Question: If people smoke and get lung disease, surely it is their own fault, so why should we help those people who can't help themselves?

This is a subject I feel quite strongly about so if you don’t mind me commenting as well, kw28…

My dad smokes *a lotMATOMO_URL I lived with this for 18 years, before I left for university.
He smokes in the house, my mum used to as well, but not nearly as much.
I thought this was perfectly normal. I didn’t even think much of it when one of my teachers asked if I smoked, because she could smell it on my homework (though now I find this rather disturbing).

So, with regard to your question, I think the same sentiment could be applied to other things like sport (if people break their legs while skiing, why do they deserve treatment??), obesity-related diseases (of which there are many), alcohol abuse etc.

The thing is, we base our healthcare on the simple principle that people have a right to aid. I don’t disagree with that, and I’m sure you don’t either. Sometimes we make mistakes.

Sure, smokers should (and often do) know it’s bad for them. But it’s addictive, there is still a lot of marketing out there and it is legal. I’d personally advocate for making most drugs legal as they’d be better regulated and money going to the government instead of criminals could be fed back into hospitals, like it is from cigarette taxes.

I don’t like the fact that people harm themselves but I think it’s unreasonable to expect it to stop altogether, so we may as well try to minimise the damage.

I do think smoking is very, very selfish. The difference from things like traffic fumes and alcohol abuse is that when someone smokes, they’re only doing it for themselves but other people feel the effects. Driving has other purposes and people don’t do it in enclosed spaces (like smoking before the ban, which was very unpleasant in pubs, clubs, restaurants, cinemas, buses etc.). You have no choice but to breathe someone else’s smoke when they’re near you (even if it is outside!).

If smokers were more considerate (which can be difficult when you’re stressed out because of your cravings; though again I have little sympathy because it’s self-inflicted, choosing to be a smoker, however hard it is to quit – lots of people do it) then we probably wouldn’t have had to ban it indoors – but I’m glad it has been!

Sorry for the long comment, but I’ve spent a long time thinking about it and talking to people; part of my job in cancer research is to try to increase awareness about cancer and lung cancer is one of the biggest but most preventable cancer-related causes of death. I’d love for more people to quit and fewer people to start. It’s unpleasant, looks ridiculous, stinks, it’s very expensive and totally pointless!

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Hey Andrew,

The only reason I’m in favour of restrictive laws like the smoking ban is because of the issue of freedom itself – freedom to do what you want ends when you start infringing on the freedom of others.
Smoking next to people means you force them to smoke as well.
So, if people were all lovely and considerate and never ended up making other people participate in their personal indulgence, then it’d all be fine.

However, that isn’t the world we live in. Just as we need (arguably?) speeding laws to stop people racing through tiny villages and killing everyone’s pets and more seriously, children, sometimes we need annoyingly (to some) restrictive laws to stop people damaging the health of others.

Smoking really is quite a unique case – it doesn’t serve a purpose other than satisfying an individual’s craving, which is usually because they themselves chose to start smoking anyway – and when compared to things like the side-effects of drinking (fights and so on – all GBH, criminal damage etc. is already illegal), pre-smoking ban people were just negatively affecting others because ‘well, smoking’s legal, I can smoke where I want, go away if you don’t like it!’

Probably the ‘best’ argument is for staff.
People staff clubs, bars etc. and they should not be exposed to health-damaging substances from cigarettes. Then people say ‘oh just employ smokers’ but if you said you should only employ people who already have testicular cancer to clean chimneys, everyone would laugh at you! Because you can’t set up a workplace that can only employ people who don’t mind having their health ruined.

Now, people can still smoke when they go out or to work, but now people have the choice to NOT smoke as well.
The ban has increased freedom, not decreased it.

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