[jambutty]

Let me state at the outset that I accept that smoking is bad for the smoker and obnoxious to the non-smoker in the vicinity but both groups have rights that clash.

A couple of years ago when I was forced to use public transport because my car was going through its annual service I was stood at the bus stop in a queue. A bus arrived but it was not the one that many of the others in the queue and me wanted. As passengers alighted and some of the queue boarded I found myself in line with the back of the bus whose engine was ticking over thrusting clouds of fumes into the atmosphere. I was smoking at the time and the woman behind me in the queue objected to me smoking because I was polluting the air she was breathing. She just wouldn’t accept that the bus’s exhaust fumes were causing her far more harm than my one cigarette. Much to her chagrin I continued to smoke the rest of my fag until the bus arrived during which time she tried to force me to stop. I didn’t! I was in that space first.

It is this hypocritical attitude of non-smokers that sticks in my craw. They crave for clean air to breathe but are quite happy to breath the atmosphere polluted by vehicle fumes and industry yet object to tobacco smoke.

I accept that public buildings should be non-smoking areas but only IF THE OWNER OF THE BUILDING DECLARES IT SO and not because of some government intervention. In the open air if a non-smoker invades my space then that is their problem if I happen to be smoking. They should keep clear of my space.

The work place should be a non-smoking work place unless 100% of the workforce and the management want it otherwise. Pubs and restaurants should declare themselves as either smoking or non-smoking and let market forces decide which was the right decision. Will any of the non-smoking campaign participants go to all the pubs and restaurants that they are trying to force becoming non-smoking? Not likely! These anti smoking brigadiers just want to impose their way of life on the rest of us. I don’t see non-alcohol drinkers doing the same to the boozers. Yet alcohol causes far more distress, harm, injury and instant death to innocent bystanders than tobacco ever did. Are the young yobos, yobos because they smoke or is it because of alcohol? Nurses and doctors get attacked in A & E by drunken louts not someone wanting to smoke a fag. Our town centres are full of rowdy, drunken people on a night out. Cars are vandalised by drunks, not smokers.

If a non-smoker visits a pub that allows smoking then they have no right to complain and definitely no right to try to force the pub to become non-smoking. If I walk into a building that does not allow smoking I wouldn’t dream of even asking if anyone minded if I smoked. I obey the rule for that building. I don’t try to force my view onto others, so why should they do that to me?

Finally, if smokers die younger than non-smokers then the government (in reality that is the tax payer) is saved the burden of paying their pensions.