Also, does anyone have reliable figures on how much the NHS spends on smoking-related illnesses compared to how much smokers pay in tax? I’ve heard it both ways but, if smokers pay more than they cost, this will have a negative effect on public health. Just a thought.

Yeah ok I admit it I’m a dirty horrible smoker. Oh yeah and I drink too much. Is there a doctor about?

Love the picture. Get orff moy laand!

Superburger, I think you’ll find that the profits have been distributed for at least some of the versions (www.newstatesman.com/200106250039), with much of the rest of the profits taken by copyright holders (governments or publishers).

Did we sort out “Godwin’s Law”? I’m not sure it really bears. Goodwin’s Law, on the other hand, probably refers amongst geeks to computer journalist Rupert Goodwin.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_Law gives a reasonable account as far as I can see (I understand Godwin protested its use to decide the winner of an online debate, but that’s memetics for you), or you could call it something like “The Nazis: An Exemplum In Sophistry”. Obviously, if you set out to discuss the Nazis or something that they did, that’s one exception.

OK I think this is as far as I can go with this point. Regarding rights and choices, I’m not sure I was doing any deploring. What I was doing was trying to expolore whether freedom of choice is limited by addiction, and suggseting it was as clearly the majority of people end up exhibiting behaviour that is both self damaging and contrary to their stated preferences. Again I’m sorry that tutting was thought to be going on. I certainly don’t think that foresight is an issue I’m not sure nicotine dependence goes hand in hand with reduced insight into the problem, if anything the contrary is true.
Regarding glum amputees, heart attack survivors and dialysis patients, I actually think quite a lot about them as I meet them evey day in the course of my work. It may well be so that they enjoy the pleasure of a cigarette whilst contemplating whether their below knee will turn into an above knee or full hind-quarter, but as I said, most of them state a desire to stop the habit and yet continue. I don’t deplore them or their habits for this, you wouldn’t last long in this trade with that level of moronic morality. I do deplore that they can’t act on their wishes though.
Regarding non smokers dying, of course they do, just on average much later and less often of lung cancer. Regarding ‘non-smokers die too’, I think that Bill Hicks had quite some insight into his addiction at least. It comes as part of the sketch where he thanks his audience for their support, ‘yeah Bill’s gonna lose a leg!’ he quips. And he died young of pancreatic cancer, not a way I’d choose to go personally, and interestingly not a way most smokers would choose to go either.

You know, I have the right to make choices you don’t approve of. You can deplore them all you want, and tut about my lack of foresight or perspicacity. To which I say: mind your own beeswax.

You ever think that your glum amputees are enjoying one of the few pleasures left to them? If you’ve had a leg chopped off, it’s not going to magically grow back if you quit.

Here’s something that may be news for you: non-smokers die every day. You’ll eventually die; so will I; so will everyone reading this. And we all have the absolute right to decide how we head towards that terminus.

I’m not sure I’m communicating very well today. I certainly didn’t think I was making a direct recommendation on prohibition, merely suggesting that addiction distorts choices and providing tacit support for distorted damaging choices might not be a good thing.

Regarding it being easy to give up smoking, I’m not so sure everyone would agree. The Royal College of Physicians has an excellent report on smoking, in which can be found this paragraph:

The evidence reviewed in this section demonstrates that the onset of certain conditions such as lung cancer, a heart attack or pregnancy provides the motivation for a higher proportion of smokers to try to succeed in stopping smoking than would otherwise have been the case. However, even after developing a serious smoking related illness which threatens loss of life or limbs in the immediate future, the majority of smokers are unable to stop smoking completely in the year after their condition is diagnosed. This remains true when medical advice and nursing support are provided, and when the smokers make determined attempts to stop smoking. When considered in conjunction with the other available evidence on the role of nicotine in tobacco smoking, this provides convincing evidence that many smokers suffer serious ill-health not through personal choice, but because they are, and remain, dependent on the nicotine they obtain from tobacco.

Which is certainly compatible with my experience of seeing amputees glumly puffing away outside the hospital doors. Are they exercising their free will and all just happen to be nihilists? Apparently not if you actually ask them what they think: the office of national statistics in England routinely find around 70% of smokers express the desire to give up smoking.

Furthermore even the tobacco companies realised early on that addiction would open them to serious culpability, hence the first admission that nicotine was most likely addictive only came from a tobacco company in 1997.

www.rcplondon.ac.uk/pubs/books/nicotine/

www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_health/smoking2006.pdf

The liberty of the pub staff, and of non smokers to be in a smoke free environment should be prioritised because:

- non smokers do not have the same options (smokers can go to a non smoking pub and not smoke, non smokers cannot go to a smoking pub and avoid smoke)

- non smokers are not imposing their antisocial drug use on others

Furthermore, as I have outlined:

- nicotine users have a range of smokeless products as options (patches, inhgalers, gum, snus, snuff, bandits, chewing tobacco etc) which are not banned. There liberty to consume their drug of choice is not infringed merely one particularly antisocial mode of administering it.

- liberties have to be wieghed against social costs. In this case a minor infringement of liberty will result in a massive social gain.

- in practical terms most establishments will be able to have an outside area where people can smoke. Where the ban has been introduced compliance has been very good, and police enforcement is very rarely needed.
- cigarette and tobacco smoking use is not being banned – if it was i would object strongly. You will still be able to smoke in the street, in parks, in the country side, in your own home and on private property. vioolating the ban is also a civil offence (£50 fine) rather than a crimainl one, like the possiesion of cocaine or ecstasy (7 years in prison). Its really just sensible public health regulation: A move that has massive proven benefits, majority support even before its introduced, and overwhelming popular support where introduced.

in a years time youll love it and wonder what the fuss was all about.

transform-drugs.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-transform-supports-smoking-ban.html

a couple of reasons why i am slightly rueful about the ban:

1. now you can smell all the stale beer in the carpets, and old men farting.

2. we wont ever be able to have dutch style coffee shops

triangukar bread – that last comment of yours in teetering into troll territory.

your not banging the liberty drum. The legistlation is. if you want to smoke you can, just not in other peoples faces. nd if you want to consume nicotine you can wherever you like, just not cigarettes.

So you think it impossible to make adequate facilities for smokers and non-smokers in the same venue? Well, I think it is possible – no matter what Matthew Norman might have said.

Here’s an idea: rather than ban smoking in alll pubs, ban smoking in 1/2 of them, chosen by lottery. That way everyone could be happy, no? A blanket ban says that giving non-smokers a chance to enjoy refreshment in pubs is not the real reason for the ban; rather, some bansturbators hate the idea of smoking. It’ll be the street next, then in cars, then at home. Just watch.

Smeone mentioned powers reserved to local authority discretion. Well, no such powers have been reserved in Scorland AFAIK – and in Glasgow, believe me, we’d know all about it. Very few exemptions have been permitted (prisons, oil rigs and, interestingly enough, the palace of Westminster).

Anyway, I’m going to carry on smoking, not only because i enjoy it but also because it annoys all the right people – the dominies, the puritans and the nosy parkers most of all.

In my experience smoking areas don’t work. A restaurant critic once wrote that “having a smoking area in a restaurant is like having pissing a area in a swimming pool” (or similar). Not only does smoke not stay in one place, but I’ve also had to argue with smokers who simply ignored the non-smoking signs.

This is not about prohibition – you may smoke as much as your like in your own home or outside.

You could formulate an argument as follows:

Many smokers are addicted to smoking i.e. they suffer withdrawal symptoms upon cessation, they exhibit tolerence, smoking is prioritised as an activity, they allow damage to occur to themselves and others in order to continue smoking, and continue smoking despite this damage being in some cases patently obvious.

It is difficult to make a rational choice about a behaviour to which you are addicted, as you are both coerced by your own withdrawal symptoms and you have an inappropriate discounting of the costs of that behaviour.

If the goverment were to legislate to provide smoking areas this could be interpreted as collusion with this destructive behaviour, which may earn them a pretty penny more but would be difficult to defend ethically.

That should get the ball rolling.

But it occurred to me that all the objections to smoking in pubs (or indeed offices and other workplaces) were not arguments for a total ban but arguments for the provision of separate spaces for smokers. There are some practical objections – places too small to create adequate separate space; those few cases in villages etc where there is only one pub and it’s too small to carve out a smoking room – but I think they could have been hammered out and that would have been a workable compromise.

That, of course, would have extended choice, not diminished it, and should, in theory, have kept everyone happy. No non-smokers would need to be inconvenienced; the police wouldn’t be having to police it; clipes and martinets would have had to find something else to frot about; children wouldn’t have to endure more smoke at home because their parents were no longer going out; and so on and on.

I’m genuinely interested to hear what other commenters think of this idea; what objections they might raise; and why a total ban on smoking pubs is thought necessary.

However, from looking at all of the flag waving and vitriol between comment posters on the Guardian website it does seem to me that Ben Goldacre’s concerns about analysing the scientist rather than the data are justified.

My one addition to the discussion of the smoking ban is not based in science, so can be easily dismissed as a personal opinion. Not eveyone has the luxury of choosing where they work, be it due to social circumstances (such as hours available to work), education, or location. Should such people be subjected to working in a smokey environment – and potential risks to health – until more evidence on the effects or non-effects of passive smoking becomes available?

Indeed many things we do are bad for us, and some bad for us in one way but good in another. Hence the libertarian stance that only the individual can decided for themselves via some internal calculus. My question is how this internal maximization works out when it concerns an addictive behaviour such as smoking.

Re. 52 Superburger
nobody mentioned prohibition. I was just talking about standing up to the global corruption, backhanders, etc. that seem to be part and parcel of flogging tobacco. Or, you could ban companies from using branding, or any form of marketing etc. etc. as an immediate and simple measure.

Come to think of it, prohibition might work for tobacco because it’s such a rubbish drug. At least caffeine unlikely to send you to early grave and the others get you high.

And that brings us neatly to the dodgy research done by tobacco companies – a source of info that really is hard to trust.