health

Doctors urge UK government to ban smoking in cars

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"Doctors" urge a ban on smoking in cars? Give me a break, as if we're supposed to believe that doctors can't sleep at night because some people are smoking in their cars.

Let's be honest at least, the BMA is simply regurgitating government policy under the guise of worried doctors caring about people's health.

This is yet another Orwellian intrusion in our lives.

2 ( +5 / -2 )

Please, pleeeeeeease let Japan follow in Britain's footsteps! It would be heaven to be able to walk into restaurants and cafes here without having to worry about the smoke or end up feeling sick.

I would love to see a ban on smoking in all apartments, too. Not only does smoke get into the walls, making the place smelly for people who move in next, it also creeps into the neighbor's apartment! I hate that my stupid college student neighbor smokes and it comes into my house even with the windows closed. I tried complaining, but there's nothing that I can do about it short of move. I was here for over a year before he moved in, and of course the cost of moving is just too prohibitive here! I hate having to suffer for someone else's drug addition. ToT

-1 ( +6 / -7 )

I agree that it's a bit intrusive to say that an adult can't smoke inside his private vehicle. BUT, I would wholeheartedly support a law that prohibits people from smoking in their cars if there is a minor on board. I sympathize with the elderly, as mentioned in the article, who may also not be able to refuse a ride in a car driven by a smoker, but I am incensed when I see a car with a smoking driver with kids inside being made to breathe concentrated second hand smoke. If the laws prohibiting the sale of tobacco to minors are there to protect them from the harmful effects of tobacco, then there should be related laws that ban smoking in the immediate presence of minors and ban adults from taking minors into a place where they will be subjected to second hand smoke like the smoking sections of restaurants, waiting rooms, and of course the confined space of a vehicle.

Jamie in Japan, I totally sympathize with you. I have a neighbor in an adjoining apartment, can't tell which one yet, who smokes out on his balcony and whose smoke finds its way into my bedroom even with my windows closed. It really pisses me off that he obviously smokes outside so as not to pollute his own apartment and family with his smoking but that I have to suffer from the stench as a result.

1 ( +2 / -2 )

I wonder whats next?........Body odor? Since I quit smoking, I'm a lot hungrier these days and the wife knows I love chili with beans so she always keeps a big pot on the stove.....Enjoy the smell :-)

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Smokers just don't realize, or refuse to admit it.

I was part of a smoking family, in a previous life. We'd take trips with my then-wife's mother and father and all three would merrily light up together in the car. For me it was like being gassed.

Her mother slowly suffocated to death from emphysema, and her father mercifully died of a sudden stroke. They were in their early 60s. My ex was 56 when she succumbed to a mix of respiratory and heart disease.

As a dutiful son-in-law I would clean their house windows once a year. The nicotine film was incredible, but not really so noticeable until you drew pictures in it. Basically like lightly tinted sunglasses from just a year of chain smoking. Paper towels would become black as tar with one stroke.

Makes me ill to think what their lungs must have been like. Very, very sad.

We also have a balcony smoker near us here in Tokyo. So WE are the ones who have to close our windows and turn on the aircon instead of enjoying the fresh air. What can be fair or reasonable about that?

3 ( +5 / -2 )

As someone who hates breathing in cancer-causing smoke, I do think smokers should be allowed to smoke in their cars IF there are no children and other passengers do not object. I do believe that smokers have some right to try and get cancer quickly and suffer a horrible death if they want. As for other regulations already in place in civilized countries, I wish they were in place in Japan too, as Jamie says (don't know why he's being marked down). Smokers deluding themselves that tobacco is like candy? I refuse to go into restaurants which do not provide adequate protection from lung cancer.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Isn't it funny how society now makes all these new laws and regulations, yet society is worse off for it. If you were alive in the 1960's you would understand. After no smoking in cars, what next?

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

VicMOsaka

After no smoking in cars, what next?

How about mandatory seat belt and child seat laws. Oh wait, we've already done that. Were you against those laws too? What's funny, actually sad, is that society has to make such laws and regulations to protect the helpless, like children and the elderly, from the stupid and selfish.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Ban it for sure.

When my mansion was having outside reform, and they put that curtain around the building in the middle of the summer, the balcony smokers, and kitchen smokers were really rude. I went wild about it so much, that the reform boss hooked up tubes to their outside vents for the kitchen smokers, and had the tubes exit through the curtain. Helped a lot, but not 100%. I have asthma, and do not need these rude people.

Ban them everywhere.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

I agree that smokers shouldn't be lighting up in any enclosed space where there are non-smokers around. Japanese companies deserve some kudos for this -- just 10-15 years ago, office workers routinely chain-smoked at their desks! I remember my first few years at work, around the turn of the millennium, and every day was torture as everyone in my "island" of connected desks smoked and there were ashtrays balances on the partitions.

Then the innovation of a single, separate smoking room came about, and today there are only a few places in my building where smokers can indulge -- and they're far from where anyone is required to sit all day long.

(Incidentally, the smoking room quickly developed walls that were so hideously yellow-brown that it would sicken you just to look at them. A photo of that room on the day we moved out would make a great anti-smoking advertisement.)

Speaking of smokers and cars, the next problem is to get these exhaust-emitting automobiles replaced by electric vehicles. Walking or biking in close proximity to cars might even be worse for your lungs than being around a smoker. You get disgusting black soot everywhere -- and the drivers don't have to breathe it in at all! Automakers, at least have the decency to put the exhaust pipe on the inner side of the road and not on the outside where innocent people are walking. Cars are the "smokers" of the roads and I can't wait until those exhaust pipes are finally gone.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Kids are victims of stupid parents who smoke, they stink of smoke, develop lung diseases etc..so sad I feel for this innocent victims of horrible parents. Good on the UK!

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

People need to be more tolerant of others;

Smoker/Non-smoker, Gay/Straight, Christian/Muslim, White/Black etc.

We can't just scorn those different from us.

Tolerance and mutual respect are the foundation of a good society.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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