DDay for smoking ban in Ireland

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 03:16 AM

I've never had trouble with smokers anywhere...






as long as they don't exhale..xx..e

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 05:06 AM

The drift to scent and other smelly stuff reminded me of a old song challenge thread arising from an attempt by the Nova Scotia authorities to clamp down on that kind of thing. I wonder how it worked out? Here is the thread - O Canada - a Song Challenge

It threw up a few new songs and some old. Here is the chorus of one I came up with, which is relevant to Emma B's plea:

Oh the smell of Mother Nature
it is better left alone,
don't you spoil it with your perfume,
we'll have no Eau de Cologne.
We don't mind if you're fragrant,
but that scent you wear is flagrant,
and we'll count you as a vagrant,
yes, we'll lock you in the jail.

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: Big Tim
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 05:41 AM

I wish they'd ban it in Tunisia where I was recently. ALL the men there smoke, seems to be a macho thing. Our guide in Tunis asked me for a light and couldn't believe it when I told him I didn't use "cancer sticks". Our hotel lounge (filled mostly with locals)was just one big cloud of smoke, which we had to pass through going to and from the restaurant. We'd have liked to have taken in some of the evening entertainments but couldn't because of the poisonous cloud.

The tobacco companies seem to targetting these sort of "emerging nations" (Marlboro was the hip smoke), who are building up a huge health problem for future generations to deal with. As they will run out of water in 20 years time, the money would be much better spent on desalination plants.

For a brilliantly funny description of a smoker's hotel room, see Joseph O'Connor's book "Sweet Liberty". (Yes Sinead's brother, currently with a big hit on his hands, "Star of the Sea").

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: Hrothgar
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 05:44 AM

Johnny, are you sure that you wouldn't be more attractive smelling like a two-day-old cheeseburger?

Perhaps the compromise is smelling like a whore's cheeseburger? Or a two-day-old handbag?

:-)

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 06:08 AM

Hrothgar - only more attractive to other unpleasant-smelling people! :0) Mrs. Johnny has given me her firm assurance that, should I decide to go down the gorilla's armpit/inside of a greek wrestler's jockstrap road, a costly divorce will quickly follow.

And McGrath - just because someone wrote a song in praise of B.O. doesn't make it socially acceptable!! :0) :0)

Anyway - back to the real thread, lets work on getting smoking banned in the UK....................

Cheers guys,
Johnny :0)

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: GUEST,Crystal
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 06:53 AM

I've just finished an exam where I wrote THREE pages on why smoking is bad for you!
That has got to be as good a reason as any.

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: Alice
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 09:00 AM

In our state, Montana, some cities have tried the smoking ban at different times with stiff resistance from the smokers who manage to get it repealed. BUT the evidence that smoking bans do improve health came from our state capital, Helena, when they were able to ban smoking in public places for less than a year. There was a decrease in heart attacks by 60%!
Read on New Scientist. Public smoking ban slashes heart attacks. We recently moved our session to a smoke free place. None of the session members smokes, but we were being run out by the toxic fumes of the location where the session had been held. New place, smoke free, much better, more people came back to the session.

alice

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 09:32 AM

To qoute the late, lamented, Sydney Carter:

"I'll give up the habit,I will even yet.
When I've had just one more cigarette"

Nigel

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: JWB
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 01:10 PM

Here in Massachusetts smoking is banned in bars, restaurants, etc., and it's wonderful. There's nothing worse than settling into a good meal only to have smoke drift over from the smokers' section one booth away (which happens in those yet unenglightened states that still allow food and tobacco to mix). Business here doesn't seem to have suffered -- the bars are still selling drinks.

Here's a poem I learned years ago from a smoking friend:

Tobacco is a dirty weed; I like it.
It satisfies no normal need; I like it.
It makes you thin, it makes you lean,
It takes the hair right off your bean.
It's the worst darn stuff I've ever seen.
I like it.

Poor bastard...

Jerry

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: GUEST,Bill Kennedy
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 01:25 PM

I posted this on another thread, but they are not linked so here:\

Don't know if any of you have, or remember, Fintan Vallely's 'Timber,
Concert Flute Tutor' from 1986, but he makes some statements about smoke and drink that are quite effective in thier non-judgemental, understated way. As to smoking, (under a great photo of a nun in habit with a fag hanging off her lip like an auto mechanic working on an engine, and all of us who smoke or have smoked can feel the smoke against our cheek and curling into our left eye. Some jobs almost required the cig for proper completion) he says:

SMOKING AND FLUTE PLAYING

"If you play music and smoke, then you might well be in a worse state than those who simply smoke, for you're going to find yourself in smoky atmosphere more often. If you play the flute it's worse again. There are of course no statistics available since flute players are a voiceless minority.
    Cigarettes seem to be handy for those boring interludes between tunes when you either don't know the other players, or have nothing to say to them. They also help cloud the atmosphere to enhance the onset of developing divil-me-caredness. But it must be presumed that smoking is particularly dangerous to flute players: We (in Ireland) seem to be condemned to do most of our playing in sealed beauty-board boxes filled with smoke. We (flute players) are the only people in the session environment taxing our lungs to the same extent as long-distance runners.
But while runners do their thing in the fresh air, we are filling every available scrap of our distended lung-tissues with smoke deposits. Meanwhile, the non-flute playing classes are happily shallow-breathing in as little as perhaps a third of it what we do. Presumably without ever lighting a cigarette we could already be shortening our lives dramatically?"

so life expectancy of Irish flute players just increased for all you actuaries out there!

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: kendall
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 02:16 PM

My ex wife suffered from chemical sensitivity to the point that we couldn't use the toilet in the motor home because it required a strong chemical. Getting behind a diesel powered truck or bus was hell for her, and being in a tight place with some woman who feels she has to smewll like a French whore to be acceptable really limited our social life.
She had to breathe, you don't have to fill the air with toxic fumes.

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 02:22 PM

Something that really bugs me is seeing those ads on TV that try to tell women that they need this "feminine hygene spray". I've been close to well ove 40 women and I have never seen a healthy one who needed this stuff. Or, perfume for that matter. YOU DON'T NEED IT! you have been sold a bill of goods by those stinkum companies that try to tell you that you smell! A daily shower with plain soap is far more sexy to me than that over priced glamorized Raid.

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: kendall
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 02:24 PM

Well said Guest. For the benefit of the Brits, Raid is an insect killer.

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 02:34 PM

Less than two weeks ago, Mudcat said farewell to one of its most beloved members; someone who died decades too young from cancer after years of smoking and playing in smoky bars. After seeing such effects of smoking and second-hand smoke on such a valued member of this community, it is mindboggling that anyone would do anything but celebrate any smoking ban.

BTW, referring to someone who wants clean air as a "health nazi" is incredibly offensive and incredibly stupid. A "nazi" believes in genocide and extreme oppression. That is hardly the mark of someone who thinks they shouldn't be assaulted by poisonous carcinogens in their air.

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: kendall
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 03:14 PM

It's human nature to want to put the onus one others. When I was a smoker I was that way, I used to say "I feel sorry for you health nuts, and I see you 40 years from now lying in a hospital bed dying of nothing."
Addiction is a terrible thing for one to suffer, but it is self inflicted, so, kick it, grow up and join the human race. I have never heard anyone say, "I wish I hadn't quit smoking."

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 04:11 PM

I was having lunch in the retaurant end of a pub the other day, with a smoking side and a non-smoking side. The smoking side had 25 people in it, I counted them. Including two babies. Only one person was smoking, and that was the mother of one of the babies.

You still got the whiff of the smoke through the whole place when you walked in.

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: Fergie
Date: 03 Apr 04 - 07:24 AM

Was in the Góilín Club in Dublin last night, the air was clean and everybody was saying that it was wonderful not to have to breath 2nd hand smoke. Even smokers were happier, the totally addicted went out onto the footpath and when they returned you could smell the smoke from their breath and clothes it was very noticable.
In every bar that I have been in the ban is abserved and the air is clear and so sweet. The publicans fears were groundless. Its the best thing that has happened in years
Fertgus

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: kendall
Date: 03 Apr 04 - 07:29 AM

25% of Americans smoke. 75 % don't smoke. thios aint rocket science folks.

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Apr 04 - 07:58 AM

Back in Victorian times they appear to have had a lot more sensitivity about this in some ways, in England ayway - smoking caps and smoking jackets, and places where you would go to smoke and that, and asking permission to smoke.

The assumption that there is a basic right to smoke where you like and at any time, regardless of what anyone else might think, and that having clothes smelling of tobacco smoke was perfectly fine - that seems to have come in quite a bit later.

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: freda underhill
Date: 03 Apr 04 - 09:12 AM

re chemicals & perfumes, i dont use perfumes that are full of chemicals. people get addicted to the chemicals, and regard their own bodies as things to be annihilated with sprays.

i wonder about the long term nerve damage that some perfumes will cause!

i go to a herbal & homeopathic pharmacy (Newtons) in sydney, to get perfumes that are basically natural essences (sandalwood, ylang ylang). it feels good to use something like that.

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: GUEST,Toenails John
Date: 03 Apr 04 - 10:07 AM

Just to voice an opinion here.
I am not a smoker, although i used to be & turned my back on the habbit never to go back. However, although I can see the advantages of banning smoking, There is, as with every argument, 2 sides.

Non smokers have the right to enjoy a drink, without enduring smoke around them, BUT Surely the smokers have the right to enjoy their evening as well. What Fianna Fail (Party in Gov for anyone that dont know)have done is taken all rights away from smokers, and placed them in the hands of non smokers. I think it's a disgrace that the government steamrolled this in, when in a democracy, something like this should have been put to a vote, or at least Non smoking & Smoking areas in pubs so both sides could be happy. In my opinion the gov are telling people exactly what they can and cant do, surely this is veering towards a dictatorship, more so than democracy.
Either way it doesn't affect me as a non smoker, but my heart goes out to those who do, and have now to put up with being punished while trying to enjoy a night out.

If all else fails, light up, get arrested and get put in the big house. You can smoke in Garda Barraks, and prisons!! (lateral thinking!!)

I bid you all adieu

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Apr 04 - 01:38 PM

"Non smoking & Smoking areas in pubs " Smoke travels. That is what makes it different from any other method of taking in nocotine - snuff, patches, capsules, even chewing tobacco with a spittoon, though I rather hope that doesn't make a come back.

And the basis from the ban is that a smokers area in the pub will mean the bar staff having to put up with it whether they want or not.

I have no doubt that a whole culture of smokers shanties adjacent to the pub, with no pub workers allowed in, will develop. God knows what they'll get up to in there...

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: Big Tim
Date: 03 Apr 04 - 01:49 PM

It's early days in Ireland but NYC introduced a similar ban a good while back. What's the position there now?

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: Joybell
Date: 03 Apr 04 - 06:18 PM

McGrath is quite right, the idea of smoking being a "right" is a 20th century idea. Here in Australia it was the great George Coppin (himself a smoker) who made his theatres non smoking. He made the point that it was because of the discomfort caused to non-smokers and not because of the fire danger, although some theatre owners used the threat of fire to enforce bans on smoking. A few people grumbled but the idea caught on and Australian theatres have always been smoke free.
Actually smoking has never been "a right". Breathing is a "right". Joy

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: GUEST,Wildcat
Date: 09 Apr 04 - 01:39 PM

1998 there was also a heart attack drop in Helena and smoking was not banned, how do they explain that? They do not even mention it. Why did they hide this information?

Read the following page about the miracle of Helena
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,100318,00.html

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: Reiver 2
Date: 09 Apr 04 - 02:28 PM

Well, I'm glad they've put in the smoking ban in Ireland, and wish it could be done all over the U.S. This will guarantee another trip to Ireland soon. I love Irish pub music, and we have some great Irish bands here in Arizona, but my wife won't go in a pub here due to the smoke. I don't like it either, though for Irish pub music I put up with it. Now at least when we visit Ireland again, she'll come with me to pubs and we can enjoy the music together.

Reiver 2

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: PennyBlack
Date: 09 Apr 04 - 03:11 PM

What a shame it wasn't left as a matter of choice?

Then from what some have said here you could have Non smoking pubs full of folk singers and smoking pubs would just have one or two people sat around cross infecting one another.

"Last night I had the strangest dream......."

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: GUEST,Kevin
Date: 15 Apr 04 - 11:45 AM

YO! eileen you said "find a pub with a non-smokers lounge." prior to the ban: no such thing. You had to breathe it in or not go out anywhere.

Smoking ban will has benefited all except cigarette vendors.
And I say benefited because people are reducing the amount they smoke which can only be a good thing.

Most of my friends smoke, I dont. Even they dont like other people blowing smoke in their face.

Subject: RE: DDay for smoking ban in Ireland
From: Joybell
Date: 15 Apr 04 - 07:05 PM

No such thing as a "smokers' lounge" here either. We had some public places with smokers tables and non-smokers tables - beside each other!! Would have been a joke if it wasn't such a serious problem. Joy