eublues

The EU and their like have only climbed onto the smoking-is-evil bandwagon because tastes were changing anyway. People would have had the choice of smoking or non-smoking environments in pubs etc. through market forces, without the EU using this as yet another way of showing they could take power over all aspects of our lives.

cookie65

I have posted this before, and I am sure many others have too.

Hitler's Anti-Tobacco Campaign

Kind of puts a new perspective on it

TomPhil

So hang on a minute, just because Hitler supported smoking bans, smoking bans must be a bad thing? Hitler also supported the building of roads. Are roads a bad thing? Hitler also liked watching films. Are films a bad thing? Hitler liked giving speeches. Is giving a speech a bad thing? Hitler also liked painting. Is painting a bad thing? Wow, that's quite a new perspective. Invoking Hitler to win your argument is the last refuge of someone who can't think of any other good arguments.

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In Labour we trusted and now we are busted... again. It's the economy, stupid.

John Connor

Sounds like you've had some experience in retail sales.

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cookie65

Hitler did not support smoking bans or road building, he was their instigator. He was a dictator and decided the policies in Germany.
He was an authoritarian who treated humans as pawns in his little game. He had no no respect for the lives of humans, and just saw them in pretty much the same light as a Farmer treats Cattle.
Many arguments have already been put forward and you do not appear to accept any of them, I am just pointing out the fact that Germany introduced the first Anti smoking legislation and 70 years later the German led EU are still pushing the same line.

Millennium3

I can't decide if TP is brainwashed or simply cannot make the necessary connections that to ban something, which might be harmful, when it could be allowed in a way that it does no harm to others, unless they choose to place themselves themselves in possible danger, is a repressive measure which has no place in a free society.

B.A.Ware

Perhaps i didn't make myself clear 60 years ago smoking wasn't a bad or evil thing and a high proportion of the general public smoked the ones that are ALIVE today that had the freedom to smoke all of their lives in PRIVATE establishments are now forced to sit in the freezing cold just because by some miracle one of you non-smokers MIGHT come into a PRIVATE establishment and have Half a lager.

How the hell anyone with any intelligence can compare the smoking rates of 60 year olds with the rest of the population is bloody amazing of course they will be lower more people over the age of 60 are dead.


What YOU don't seem to realise is the argument isn't about smoking its about passive smoking which is complete ******** the risk is insignificant as testified by the following groups.


you see you have to have some intelligence to know what a risk is, do you actually know anything about statistics do you know anything about RR, CI or confounding factors i doubt it and that is why you are a prat because you are talking about what you would personally like in life not real life which is full of choices and you choice to restrict perfectly legal pastimes in PRIVATE establishments even if the owner allows it.

Prat and fascist comes to mind.

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We’re not just about Europe.

g hall

I was though

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g hall

Don't go where people smoke then - do you have difficulty understanding English ?

__________________
"That government is best which governs least."
"This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physician for all diseases and miseries".
"To be "matter of fact" about the world is to blunder into fantasy --and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful."

I don't ignore posters just any post made which meets my ID-TEN-T criteria

TomPhil

Clearly, if I was presented with an entirely free choice as to whether to enter such establishments, I would not care less what they allowed - I would just not enter if I disagreed with their rules, as you suggested. I completely agree with you that if I had a totally free choice, then there would be little justification for the smoking ban.

At the other end of the scale, if I had a gun pointed at my head (literally) and I was ordered to enter such an establishment, then I think you would agree that I would be unable to consider whether I disagreed with the rules, and therefore, because I was able to exercise no choice whatsoever, your analysis of the free market fails. It would therefore be perfectly justifiable to impose restrictions on the establishment, as I would have no choice as to whether to enter or not.

Thus far, I hope we can agree. If I have a completely free choice as to whether to enter an establishment, then that establishment should have a completely free choice as to its rules. On the other hand, if I have absolutely no choice whatsoever, then it is necessary to regulate the rules of the establishment.

However, unlike you, I can see the shades of grey. It's not a black and white issue. No, I don't have a gun pointed at my head. But neither do I have an entirely free choice. If I am working for a company, and all the other people working there go to a smoky pub after work, my freedom of choice is restricted. There is a great deal of pressure on my to attend the pub. Not doing so may mean social exclusion and may harm my job prospects. That's a pretty serious restriction on my freedom of choice. Or if, to give a previous example, I am an elderly (non-smoking) person in a village where the only place to socialise is a smoking establishment, then I know that unless I go there, I will be socially excluded, a significant hardship. My freedom of choice is significantly impaired.

Thus the reality lies somewhere between your "you have a completely free choice: if you don't like it don't go in" analysis and the "gun to your head" analysis I outlined earlier. My choice is free only to a limited extent. This means that you cannot run the argument that as my choice is free, the establishment owner's choice should be free. Presumably, by the same token, as my choice is restricted, so can that of the owner of the establishment. It lies somewhere along the line between complete freedom and absolutely no freedom.

Now, I completely agree with you that we should not place unnecessary regulation on people. Perhaps this agreement on opposition to unnecessary regulation is one of the reasons that we are both posting on an anti-EU forum. But my above discussion has highlighted that I, and the tens of millions of non-smokers like me, do not have a free choice. We are restricted, "regulated", if you like, by the circumstances. I agree that I should bear much of this restriction, if it is my circumstances that have imposed it on me, even if not through my fault. It is not my place to tell the establishment owner that I don't like the food he serves or the music he plays. But I think that it is justifiable to say that the small limitation of a ban on smoking - setting fire to a tube of carcinogenic chemicals of which there is no safe level and emitting them into the air for other people to inhale - should be imposed. This is because, as highlighted numerous times in this thread, my choice is not free. This is where your analysis breaks down.

There is a sliding scale between the two situations outlined above. If my choice is completely free, then so should be that of the establishment owner. If my choice is completely unfree, then it is completely justifiable to say that so should be that of the establishment owner. But where my choice is partially free (or partially unfree, depending on how you look at it), then that is somewhere along the line, perhaps closer to one end, perhaps closer to the other. On the other side of the line, the establishment owner should be placed. So if my choice is restricted, as it may well be by social, work pressures, etc., then this is a justification for imposing some restrictions - the minimum necessary to protect my own freedoms - on the establishment owner. I believe that banning dangerous and extremely unpleasant activities such as smoking (f you won't agree that it increases my risk of dying, as I maintain it does, then at least agree that it may give me a headache, or set off people's asthma) is a proportionate response to make sure that the maximum freedom is available to everyone.

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"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government."

In Labour we trusted and now we are busted... again. It's the economy, stupid.