No Blacks, Irish, Dogs and Smokers...

If you don't live in England or don't know, today is the first day the smoking ban came into place. From now on in England, you can't smoke in a enclosed public space.

I smoke and have done so for about 12 years. I don't smoke a lot. Very, very few of my friends smoke. In fact, nearly all of them don't smoke. Neither did I start because of my friends, none except one did. I am a considerate smoker. Most smokers are.

I like to have drink. And I like to have a roll up (tobacco) with my drink. Not seperately. Not one inside and the other outside.

I don't agree they passsed this law. I think they should have non smoking areas. I think they should have non smoking areas in ALL public enclosed spaces and that the government should give proprieters subsidies to build partitions in their estanblishments. Not force proprioters to enforce a non smoking environment to all areas. I think proprioters should be allowed to choose. Just as they can choose who enters and who doesn't.

Most non smokers have said in defense of the ban, 'why should I inhale other peoples's cigarettes?'. Well... I don't stand in front of moving vehicles because I don't want to get run over. Okay, okay, granted I don't like a stinky pub or restaurant. But I don't think it should be one or the other. Thus a stict non smoking section. Exiling smokers to the outside, leaving their drinks and friends inside simply isn't fair, especially when it gets cold. Most people who don't and have never smoked simply don't understand people who do. To many, it simply seems like a disgusting habit none of us should do and especially not indoors with people who don't smoke.

If the government wanted to better our health and making a safer environment, they would ban cars that run on petrol , chemical pestercides in produce (some of which can cause cancer), American fast food chains (diabetes and obestsity and food poisioning), propaganda tabloid newspapers and television, celebrity driven magazines and stop invading middles eastern countries they suspect holding terrorist cells. You don't see the British Army riding armoured cars into Bradford do you?

The NHS might fair better but then, why doesn't the government spend more on the NHS and less on upgarding the Trident Submarines. They have passed a law switching around 500 years of smoking in public houses and in turn, have suppressed civil liberties a little more.

- J