates also declined. “This single legislative act — increasing the price of cigarettes — is projected to have reduced the number of middle and high school students who smoke by over 220,000 and the number using smokeless tobacco products by over 135,000,” the surgeon general’s report noted.

Even the poll The Hill wrote about reported that more than a quarter of adult smokers surveyed said they smoked less due to tax increases. As there are 42 million smokers in the United States, this translates into millions of smokers whose behavior is affected by cigarette tax increases. And this survey of current smokers would not have included former smokers who have already quit due to increased tobacco taxes.

Tobacco tax increases don’t have to cause every smoker or even a majority of smokers to quit or cut back in order to have a big impact on public health. As the scientific evidence and even the new Gallup poll show, such tax increases will impact the behavior of large numbers of smokers, saving many from a premature death.

50 years later, fewer smokers in Kentucky

Half a century after the U.S. surgeon general’s historic report outlining the deadly health dangers of smoking, fewer Kentuckians smoke, but the state remains at the top of the list nationally for the number of smokers. Currently 27 percent of adults in Kentucky smoke, said Amy Jeffers, director of Pathways Regional Prevention Center and manager of the Kentucky Tobacco Prevention Enhancement site.

Nationally, 18 percent of adults smoke, according to the 2014 report, which was released Friday. That is dramatically down from the 42 percent of adults who smoked in 1964, when the first report was issued, Jeffers said. Deaths attributable to smoking also have decreased since the first report, she said. The most current statistics show 7,800 adults die in Kentucky from smoking-related illnesses each year.

The outlook for children is sobering: about 107,000 children alive today will die prematurely if current rates continue, she said. However, that figure has decreased. When Jeffers first began monitoring the statistic 13 years ago, it was 115,000. With above-average cancer rates, Kentucky could see a dramatic reduction in cancer deaths if everyone in the state stopped smoking: 90 percent of lung cancer cases are related to smoking. “If we could eliminate smoking, we could almost eliminate lung cancer,” she said.

Another significant issue in Kentucky is second-hand smoke, especially exposure by children in the home. It leads to more cases of asthma and middle-ear infections, among others. Among the consequences are children missing more days of school. Smoking has even been linked to cavities. “There is no part of the body that is not impacted,” Jeffers said.

Findings in the report indicate that, while fewer people are smoking, there are more dangers from smoking than was believed half a century ago. In fact, the cigarettes they puff on may be more dangerous than the butts in 1964.

The typical cigarette contains more than 7,000 chemicals, some 70 of which are carcinogenic. Some cigarettes today are more addictive because chemical additives convey the nicotine to the brain quicker. One of every three deaths could be smoke-related, the report indicates, and nearly all lung cancer is related to smoking.

Quitting Smoking Leads Workers to Higher Wages

Researchers say that health improvement is not the only benefit of quitting smoking, because recently they found that your wages become higher. The latest study of American researchers showed that non-smokers are not as wealthy as their colleagues who gave up the habit. In the research there was used data about tobacco consumption of the

JTI’s smoking lounge innovation

While around a quarter of the 2.4 billion people who travel by airplanes yearly are smokers, smoking bans have limited where these tourists are able to smoke, especially once through passport control when they can move around less easily. Airports in some cases offer designated smoking places but too often they are badly constructed, located