BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: PHJim
Date: 19 Jul 13 - 05:23 PM

In 1968/69, I lived for a year in Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales and have never heard the word "tab" to mean a smoke. I smoked at that time too.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Ed T
Date: 19 Jul 13 - 07:44 AM

Why you shouldnt stand next to idling diesel trucks:

PM2.5

EPA's human experiments

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 05:13 PM

I quit smoking, COLD, when I was thirteen years old.

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I took two puffs, and quit.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 06:00 AM

A tab is UK speak for a cigarette - Often used in the North East. From a US point of view I suppose it is nearly as bad as going out to roll a fag...

:D

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 04:45 AM

The waitress was pleasant with a big smile and the burger was great, ... It was like a window into the world of yesteryear.

That sounds pretty dope, actually. Especially for Canada. It's fun to find places like that once in a while. It's good to have choices in life. Not every place needs to be the same. Think how boring it would be if attached to that gas station was Starbucks or Tim Hortons.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 01:07 AM

Re the various smells: some, like pipe tobacco or good Havana cigars, smell v agreeable when being freshly smoked. But the room still stinks like the Pit the next morning, and the cushions and upholstery (and one's clothes) for days.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: PHJim
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 12:04 AM

I still have no idea what, "I'm off out for a tab," means.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Ron Davies
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 08:40 AM

Have to admit I feel very different about different types of smoking, as Kevin does.   Cigarettes are the alltime worst--I think it's the paper and all the various chemicals in them. Very acrid.   

Pipe smoking is absolutely fine in my book (though not good for the smoker).   Certain types of pipe tobacco smell just great--especially cherry tobacco.    Of course my father smoked cherry tobacco when he smoked, which wasn't that often.    It's just remotely possible that has something to do with my feelings about cherry tobacco.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: GUEST,Stu with no cookie for some reason
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 07:58 AM

"Fine example there, on the part of Stu, of that rebarbative aggressive-defensive habit of smokers, of claiming the moral high ground: expecting us all to kowtow to their monumental integrity as an oppressed minority, gallantly refusing, in the face of so much cruel victimisation on the part of totalitarian society & government, to be deterred from persisting in the practice of their valiant avocations."

Thankee sir. I presume the above mouthful is a compliment, and I take it gratefully.

Not TAB, a tab! Can't be doing with sugary fizzy drinks. They're very bad for your health.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Jul 13 - 08:25 PM

Well, they all stink, but some stinks are a lot nicer than others. Cigarettes are vile, cigars are a bit better, and pipe smoke can be quite pleasant in moderation. As for grass that hasn't been polluted with tobacco, I'm always happy to get a whiff of that as I stroll round festivals.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Ed T
Date: 12 Jul 13 - 02:11 PM

Oops

Tab is not not Diet Coke, but remains a brand in some niche markets
TAB

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Ed T
Date: 12 Jul 13 - 02:09 PM

A bit of bakground. Tab is not Diet C


Some history of Soda Pop
More on Tab

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Jul 13 - 01:54 PM

"It's enough to make you want to carry a small bell & shout "Unclean, unclean" like the lepers of old."

Now, THERE's a great idea! ;-D

I too had the good luck to grow up in a non-smoking family in the 50s and 60s (something about as rare as a dragon egg back in those days). I've never smoked, except in a handfull of Native American ceremonies...which is a special situation, and I'm okay with that.

I detest cigarette smoke, always have, and always will. (I don't care one bit for grass or hash smoke either, by the way. They all stink.) I'll make sure to avoid the restaurant near Shannonville.

Played a humorous song of mine at the TLC Cafe last night. It's called "She Was Real Good Lookin', But She Smelled Like an Ashtray". It always gets a good laugh from everyone. At least half the people who gather there ARE smokers, and one or another of them usually remarks after the song, "Gee, now I feel like going outside and having a smoke." and we all laugh. It's like saying to someone, "Don't think about an elephant." Impossible. I sing the song not to persuade anyone of anything, but merely to tell a shaggy dog tale, and the events in the song are appropriately exaggerated to the extreme.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Jul 13 - 01:18 PM

Fine example there, on the part of Stu, of that rebarbative aggressive-defensive habit of smokers, of claiming the moral high ground: expecting us all to kowtow to their monumental integrity as an oppressed minority, gallantly refusing, in the face of so much cruel victimisation on the part of totalitarian society & government, to be deterred from persisting in the practice of their valiant avocations.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: PHJim
Date: 12 Jul 13 - 12:55 PM

Is TaB still available Stu? I thought it had been replaced by Diet Coke.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Stu
Date: 12 Jul 13 - 10:36 AM

What a load of self-righteous twaddle.

I'm off out for a tab.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: artbrooks
Date: 12 Jul 13 - 09:14 AM

I worked for the VA (veterans' medical system in the US) for many years, and was at the VA Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin when the entire system went smoke-free (indoors) in the early 90s. It took a lot of doing, and the staff were much more difficult to get on board than the patients. As I remember, the last two individuals who came around and stopped smoking in their offices were our union president...and the Chief of Thoracic Surgery.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Jul 13 - 07:33 AM

Yeah, right!
Whatever.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: PHJim
Date: 12 Jul 13 - 12:32 AM

It's sometimes really difficult to detect sarcasm on the internet. So much of it has to do with tone of voice which we can't detect here, but I suppose when you start out by typing, "Yeah," it helps us decide.

It reminds me of the prof who said to a class, "While two negatives make a positive, two positives can never make a negative." A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, sure."

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 10:22 PM

"WHO_tobacco laws working"

Yeah, I believe that!

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 09:27 AM

Kevin, are those the same electronic ciggies and pipes that may become subject to a tax on E-Cigarettes?

I stopped smoking many years ago but things like that almost make me want to start again! At least it show the politicians up for the money grubbers they really are. What is the betting someone will get a fat back-pocket payment from the tobacco barons to introduce such a bill?

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Jul 13 - 09:44 PM

""Establishing smoke-free public spaces and putting health warnings on cigarette packages are among the measures that are helping to protect millions of people from the harmful effects of tobacco.

In fact, more than two billion people worldwide are now covered by these or other life-saving measures which limit tobacco use, according to the World Health Organization""

WHO_tobacco laws working

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Jul 13 - 01:01 PM

"Christine Lavin has pointed out that smokers are the new street people. We see them huddled in the cold "enjoying" their cigarettes."
It was highly entertaining when Ireland introduced the smoking ban some years ago, to drive through towns and villages late at night and witnessing huddles of illegal after-hours drinkers having a puff outside the pubs - happy to break the law by drinking late but wouldn't break the smoking ban.
It's wonderful now - our pubs are passive-smoking free, our dinking companions no longer smell like old ashtrays and our flute-players can breathe in without inhaling cancerous fumes - long live the smoking ban.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: PHJim
Date: 10 Jul 13 - 12:21 PM

Nigel - Perhaps we should establish Smokers' Colonies.

Christine Lavin has pointed out that smokers are the new street people. We see them huddled in the cold "enjoying" their cigarettes.

One of my sons is a smoker as are all of the residents the house he lives in, but none of them smoke inside. Even in the winter, smoking is done on the back porch. The house doesn't have the smell that a smoker's house has.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Jul 13 - 11:42 AM

A technological fix is already here - the electronic ciggies and pipes I mentioned. Not exactly the same as smoking, but pretty near, I'm told.    A great deal cheaper as well as being safer.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Jul 13 - 10:56 AM

That idea about a fan to vacuum smoke away sounds good.... but all those fans in a restaurant would get noisy. I think the fan ought to be contained in a helmet placed over each smoker's head, leading to a filter system hung on their backs.

...well....I know.. not technologically easy... but I like the image.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 10 Jul 13 - 06:44 AM

Now that's an idea.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 10 Jul 13 - 05:18 AM

It seems the poor smokers can't win.
Our local Conservative club implemented the ban on smoking indoors, and the smokers were banished to the beer garden.
Once the summer came the non-smokers started complaining about smoking in the beer garden.
It's enough to make you want to carry a small bell & shout "Unclean, unclean" like the lepers of old.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Mooh
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 10:01 PM

Running the gauntlet of smokers outside of bars and restaurants can be pretty annoying. What's worse is the fact that smokers treat such areas as ashtrays. Stinky butts all over the ground, sidewalk, parking lots. Owners of such establishments should take responsibility for the mess, and it might be good for business.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Joe_F
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 09:31 PM

I do not smoke, and I applaud the change of law & custom that allows me to avoid other people's smoke. However, inasmuch as smoking is important to many people, especially those who go to bars, mightn't a technological fix be possible? I have in mind a hood, like those found in laboratories where an experiment may generate noxious fumes, over every booth in a restaurant. When smoke was detected (for that, of course, we already have effective devices), a fan in the duct above the hood would automatically start & suck it all away. The smokers would have to put up with the noise, but that would probably be a lesser burden than putting off smoking.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 05:51 PM

When I did voluntary work at the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital a few years ago, they allowed smoking outside the main door. I was always horrified to see obviously quite ill patients in dressing gowns dragging drip-stands along, even carrying brimming catheter bags, in order to have their fag in the open air. I imagine that's why not long after, the ban was extended to anywhere in the hospital grounds. I took a trolley round the wards, selling newspapers, sweets and toiletries etc, and dozens of irate patients sitting up in their beds gave me grief because I didn't sell ciggies or baccy. I told them to take it up with the WRVS!

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 05:49 PM

"Smoking in restaurants is, was, and always will be stupid, dangerous, unhealthy, and inconsiderate."

I agree. I'd add wearing perfumes to that, also.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 04:28 PM

In my adult life I have seen smoking go from something you faced everywhere to something I rarely encounter. I grew up in a house full of smoke, yet I never wanted a cigarette. I briefly tried a pipe because that smoke seemed to 'interesting', and I didn't have to inhale. I would carry the pipe around and forget to get it out. It seems I wasn't much of a smoker...A few years after I quit..(about 1978) .. rules about indoor smoking began to appear, and it was like a huge weight was lifted!

I have watched cigarette smokers act as though restricting what they did was tampering with God-given 'rights'... that's what a serious addiction will do. Not quite as bad a heroin addicts robbing and killing to feed their habit, but then...nicotine addicts didn't have to.

Just imagine if tobacco were discovered today, and someone tried to market a product of this dried plant which you set fire to and inhaled. With the tests available today, the FDA would NEVER have allowed it to be marketed.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: GUEST,bankley
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 03:56 PM

you were on the Rez, Kimosabee. Cheap smokes, gas, and firecrackers.

Butts in the urinals. I hate that. Makes 'em soggy. They take a long time to dry out, then taste strange later. Ona.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Mooh
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 03:53 PM

Smoking in restaurants is, was, and always will be stupid, dangerous, unhealthy, and inconsiderate. The OP's example is on our route to and from Ottawa and Kingston, maybe I'll check it out...or not.

(Aside...As much as I loved my parents, I always resented their smoking. They both managed to quit before they retired, but long after I'd left home.

As much as I loved playing regular pub gigs, by 23 I couldn't take the smoke anymore and quit gigging for several years and didn't gig in pubs again until the smoking bans started. I resented that too, it forced me to other work I didn't enjoy as much.

When I started working (I got a county job with a decent income and great benefits, for the time) it was mostly to shore up my music income. Working in county offices and buildings the county leased to the province, one of my security/maintenance duties was to clean out ashtrays and dispose of the contents safely. Besides that the air was rank because everyone smoked, I had to clean up after the smokers. The only blessing was part way through my shift the buildings were empty except for me, so it wasn't AS rank later in the day.

It was impossible to escape.

A parent of one of my guitar students (I've been teaching music privately for 14 years) said they were going outside for a smoke. I told them to go out on the street, it's not allowed on my property. Says who? Says me. A teenage student asked me if he could smoke during the lesson, as he was putting it in his mouth. Well, of course not. It seems he was allowed to smoke at home.

It's still out there. My wife, as part of her job, has had to keep an eye on a school smoking area from afar. It's off school grounds nowadays, but only across the street. When I went to school, smoking was allowed at high school dances. Some progress in 30 years I suppose.)

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 02:51 PM

40p for one ciggie!

Eight shillings in real Christian cash!...

YIKES

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 02:26 PM

Indeed, Michael. I gather that a packet of 20 cigarettes now costs £7.98 (RRP) in the UK! Most of the smokers I know use roll-up tobacco, and 25gm of Golden Virginia costs £8.26. Many of those who do smoke rolling tobacco in my areas buy from friends who bring it back from France. Even so, it's a huge drain on the wallet - hurray!

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 02:17 PM

"so that saved my wallet and my health" ~~

Ah, Will: how often I thought that, instead of the shots of the saucers full of tar or the diseased organs, the 'stop smoking' ads should show lots of shots of empty wallets...

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: PHJim
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 02:00 PM

Well, Freud SAID it was only a cigar.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 01:54 PM

I stopped smoking cigarettes in 1969 - full stop - woke up one morning, sat in the office at the BBC, pulled out a packet of fags and thought, "I can't face another cigarette" and dumped the packet into the wastebin.

I enjoyed Havana - and I mean real Havana - cigars like Cohiba for a few years after that (never inhaled, just enjoyed the flavour), and then the smoking ban came to the UK. Hurray for the smoking ban! It stopped me smoking completely - stopped me waking up with my hair, clothes, guitar, etc., reeking of smoke. Havana cigars can't be enjoyed en plein aire - and cost way too much anyway - so that saved my wallet and my health. (Sigmund Freud had a prosthetic jaw because of jaw cancer because of smoking cigars all day...).

Pubs and clubs and restaurants are better places today because of smoking bans - and so is our communal health.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 01:04 PM

I was sitting in a restaurant in Chinatown in New York City many years ago. Small tables, close together, without a non-smoking section. The woman behind me lit up and proceeded to prop her elbow on the back of her chair with her cigarette hovering near my ear. And she acted insulted when I asked her to get the cigarette out of my face.

Lots of smokers never thought about it. I recognized the behavior - my mother pawing through her voluminous handbag for her small cigarette case and her lighter. Pulling out the ashtray in the car in preparation for lighting up. Retrieving the ashtray from the center of a restaurant table and placing it beside her right hand. After my parents divorced my father had a sign on his door along the lines of "No Smoking. There are people and other living things here."

I had a hangover on a January 1 morning and on our drive home from an overnight party a friend and I had stopped at a small restaurant for a nerve-settling bowl of their famous oatmeal. We were seated at the unused bar because all of the tables were full, and a woman crossed the room, plopped her voluminous purse on a stool beside me, and started to paw through it. My heart sank as she pulled out the cigarette case, and I leaned over and asked her to not smoke until I had finished enjoying my breakfast or I was liable to throw up. There was no law that said she couldn't smoke in there, but I knew that smoke was going to lead to a big headache. She pushed the contents back in the bag and flounced out of the building. My friend was in stitches, and I had my first small victory in asserting my rights as to why someone shouldn't smoke and make me ill.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 12:40 PM

Don't know if things have changed; but when I spent time in China some years ago, smoking was forbidden everywhere. If ever you pointed out the prominent No-Smoking sign to any of the vast puffing multitude all around ~~ boy, but did they ever laugh heartily!

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Charmion
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 12:30 PM

As we were driving to church the other day, I spied a woman puffing on a cigarette as she trudged along the street. Despite the closed windows of the air-conditioned car, my asthmatic old lungs immediately squeezed themselves shut in dismay.

Back in the 1970s, when I worked in a Navy hospital in Halifax, the only one of many messy tasks that I genuinely resented was cleaning ashtrays. I sometimes thought I was the only person in the building who didn't smoke.

Roll the calendar forward some 35 years, and I was writing a weekly history feature for the Canadian Forces newspaper "The Maple Leaf". To accompany a story about the deployment of the first Canadian Army rotation in Korea, I ran a 1950 photo of a young soldier staggering under an enormous rucksack, with a cigarette dangling rakishly from his lower lip. Within two hours of the release of that issue, I received a stern rebuke from the Canadian Forces Health Services Group for "glamorizing" smoking.

That was me told.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: PHJim
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 12:08 PM

I can recall waiting, in a restaurant, for my friends/family to finish eating their meals before I lit up a smoke with my coffee. It now occurs to me that I didn't wait for the people at the next table to finish eating.
The link that Mooh posted above has a place for a restaurant review. I will copy my first post there.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 12:07 PM

Smoking banned (City bylaws) in all public buildings, restaurants and businesses, as well as parks.
Calgary

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 12:05 PM

"Even in their own apartments" - that's a bit extreme maybe. though in a place we rent out we've got a no smoking policy on anyone who wants to rent it, which I suppose is the same thing. But it's not imposed retrospectively, which makes it a bit different.

One thing that puzzles me is the official opposition there seems to be to people switchng to electronic cigarettes and pipes, which get rid of the smoke and tar element, but leaves the nicotine.

The attitude seems to be one of using the fact that smoking is a killer as a mechanism for attacking a nicotine habit on principle, treating it as a moral issue over and above health considerations. So a nicotine habit fed by patches is fine, because it can be presented as a way of breaking the habit, but an electronic cigarette is not on, because it's seen as a way of continuing it. And yet in practice people use the patches on a long term basis, in just the same way.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 11:48 AM

Of course, I remember when smoking was the norm and everybody was puffing away like chimneys. (Those too smoked; I remember the London pea-souper fogs vividly.) We loved cigarette cards for all sorts of games, and my sister adored those sweet cigarettes with a pink end. But I don't believe cancer or cardio-vascular disease were linked to the habit then, and adverts encouraged smoking as being cool and sophisticated. I was very lucky; my parents never did smoke and our house was blissfully odour-free. I went to Madrid for a weekend with friends four years ago. They all smoked, and the tapas bars were astonishingly fugged-up, you could barely breathe. Everyone coughed themselves silly and I was utterly disgusted. I'd have thought that Spain had the same rules as UK, but apparently not! I give no ground on this one, as I refuse to have my air contaminated, and the health consequences of the thing cost all of us tons of money. I imagine the Government make a bomb on the tax from baccy, yet print hair-raising warnings on the packets. Hypocrites!

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 10:32 AM

That is a real regret of mine- my obliviousness toward others' right to be free of my smoking. Like MichaeltheGM, in that era it was as though we felt, Of course, I will smoke, I am a smoker. Absolutely as though I had no control over the matter and others would have to just live with it.

However, I do understand the frustration that smokers feel today. After all those decades of feeling entitled, suddenly they have no rights at all. Were I a smoker today, no doubt I would be angry all the time.

We are currently going through this brouhaha in this Senior complex where I live. Residents have been informed that after a certain date smoking will not be allowed indoors, even in their own apartments. They have established two outdoor areas where smoking will be allowed; one of them is under a roof, although not enclosed.

Juneau winters are long and wet and cold and windy; smokers are up in arms.

Frankly, I think the rule will be unenforceable. Much better, in my opinion, would have been to provide the canisters that suck up smoke and require smokers to sit within its circle.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Ron Davies
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 10:28 AM

"In my youth".   Well , it appears there has been a bit of progress since then. Maybe not much, but banning smoking is progress.

And it's far more a case of health than of politeness.   

Even Bogie, were he still around--and he left us prematurely, as did Ian Fleming and a host of others--would admit that smoking is in fact not cool.

My favorite on this:   Cartoon:   Stewardess says to passenger:   "I'm sorry sir, if you want to smoke you'll have to go out on the wing."

Subject: RE: BS: Smoking in restaurants in July 2013
From: Mooh
Date: 09 Jul 13 - 10:17 AM

I think it's off reserve, but I am not certain. If it's on the reserve it's still stupid.

The link I poster earlier indicated 16 employees too. Not a safe place to work.

Peace, Mooh.