Personally I think this is the most collosal red herring, yet it is an argument enlessly trotted out by the pro-smoking group FORREST (96% funded by the tobacco industry).

So I am inviting all those who GENUINELY believe this to be the case to justify your claims and prove your case. To do this requires you to prove two points:

1) What PRECISELY will be banned after public smoking.

2) Prove that it will only be outlawed BECAUSE of the smoking ban and that otherwise it would not be.

Drinking alcohol after 10pm will be banned next.

It's got to be chewing gum hasn't it?

What: the mess on the pavements by those who choose to discard it in the street.

Why: there'll be no other "main culprit" for the untidy state of our pavements. And the bureaucrats currently employed to campaign against the people who pay their wages right to smoke in public would do themselves out of a job if they don't find a new section of their employers to target.

The thing is, there is tons of chewing gum on the pavements but you never see anyone spitting it out.

Cigarette lighters? :heyhey:

Originally posted by hotphil
It's got to be chewing gum hasn't it?

What: the mess on the pavements by those who choose to discard it in the street.

Why: there'll be no other "main culprit" for the untidy state of our pavements. And the bureaucrats currently employed to campaign against the people who pay their wages right to smoke in public would do themselves out of a job if they don't find a new section of their employers to target.

Are you sure you don't mean "the elected government currently elected to to save the health of the vast majority of those who elected them's right to work/drink free from the fatal effects of second hand smoke wouldn't be doing their civic duty if they didn't carry on trying to stop selfish members of society ruining things for the rest of us?"

So are you saying that the sale of chewing gum will be banned or that it will be illegal to spit it out on the street (which I think is already the case)?

I can't quite see why whether or not smoking in public is banned will make any difference to chewing gum one way or the other.

Originally posted by slimsid2000
I can't quite see why whether or not smoking in public is banned will make any difference to chewing gum one way or the other.

If you can't smoke you need something to keep your mouth occupied, chewing gum sales will rocket.

Originally posted by nick2
If you can't smoke you need something to keep your mouth occupied, chewing gum sales will rocket.

Either that or....

:hihi:

Originally posted by kathythebean
Either that or....

:hihi:

Shame you don't smoke Kathy, as I noticed your comments on another thread about promiscuity.

:hihi:

Originally posted by Lickable
Cigarette lighters? :heyhey:

You can't ban cigarette lighters...........what would rock fans have to hold up at concerts when the artist plays some cheesy ballad or anthem!:hihi:

Originally posted by daverity
You can't ban cigarette lighters...........what would rock fans have to hold up at concerts when the artist plays some cheesy ballad or anthem!:hihi:

And what would all those... 'independent businessmen' outside the St Johns Shopping Centre in Liverpool have to sell instead? ;)

Originally posted by liencam
Shame you don't smoke Kathy, as I noticed your comments on another thread about promiscuity.

:hihi:

:o

I was being hypothetical!

Originally posted by Abdul
And what would all those... 'independent businessmen' outside the St Johns Shopping Centre in Liverpool have to sell instead? ;)

:thumbsup: Abdul PMSL :hihi:

Originally posted by daverity
You can't ban cigarette lighters...........what would rock fans have to hold up at concerts when the artist plays some cheesy ballad or anthem!:hihi:

No smoking signs?

This could would for Abduls query too

The difference between alcohol and smoking is simple.. Smoking makes other peoples clothes stink, and get's on their chest.

While too much drinking can make you more violent than too much smoking.

And on another point - drinkers smell. They stink of alcohol. Their breaths stink. Their clothes stink. Their posessions stink.

Ban alcohol and then ban smoking. See how well that goes down.

Dragon

Good question Sid ‘what will be banned next?’

It’s interesting how here in the UK in recent years we’re being told in the media constantly about the ‘new trend’ of binge drinking particularly amongst the young. Funny, I remember people doing the same 25 years ago, when I was in my teens. They used to get into fights too and damage property, so I don’t think that this is a new phenomena but now we are seeing it mentioned almost daily as though it is. The phrase ‘binge drinking’ is one that’s been used for some time too in the States so that has certainly travelled over the pond and as we all know if you say something enough times in the press, people start to believe it.

Well ASH and all the associated anti-smoking groups really have their powerbases across the pond in the ‘good ole US of A’. They came to real prominence back in the 80’s I recall and have grown from strength to strength. Now nobody denies smoking is bad for you (I don’t smoke) but the zealotry of our American cousins has crossed over here and in a generation has made smoking, well ‘uncool’ I suppose is the best way to put it; now they are seeking to drive it from the planet. Not only that, certain employers are now stipulating that they will only hire or employ non-smokers, insisting on carbon monoxide tests and sacking people who refuse or prove to be off-duty smokers. Their ‘reason’ for doing this they seek to justify is that smokers take more days off and health insurance costs are higher. They’ve certainly managed to marginalize it and by legislating they are having a damn good go at totally eradicating it.

Ok, so what’s next? Well back in 1919 the Federal US government as we all know, gave in to a powerful bunch of bible-belt zealots called the Temperance Society and introduced the prohibition of the manufacture, sale, transportation and consumption of alcohol. Again, as we all know, it was a massive failure and heralded the birth of truly ‘organised crime’. The laws were repealed in 1933 and alcohol came on legal sale again. But what happened to the prohibitionists? Well the fact is that they have never gone away and phoenix-like they are back on the rise in the form of MADD (Mother’s Against Drunken Driving) and RID (Remove Intoxicated Drivers).
A mother whose child was killed by a repeated drunken driver formed MADD back in 1980. Her motives, not unreasonably, were to promote an enforcement of the drink driving laws and to make the offence socially unacceptable. The organisation has largely been successful in this but its power, influence, current aims and rhetoric have led its founder, Candy Lightner to leave the organisation stating that its goals had become in her words ‘neo-prohibitionist’.

The simple fact of the matter is that the current leadership of these organisations is committed to the eventual eradication of alcohol useage. Using the successful strategy used by ASH and other anti-smoking groups 25 to 30 years ago, they hope to use all the negative points of alcohol and make it ‘uncool’ too. They focus on drink drivers, domestic violence, health issues and teenage drinking to use their powerful lobbying to initially raise state drinking ages and ban alcohol advertising, that’s for starters. Put simply, their strategy, knowing that immediate prohibition doesn’t work, is to start low and gently, gently turn up the heat demanding more restrictions until they eventually get what they want. I can see in the coming years demands made to raise excise duties even higher on alcohol making it less affordable, as was done with tobacco.

Many of you will say, I know, ‘yes but that’s America, it couldn’t happen here’, well 50 years ago something like 82% of Britons smoked (today it’s 28% and dropping) if you’d have said then that in the year 2005 tobacco smoking would be virtually outlawed, people would have ridiculed you. You might say that the drinks industry is too powerful but there was no more powerful industry than tobacco until a few years ago. It won’t be long, I’m sure, until the first law-suit against a drinks company for causing liver disease in the States, when that starts you know the writings on the wall for our beloved habit.

So it’s Friday evening everyone, treat it like your last. Before they ban it, go out there and enjoy yourselves………..know I will be!!!!!! :hihi:

If anybody wants to know more about MADD and its hidden agendas
CLICK HERE (http://www.alcoholfacts.org/CrashCourseOnMADD.html) this is just one site about them, there are very many more.

Public sex!! ha ha only kidding- well you never know!!!:heyhey:

Originally posted by sexibabe
Public sex!! ha ha only kidding- well you never know!!!:heyhey:

I have to admit I was going to say that too. :hihi: :rolleyes:

Originally posted by Dragon
While too much drinking can make you more violent than too much smoking.

And on another point - drinkers smell. They stink of alcohol. Their breaths stink. Their clothes stink. Their posessions stink.

Ban alcohol and then ban smoking. See how well that goes down.

Dragon

being violent is already illegal, so we've got that covered, and smelling doesn't injure anyone else.