Smokers have rights too

I gave up smoking sometime ago, but I agree that it should be the persons choice not dictated too!!!!

Smokers DO NOT HAVE RIGHTS associated with smoking. Smokers are people (only just) and they have the same rights as non-smokers. There are NO rights associated with smoking because it is harmful to innocent people.

If you smoke, you most likely started smoking before you were at a legal age of consent. In other words you are a victim of an activity which should be criminal in a responsible society (distributing cigarettes).

Try to give it up because it's bad for you, you stink, your breath is rancid, your clothes smell like filth and you are hard to like this way. And you are going to die a vile death whereby you lose every shred of human dignity before you slowly go. Regrets...you'll have more than just a few.

Britain has ended up as a nation of unthinking cretins because of overlegislation by the nanny state. The Health and Safety brigade, to mention just one aspect of life on the little island, has created a race of people so paranoid that they cannot think beyond the consequences of their actions and are afraid to do anything.

It's illegal to do anything anymore in Britain. It is the most horrifically fascist country in the world now. I hate everyone there. I despise the corrupt Governments, and business. I hate the exploitation by employers and landlords. I despise the incompetence of local governments. But above all I consider the smoking ban and the proposed controls on drinking as completely beyond understanding.

I think for myself.

Britain does not let its citizens think for themselves.

although I agree smoking is a bad habit, I think the People against smoking should look at the air that is being poluted due to loories going through villages. When I was a teenager nearly everbody smoked, so why as it got bad now when most people have stopped smoking. Why can't we campain against our housing estate and villages having through traffic most cause of polution lorries. They should be campaining for better road s so traffic doesn't need to go through villages and housing estates to get to work or motorways, then they will see that people will have better health. Stop blaming smoking for everything.

Will Powers. Well may you say then that any person who operates a vehicle, be it car, bike, plane, boat could also be accused of stupidity. Point remains until smoking tobacco is outlawed completely, smokers still have rights and should not be treated like second class citizens. To the comment further down about injecting in public....once again, SMOKING IS LEGAL, heroin use is not. And MikeP, I am more than capable of walking around an object that offends or endangers me....are you not?

@ ScubaSteve - You wrote : "I smoke and I like to smoke. I also know that it causes cancer, I am not stupid."

That is quite the contradiction. Are you trying to suggest that continuing to smoke whilst knowing it causes cancer (and a whole raft of other health problems) is the behavior of someone intelligent?

Smokers have to be ten metres away from the buildings at my works, as the air con sucks the smoke in to the building and you can smell it inside, this has been well proven.

Sorry, that was meant to be : In some more enlightened countries smoking is banned within a certain distance of buildings, typically 15 metres.

"The fact that smokers are now banished to the cold outside is surely enough for your smug satisfaction."

Not really. It means that the rest of us have to walk through the screen of smoke and exhaled bad breath to get inside. It also means that in summer when sitting outside the rest of us are exposed to poison fumes from your addiction to tobacco. In some more enlightened countries smoking is banned within a certain distance of buildings, typically 5 metres. Great idea.

JETHRO instead of slandering other people for what it is they want to do with there lives with comments such as "You are surrounded by morons" basically for being a smoker, maybe instead you should try a bit of constructive critism. The fact that smokers are now banished to the cold outside is surely enough for your smug satisfaction.

Anyone with a bad habit tries to justify why they have no self controll.