A place for adult tobacco consumers who enjoy smoking and choose not to quit during October or any other month of the year
A place for adult tobacco consumers who enjoy smoking and choose not to quit during October or any other month of the year
Picasso enjoyed his Gaulois and didn't die until 93 -
ReplyDeleteI am the guy in the fourth picture from the bottom. Do I look like I wanna quit? haha I love my nicotine. I have had a few smokefree episodes in my smoking career, and I am still waiting to know what the benefits were! No siree, my baccy gives me a healthy mind, and you what they say, a healthy mind means a healthy body.
ReplyDeleteAs a smoker, I never have to worry about the constant bombardment of new health scares.
ReplyDeleteThe cigs are gonna get me.
No need to worry about cholesterol, salt, mobile phones, power lines, radon gas, alien abduction, alcohol, ash dieback, bse, asteroids, aids, tsunamis, etc. (Sorry about the out-of-date list, but I don't read the press any more.)
And if one of those does get me;
Then I got away with smoking! :-)
It's a win-win situation!
(Smoking has been a lot more fun since they've been trying to stop me.)
Cigarettes and then rolling tobacco were just things I used to pick up at my local newsagents along with my local paper and whatever else I fancied. Now buying tobacco has become fun and allowed me to travel across Europe in a way I never could before. I never go into local newsagents any more and I don't buy a local or national newspaper either.
ReplyDeleteMy travel costs and the tobacco I buy is paid for each time by the amount of tax I save by refusing to buy an over-taxed product in the UK . ..a win win situation.
If the Govt stops giving my tax to quangos that manipulate science to browbeat and attack me, and stops forcing stupid gimmicky campaigns with money that could fund direct patient care, then I might start buying tobacco at home again.
Until then I refuse to pay for my own persecution and I'm not the only one who feels that way.
I am making regular visits to Weston super Mare to visit my 93 year old father. He is currently in Weston General Hospital, and sad to say, I am not certain that he will reach his 94th birthday.
DeleteAs you enter the grounds, there are many signs pointing to the car park, outpatients etc etc. These signs are however dwarfed by the biggest signs of all, which you see several times before you get inside. SMOKEFREE SITE is proudly proclaimed by smokefree southwest, the biggest, most brightly coloured signs. Needless to say, I get very angry.
Me too. These people have created health inequalities for smokers and instead of being given bucket loads of cash they should be taught that hospitals are supposed to be compassionate and caring places for the sick - not easy targets for the bigots.
DeleteTalking of bigots, you should pop over to Twitter and check out the #stoptober hashtag. I have never seen so many fakes posing as smokers who want to quit. It's so obvious to real smokers but clearly not to the gullible.
I know this because of the sheer abuse you get when you try and debate. Such as one who claimed to have saved X amount of cash since he quit last year but when I pointed out the Laffer Curve, an that the saved tax now pays for several trips abroad for me and my tobacco in friendlier EU countries, his next four or five responses were pure anti-smoker filth with bullying personal abuse.
TBH, I don't think that many smokers bother with stoptober but paid anti-smoker trolls have been sent in to make them look good. One of my missions this #Octabber is to highlight the bullying of smokers that's going on so when the smokerphobics crawl out of the woodwork, I aim to name and shame them @nigel_simmonds for example. @smokefreeworlf as another and @savemetheolour as well. Certainly the last two are paid smoking cessation workers and both hurled abuse when I refused their offer of "help" to quit. As for the first mentioned tosser, maybe he's just one of those who picks his prejudice, picks his group an then has fun with all that hate he holds close but he also uses the common type of abuse hurled by paid antis so I guess he's just another one..
Govt needs to know it is funding bullies and we will not put up with it anymore. As many of you that can get over and Tweet the #Octabber hashtag, the better the Govt will see that the anti-smoker industry is full of outrageous, border line illegal, propaganda crap inspired to create hatred against one targeted consumer and now social group.
After being a smoker for 45 years, I switched to vaping, which I love, and as you point out, its a lifestyle choice. Smokers have the right to make that decision for themselves, but it would be nice if BAT or any other Big Tobacco company helped to make that choice with harm reduction in mind.
ReplyDeleteIt was a joy to find this site, and I have shared it... well said everyone!
Thanks. Support is always appreciated especially as the Stoptober smokerphobic bullies have begun to move in here and on Twitter.
ReplyDeleteAt least the tobacco companies are trying to make a safer product unlike the antis who make it more dangerous all the time. Firstly the anti smoker industry forced poorer smokers onto harsher but cheaper tobacco like RYO and then onto the criminal and contaminated black market which the anti-smokers created by demanding unfair and unjustified high taxes - 80% of the product price is tax and a lot of that goes to the anti smoker leeches. The 20% left over is shared between tobacco companies, farmers, retailers, distributors, packagers, etc... so the main beneficiaries of the tobacco industry cash are the hypocritical anti-smoker parasites themselves.
The regressives have trashed and halted technological evolution of the safe cigarette and tbh, if they hadn't been so hysterical about it,. I think E Cigs would have been a natural evolution to smoking anyway and probably most people now digging in their heels would have embraced them.
Part of this campaign is to demand that bullying and aggressive antis are denied funding and for that funding to go to causes that really could do some good like independent harm reduction research and technology.
This post shows the tobacco industry is at least trying to do its bit. http://octabberresistance.blogspot.co.uk/ (see the video - it's well worth a watch)
If you have smoked 45 years, like me, then you will recall we used to have really useful and inclusive public health harm reduction campaigns rather than aggressive abusive quit or die ones. #Octabber wants to see a return to harm reduction which is a better way to spend our money.
The only people getting rich now are those who hate smokers and frankly couldn't give a toss if they live or die as long as their funding keeps on rolling in.
I have tried e-cigs. They're OK and, for me, more akin to changing brand than quitting. What I cannot stand is the sort of vaper who takes the holier-than-thou attitude or who uses tobacco control industry propaganda or denormalisation of smokers to promote their own lifestyle choice as somehow better than ours. You're clearly not that way inclined and that's refreshing
As soon as vapers and smokers realise that we are in it together, the sooner we can merge our resources and really have an impact in changing the debate from the "dirty, filthy, pathetic addict, murdering, child abusing, smoker," to something more mature such as harm reduction and how to benefit everyone through science and technology.
Sadly, while campaigns such as the offensive "E Cigs Save Lives" rubbish play into the hands of the antis, and piss off tobacco consumers from here to Timbuktu, then that is never going to happen. Divided we fall or united we stand. I think most smokers and vapers get that.
Re Pic number four; isn't it nice to be in a civilised situation where you can enjoy a meal and a postprandial ciggy without anyone so much as even frowning. I can't imagine living under the oppression that is prevalent in UK.
ReplyDeleteI can smoke in just about any bar and any restaurant I go to. Sure, there are a few who choose to enforce the smoking ban, and doubtless they do trade with non-smokers, but the vast majority of places know that it would be a death knell for them to be non-smoking establishments. And anyway, most of the owners smoke themselves. A good friend of mine opened a bar in town last year, and he is in fact a non-smoker. However, his bar is a smoking bar. And when I visit him at his home, he will always put an ashtray in front of me. There is no question of "you can't smoke in my house". Smoking is normal. Non-smokers don't even notice people smoking around them.
Long live the Greeks! (And actually, they do live long - it must be because they don't listen to the TCI bullshit!)
Yes, life was good six years ago when we Brits were civilised, considerate and tolerant, and not phobic neurotic wrecks scared of everything. I expect we older people will be forced to emigrate to more tolerant countries like Greece or the Czech Rep in our pension age to avoid our criminalisation by the intolerant bigoted Smokerphobics.
ReplyDeleteJust so it's clear, before anyone pops in for a stab, I won't allow "smokers stink" comments nor "smokers are selfish" jibes.
ReplyDelete1) Smell is subjective and there is no law that demands we all like or dislike the same smells. Personally, I prefer the fresh aromatic smell of tobacco burning than I do many other types of smells - including raw alcohol or beer, sweat or urine that now permeates some pubs. I also prefer toacco to onion or garlic or chewing gum but each to his or her own. I certainly wouldn't demand people who like the smells I dislike should be banned from meeting in places where gum is chewed or smell of garlic or onions pervade the room. Antis tend to prefer farts and the smell of shit to tobacco but then they're just weird.
2) Smokers are clearly not selfish as they've always compromised and have never before argued against any ban. If they are deemed "selfish" now because they happen to be outside when someone walks past and doesn't like them smoking then it's hardly their fault that they have no where else to go due to law that puts them there.