To hearten all you smokers...

When the grime reaper calls, and what method he uses is more or less pot luck. We can modify the odds by our own behaviour, but even then not all that much.

I am inclined to the thought that trying too hard to prolong life is even dafter than than avoiding a few simple pleasure along the way. Moderation in all things - not abstinence with regard to simple pleasures that carry some risk!

Mine are friends, music, and yes a roll-up every now and then! I am going out in a little while, it might be my bad luck to get run over in the process! But it won't stop me. Equally I shall have to breath others' motor fumes, be assailed by the sound of people in aircraft, and so on, but that seems all part of the merry parade of life to me!

ATB from Fredrik

Everyone's going to die - that's a fact. But why screw up what time you have by reducing your aerobic capacity to zero, filling your lungs with tar and 200 other lethal chemicals, stinking like a chimney and carrying on like you have an unresolved oral fetish?

Dear Joe,

I guess some people are more robust than others. At a medical earlier this year I did a spirometer test where my lung function was said to be that of a healthy 39 year old. I am 46 later this year. It could be that just possibly this is more the result of taking excercise, not the least an approach to bicycle riding that leaves many half my age unable to keep up, has more effect than the odd roll-up now and again! Or parhaps it is just good luck with the genetics. Interestingly, there is a history of cancer in both sides of my familly, and yet it seems to strike in the seventies or eighties, whether they smoked or not...

I am content to say that it is now unlikely I shall ever go into a public house again, unless it is for social reasons. I tend to think an enjoyable drink at home or as a guest in some one else's is prefereable in any case, so I cannot say that the law change will affect me materially. But I do think that it comes very close to someone knowing better than me what choices I should make in life.

There are many activities far more deleterious to health than enjoying a smoke occasionally, and in moderation. Being over weight is just one. Even then I would not want to be the one to tell a heavy smoker to moderate, or even a fat person to slim down. My father was grossly overweight and a heavy smoker [60/80 a day plus a bottle of spirits for most of his life], and eventually died of cancer though the lung tumours were secondary, and not the fatal part. He was sixty four. Otherwise not one of my grandparents or aunts or uncles has gone before their late sevemnties! Most survived in to their eighties or nineties.

Personally I would like to see a little bit more live and let live...

ATB from Fredrik

quote:

the odd roll-up now and again!

Perhaps the odd roller doesn't hurt so much, but smokers aren't generally known for their LACK of the habit, are they?

quote:

Personally I would like to see a little bit more live and let live...

Me too. Please go smoke somewhere else where my taxes don't have to pay for the overwhelming majority of smokers who cause a massive burden on the health system.

There's freaks in every walk of life, so I suppose you might be as robust as an iron boot, but that's a poor argument in favour of smoking.

quote:

Originally posted by joe90:

and carrying on like you have an unresolved oral fetish?

I wonder how a person carries on who has an unresolved anal fetish?

(They don't post on Hifi fora I hope...)

quote:

I wonder how a person carries on who has an unresolved anal fetish?

Farts a lot?

Talks a load of crap?

Well - there is one thing about smoking that gets me...and it's not that I think I should impose my beliefs or preferences on to someone else and how they should behave...

But, I really wish that the smoke from a cigarette could be completely self contained to the user....

If they could acomplish that feat of engineering then I would stop feeling tempted to piss all over some inconsiderate smokers - after all, that could be considered the unsolicited by-product of my pass time...drinking.

quote:

Originally posted by joe90:

... Please go smoke somewhere else where my taxes don't have to pay for the overwhelming majority of smokers who cause a massive burden on the health system.

There's freaks in every walk of life, so I suppose you might be as robust as an iron boot, but that's a poor argument in favour of smoking.

Dear Joe,

Are you suggesting that I leave the country. I am still toying with the idea! Nice to made welcome in my homeland, but there is an increasing amount that I dislike about Britain including the encroaching nanny state, and intolerance that passes itself off as Political Correctness.

I don't argue in favour of smoking so much as argue for be allowed to get on with it in my own way, without being called an idiot or whatever! Let all the non-idiots here start throwing the first stone, as I suspect we all live in glass-houses to some extent!

ATB from Fredrik

quote:

Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:
there is an increasing amount that I dislike about Britain including the encroaching nanny state, and intolerance that passes itself off as Political Correctness.

Just the same here in Norway, too!

Smokers been looked at like criminals!

atb
Fredrik

quote:

Originally posted by costello:
Smokers been looked at like criminals!

I blame the tobacco companies....I grew up in a smoking household and held a certain amount of hate for the perps (strong word but that was the feeling of me as a 5 year old)...I am sure that my parents had no idea that I felt that way about them but I was being subjected to choking smoke and could do little about the world around me at that point. About 15 years later they gave up....

Now - if that smoke from a cigarette could be completely self contained to the user....I would have absolutely no problem with someone ingesting the chemicals for their own pleasure.

The legacy is an insane sensitivity to cigarette smoke - I can smell it from a car driving 10 meters in front of me if we both have our windows down...now I would bet that most smokers would not even dream that that was possible, and such is some smokers view of their habit and how it affects the environment around them.

quote:

Smokers been looked at like criminals!

That's because if I ran around with miniscule amounts of 200 deadly poisons in a glass vial and splashed it in people's faces I'd get done like a dinner, probably for attempting to POISON people.

But wrap it up in a paper wad and shove it down my throat via someone else and it's ok? And if the right to poison me is taken away from the smoker then all hands go up the air about the 'rights' of smokers?

That's a situation that's cocked-up!

Macker is right - keep it self-contained and you lot can go for it!

quote:

Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:
I am content to say that it is now unlikely I shall ever go into a public house again, unless it is for social reasons.Fredrik

Previously it was for anti-social reasons?

quote:

Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:
There are many activities far more deleterious to health than enjoying a smoke occasionally, and in moderation. Being over weight is just one. Fredrik

Utter bollocks. Being overweight is far less harmful than smoking until one reaches the very extreme end of the obesity range.

Re the poison comment - it's totally cool and hunky dory for MILLIONS of human beings to poison my air with their stupid tin box car fumes all the time.

I fail to see how 3 rollups in the pub of an average drinking session even begins to compare to that!

Mind you, I discovered a pub I've been going to for ages had a beer garden on Wednesday as a result of this ban, so it's not all bad. ...and I will give up!

Srange to relate: So will I give up, but on the basis of a pact with a friend who thinks that it would be good for me. He is packing in something stronger, which I am sure can be doing him no favours at all. I am quite certain that the will-power of two is worth much more than a solitary, secluded, effort!

In that sense it is my own free will at work and nothing to do with external factors like the public places ban.

My late Norwegian grandfather was badgered by his doctor to quit smoking, but he refused, saying that he enjoyed it. I know he did from the seraphic look that spread over his face when he lit up. He gleefully shared a smoke with me when my grandmother was not looking! He would not have allowed for her to stop him, but he would not defend me to her for doing it. She would have been happy though, as I discovered after she died. My aunt told me that she enjoyed being with him when he smoked! Really she was very broadminded, and not only for her own time. In her case this also ran with a clear and vital intellect. He also enjoyed a drink in rather small measure - beer, vodka [Bols or Finish], or scotch [often home brewed as is a common illegal practice in Norway, where the alcohol tax at the state controlled Vinmonopolet makes the real thing terribly expensive] - which his doctor also discouraged.

In old age my grandfather regarded a good day as better than another miserable year. He had excruciating arthritis. How right he was in that. Eventually he died quite quickly and peacefully of a stroke. He never recovered consciousness after the first, though the period of coma ws distressing for my grandmother, and his ashes were buried on Christamas Eve, which must have taken the shine off Christmas after that for her.

Life is a strange old business. Fredrik

quote:

I fail to see how 3 rollups in the pub of an average drinking session even begins to compare to that!

Because I don't need to sit near your car in order to get a drink. But it seems I HAVE to sit near you while you poison yourself (and me).