Should smoking be banned completely ?

One eyed Jack · 02-09-2015 04:18PM

Vandango wrote: »

I'm a non-smoker but I wonder if all those who voted to ban smoking completely. Would also vote to ban drinking completely, since alcohol and it's abuse has a much greater impact on society than smoking has. I've a feeling most wouldn't.

Has it? I suppose that depends upon what criteria you're using to measure the impact of both upon society, You could catrgorise anything as abuse by that standard and then claim it has "an impact upon society", like the correlation between food and obesity, would you then suggest that people who want to ban smoking should also want to ban food?

No, because that would be silly, seeing as they're two completely separate issues.

NachoBusiness · 02-09-2015 04:18PM

It's not my fault if I'm good in bed.

Kev W · 02-09-2015 04:20PM

No, the price should be decreased, I shouldn't be financially punished for choosing to smoke.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Actually the link between tobacco and lung cancer was proposed as early as the late 1800s.

Over 50 years later Einstein actually advocated pipe smoking.

Evidently even more stoooopid than the average smoker.

Even geniuses can do stupid things.

Smoking's dumb. It ruins your health and gives nothing in return.

uch · 02-09-2015 04:24PM

Kev W wrote: »

Even geniuses can do stupid things.

Smoking's dumb. It ruins your health and gives nothing in return.

Ahhh go way out of That!!! Look how Cool he looks !

Kev W · 02-09-2015 04:26PM

No, the price should be decreased, I shouldn't be financially punished for choosing to smoke.

uch wrote: »

Ahhh go way out of That!!! Look how Cool he looks !

That's all moustache, you can't credit smoking for that!

Sam Kade · 02-09-2015 04:28PM

No, I should be smoke if I choose.

osarusan wrote: »

Where did you get those figures?

It looks as if he pulled them straight out of his arse. Nicely rounded figures to suit his argument.

Junkyard Tom · 02-09-2015 04:30PM

Former agnostic-smoker here turned evangelical non-smoker. Smokers disgust me and should be murdered.

Kev W · 02-09-2015 04:32PM

No, the price should be decreased, I shouldn't be financially punished for choosing to smoke.

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Former agnostic-smoker here turned evangelical non-smoker. Smokers disgust me and should be murdered.

Just let them smoke, it'll take care of itself.

lertsnim · 02-09-2015 04:33PM

Banning heroin didnt get rid of that. Why would banning cigarettes be any different. Banning something because you don't like it is dumb.

Junkyard Tom · 02-09-2015 04:33PM

My name is URL wrote: »

smokers-taxes-health-expenditure.docs

Those figures are very reductive and I presume they don't factor in lost productivity at work, the illness benefits cost to the state, the suffering of the ill/dying smoker and trauma caused to the smoker's loved ones.

MadDog76 · 02-09-2015 04:33PM

Hollister11 wrote: »

I hate smoking. I always have, and all ways will. My grandad died of lung cancer in 1994, I was born in 96 so i never met him. He smoked everyday from the age of 12 to when he died aged 66.

When I was 14 all my mates used to smoke in school, I couldn't stand the smell of them so I stopped hanging out with these lads. Even now when I'm in town, I hate standing behind some one who lights up, the smell makes me sick.

The one thing I look forward to in the budget every year is the price of cigarettes going up. I hope this encourages people to stop buying them, or it makes them stop because they cant afford it.

So, should it be banned completely ?

If anybody needs a cigarette, it's you! Relax

02-09-2015 04:40PM

johnty56 wrote: »

I would seriously doubt your first point. Do you by any chance have a link or a source for that claim?

Cigarette smoking and the mass consumption of tobacco really only got underway with the First World War, when free cigarettes issued to the troops got a whole generation hooked.

No problem.

It was proposed in the 1890s, though wrongly thought to be attributable to tobacco dust rather than smoke...

https://books.google.ie/books?id=fA6FHgzfFOoC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=hermann+rottmann+cigarettes&source=bl&ots=lDUTHUAfZR&sig=1beYbL0Ka3SIzVd4rLZvNzj5O9Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDoQ6AEwBGoVChMIicfxq9fYxwIVSewUCh2dMg2Z#v=onepage&q=hermann%20rottmann%20cigarettes&f=false

Sam Kade · 02-09-2015 04:42PM

No, I should be smoke if I choose.

I've seen plenty people that had legs amputated others that got lung cancer all thanks to smoking. There are also plenty young people taking up the habit every day, if they weren't so readily available I doubt anyone would go out of their way to find tobacco start smoking.

02-09-2015 04:42PM

Kev W wrote: »

Even geniuses can do stupid things.

Smoking's dumb. It ruins your health and gives nothing in return.

Actually in the short term can give someone a sense of relaxation and decreases stress.

osarusan · 02-09-2015 04:43PM

Whatever about making people stop smoking, the impact on people never starting to smoke in the first place would surely be dramatic.

Ctrl Alt Delete · 02-09-2015 04:44PM

I wish they would ban smoking I might then be able to stop.

Kev W · 02-09-2015 04:44PM

No, the price should be decreased, I shouldn't be financially punished for choosing to smoke.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Actually in the short term can give someone a sense of relaxation and decreases stress.

Stress that's caused by the cigarettes to begin with.

DEFTLEFTHAND · 02-09-2015 04:46PM

Yes, the price should be increased to €15 a pack.

The blackmarket tobacco racket is already big business due to the massive tax levy placed on a box of fags, it would grow further with prohibition. The State may as well stay in the game and get a piece of the action, no point leaving it all to crooks.

02-09-2015 04:47PM

Kev W wrote: »

Stress that's caused by the cigarettes to begin with.

You serious?

You think all the stress that one faces when they reach for a cigarette is caused by those cigarettes?

Dear God no. Stress caused by work, relationships, money issues, other dependancies such as alcohol and so on.

I myself have never smoked because of the pressures of smoking!

Kev W · 02-09-2015 04:50PM

No, the price should be decreased, I shouldn't be financially punished for choosing to smoke.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

You serious?

You think all the stress that one faces when they reach for a cigarette is caused by those cigarettes?

Dear God no. Stress caused by work, relationships, money issues, other dependancies such as alcohol and so on.

I myself have never smoked because of the pressures of smoking!

I smoked for 12 years. The only stress smoking alleviates is the stress from nicotine withdrawal.

Sam Kade · 02-09-2015 04:52PM

No, I should be smoke if I choose.

Deleted User wrote: »

Actually in the short term can give someone a sense of relaxation and decreases stress.

It actually does the opposite.

marmurr1916 · 02-09-2015 05:00PM

ejabrod wrote: »

It is my business if my taxes are being used to treat (with medication and services) the resulting conditions caused by smoking.

I smoked from 22 years and the best thing I ever did was stop.

You could say the same about any illness caused or worsened by lifestyle choices which, in the western world, is most morbid illness.

Do we have to have this bullshít argument trotted out every time there's a discussion about smoking?

Has prohibition of any drug ever worked? Or does it just lead to a huge black market that encourages and enriches violent criminals?

Have a look at the first series of Narco (on Netflix), about the life of Pablo Escobar. He's a prime example of a man who made a vast criminal fortune because of prohibition and used extreme violence to protect his criminal activities.

tommy2bad · 02-09-2015 05:01PM

Yes, the price should be increased to €15 a pack.

Sam Kade wrote: »

It actually does the opposite.

True but so is the original claim. Nicotine is an unusual drug in that if raises awareness and reduces stress simultaneously.

darkpagandeath · 02-09-2015 05:01PM

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Those figures are very reductive and I presume they don't factor in lost productivity at work, the illness benefits cost to the state, the suffering of the ill/dying smoker and trauma caused to the smoker's loved ones.

If you include all that overweight would be way more of a cost.

Junkyard Tom · 02-09-2015 05:06PM

darkpagandeath wrote: »

If you include all that overweight would be way more of a cost.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if that were true. Infacta I'd say obesity is set to be the public health issue of the next decades afaia.

end of the road · 02-09-2015 05:15PM

Hollister11 wrote: »

I hate smoking. I always have, and all ways will. My grandad died of lung cancer in 1994, I was born in 96 so i never met him. He smoked everyday from the age of 12 to when he died aged 66.

When I was 14 all my mates used to smoke in school, I couldn't stand the smell of them so I stopped hanging out with these lads. Even now when I'm in town, I hate standing behind some one who lights up, the smell makes me sick.

The one thing I look forward to in the budget every year is the price of cigarettes going up. I hope this encourages people to stop buying them, or it makes them stop because they cant afford it.

So, should it be banned completely ?

no . the amount of revenue lost, and the cost to enforce it, would probably cause this country to require another bailout. not worth the bother for what is a persons choice. considering one is breathing in a lot worse in the form of vehicle fumes there really is no argument for a ban. from a non smoker

H3llR4iser · 02-09-2015 05:16PM

A ban would solve nothing, just cut a source of tax income for the State and encourage the proliferation of black markets.

I am also honestly unconcerned about things such as "but my tax money pays for smokers treatments!"; my "tax money" also pays for the Sky TV subscription, booze and everything else of "professional dole claimers", hospital care for "serial single moms" and most likely a million other things that I don't like, don't agree with and have very little patience for, but that certainly can't all be banned.

One thing that I can't honestly understand is that, in a society that is trying to get more and more people to quit, there seems to still be quite a lot of leniency toward smokers in certain contexts - for example, work.

Every single smoker I worked with over the last 15 years, takes "smoke breaks" basically every 30 minutes - if a non-smoker started taking these kind of breaks every day without fail, he/she would be questioned. I've seen it happening in the past - and mentioning the incessant smoke breaks, I was met with "but you don't smoke!". It does look like we still are in a smoker's world, in a certain way.

darkpagandeath · 02-09-2015 05:16PM

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

I wouldn't be at all surprised if that were true. Infacta I'd say obesity is set to be the public health issue of the next decades afaia.

Already is, Ireland is pretty much the fattest country around. That and Type 2 diabetes is set to sky rocket.

end of the road · 02-09-2015 05:24PM

Sam Kade wrote: »

Did you ever hear of second hand smoke? If you were ever in a pub before the smoking ban you'd know what it's like.

big difference between indoor and outdoors. i think most agreed with the indoor smoking ban as it has an actual benefit. an outdoor one on the other hand or even a full one would have none apart from bankrupting the country for definite

end of the road · 02-09-2015 05:31PM

ejabrod wrote: »

It is my business if my taxes are being used to treat (with medication and services) the resulting conditions caused by smoking.

I smoked from 22 years and the best thing I ever did was stop.

well as the revenue brought in from smoking more then covers treatment on its own, its none of your business

Should smoking be banned completely ?

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