Voluntary Smoking bans

Last week at Franks Place, we were discussing the smoking ban and how it has become normal for many people, particularly the young who have started to frequent pubs only since the ban was put in place and have known nothing different

It's not uncommon for children to be used as a good excuse to have smoking banned in certain places. It's also not uncommon for The Tobacco Control Industry to press gang children into their campaigns and have them stood protesting outside a school or playground with placards in their hands

'For the children' is the rallying cry of the Tobacco Control Whack-A-Moles when they keep popping up to demand the next restriction or ban, but ten years since they first showed us that private property is no longer private and not immune to Government interference, smoking bans and the idea of further legislation has become so much accepted by the general public, legislation is now not always necessary. Tobacco Control can simply ask people to ban themselves from smoking and the brainwashed masses will jump through hoops to see that it happens

Smokefree Sidelines
Kids copy adult behaviour – so please don’t smoke on the sidelines.

That’s the message in a campaign launched by Healthy Norwich and the Norfolk County Football Association.

Tobacco Control must have regular get togethers and try to come up with new places where children go and adults are still allowed to have a smoke

Local youth football clubs are being invited to join the campaign and become smoke free spaces. This means members and visitors are asked to refrain from smoking indoors and outdoors, anywhere on site, including all playing fields and especially the pitch side lines.

'Invited'. Makes it sound like a privilege, doesn't it?

If mums and dads are seen smoking as they watch their children play a game, it sets a bad example. So the good thing to do is either walk away or better still, quit altogether

If mums and dads smoke, their kids are going to see them smoking a lot more often than while they are playing a game of football. Banning smoking on the sidelines will make no difference what-so-ever to children seeing adults smoking. But of course, it's never about the actual health message they say it is, it's only about making it as difficult for adults to smoke anywhere

The most effective way to prevent young people from becoming smokers is to encourage adult smokers to quit and to remove young people’s exposure to smoking.”

That's a disgusting stance to take. Adults must be forced to quit in order to prevent children starting. It's already against the law for children to smoke, cigarette taxes have made tobacco prohibitively expensive for kids (and many adults) and the new plain packaging laws were supposed to be so effective at preventing kids from smoking, they were referred to as a 'vaccine against lung cancer'. Yet the simple act of seeing an adult smoke will make a child take up the habit?

Norfolk FA Chairman, Michael Banham said: “We’re delighted to be able to provide support to such a worthwhile initiative that can have a real positive impact on the lives of Norfolk’s youth footballers.

Baaa!

James Wade, from Smokefree Norfolk, added: “Around 35% of children who smoke start around the age of 12 years with 90% of those children starting smoking because a family member does or because they feel peer pressure from their friends.

So nowt to do with 'glitzy' packaging then?

Secondhand smoke has been proven to be 85% more toxic than smoking

Good Lord! Passive smoking is more harmful than actual smoking? Passive smoking was originally invented as a good excuse to ban smoking in pubs. As long as smokers were only harming themselves, there wasn't a good reason for such a draconian ban, but as soon as it could be shown with bad science, that smokers were killing everyone around them, the ban became justifiable

Now it's come to this. Smokers are actually doing more harm to people around them than they are to themselves. These are the people who are breathing a wisp of massively diluted ciggy smoke in the ambient air.

The batshit just keeps on coming

Being a smoke free sports club is not about unfairly targeting smokers

All tobacco legislation is about unfairly targeting smokers. It's all about making it as difficult as possible for smokers to enjoy a cigarette anywhere, in the hope that they will eventually do as they're told and quit for good. Or become 'smokefree' in TC Newspeak

Rather, it is about promoting your sports club as a healthy and inclusive place

But just not inclusive for smokers.

Last year, Healthy Norwich worked together to designate 85 children’s play parks as Smokefree.
Smokefree Sidelines is an important next step for the Healthy Norwich campaign

Voluntary smoking bans. I hope their are enough smokers left with the balls to tell them where to shove their smokefree spaces