View Single Post
Old 22-10-2013, 13:13   #23
Sunflower49
Senior Member
 
Sunflower49's Avatar
 

Re: Smoking in school

Quote:
Originally Posted by Judith Addison View Post
I would have thought a school classed as a public building and that no smoking would be allowed anywhere within the grounds. At Hyndburn Borough Council smoking was banned altogether several years ago. You can't even smoke in your own car on a Council car park. Staff who previously could go to a nice cosy smoking room in works time suddenly found themselves having to clock out, put on their outdoor coat and go and sit on a bench at the bottom of Ormerod Street. How will these kids cope with the discipline of a workplace where smoking isn't allowed if they have been allowed to light up at certain times in a designated area of the playground? Also, whatever happened to promoting a healthy lifestyle?
The smoking in your own car thing is a bit harsh, I think-unless It's a company car of course. Where do legalities lie on that, or is it just a case of it being written in the work rules and if you don't comply you're up for disciplinary?

I don't know what it will be like in the future but most workplaces still allow employees to take breaks and allocate somewhere outside of the building where it is acceptable to smoke
Not doing it inside a building is obviously a legal thing now.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Judith Addison View Post
The thing I can never get my head round, never having been a smoker, is seeing patients in wheelchairs, wearing their pyjamas or nighties and dressing gowns, still attached to their drip, sitting in the freezing cold outside the front door of all our hospitals, having a fag! The mind boggles!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric View Post
Save the boggling for things cofusing and difficult to comprehend ... this is a no brainer; smoking is an addiction When I started, it was more-or-less expected that one would smoke. You could smoke in restaurants, buses, trains, planes, movie theatres, even hospitals for chrissake. And now, as Edmund observed: "The wheel has come full circle." Problem I have with the anti-smoking campaigns and laws, are that they seem to have moralistic overtones (undertones too). It's as if smokers are not sufferers from an addiction, but, somehow they are immoral, sinful, not as "good" as non smokers. This, of course, is an immense crock of horse manure. I find the obviously punitive measures taken against smokers distasteful. However, I do feel that point of anti-smoking measures should be to prevent people from starting.
It is an addiction and although I don't smoke and when I did I only ever did it as a social activity , I imagine if one is a smoker and is stuck in hospital which is usually a stressful, frustrating and boring situation (at best!) The desire to smoke would increase, not decrease!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric View Post
I don't think one can deny the zealotory and smug moralizing of the anti-smoking campaign ... it's as plain as the fact that smoking is a powerful addiction, which should, through education and good-parenting (I know ... this is a tricky one) and reasonable restrictions on smokers, be limited to an ever decreasing addicted minority.
I agree. Who was it who famously said they quit heroin and nicotine, and nicotine was the harder of the two!?

It is usually a very difficult thing to give up. On top of the addiction you have the fact that It's habitual, association is there for after eating, on waking, during conversation etc, and products containing nicotine remain widely available and easy to access. There is a stigma now, and the smugness of the anti-smoking campaign isn't helpful.

But if one is trying to give up an illegal drug that is more stigmatised and not as easy to find, it has to be easier?

My Grandmother continues to smoke (although not very often) even though she's had lung cancer.

She said on returning from hospital she didn't want a cigarette, wasn't craving nicotine at all and made a good recovery, but something was missing and she became very depressed for the first time in her life.

I can't pretend I fully understand that, but I do find it interesting in a way. If it wasn't lack of nicotine that made her reach for the cigarettes again, what was it..?

I agree with Eric, if you smoke, many people see you as a dirty, unintelligent, immoral human being. I don't think it means any of that, just a person who has succumbed somewhat to a powerful addiction-very easy done.
__________________
Life is 10% what happens to you-and 90% your reaction to it.
Sunflower49 is offline   Reply With Quote