If you support freedom then you should oppose what the Smokers' Rights Party stands for.

As I pointed out in the Smokers' Rights Party's Facebook page:

- allowing smoking in a venue (such as a pub) is discriminatory, as it means that people with particular medical conditions - such as asthma, pregnancy, emphysema, etc. - will not be able to go to the venue. Allowing business-owners to permit smoking in their businesses is akin to calling for the repeal of a law that mandates that all businesses have wheelchair access.

- to allow business-owners to permit smoking at their businesses is a violation of the rights of the business' employees to a safe and healthy working environment.

- the tobacco industry is riddled with human trafficking, environmental damage, and child labour. Whenever you buy tobacco you are supporting this.

- smoking pollutes the air.

- there are the further problems of people smoking around their children, smoking around their pets, smoking while pregnant, and littering their cigarette butts. I recognise that not all smokers are guilty of this, but each of them is enough of a problem on its own to warrant anti-smoking and anti-tobacco laws.

Rachel Connor is correct that littering one's cigarette butts is illegal. However, countless smokers break that law every day and couldn't care less.

Regarding the "nanny-state" argument, I would be interested if Rachel Connor opposes laws mandating cyclists and motorcyclists wear helmets, and that people riding in cars and trucks wear seatbelts.

Is the author's problem her libertarianism?

During the seventies I read two of Ayn Rand's books because Malcolm Fraser indicated that he had been influenced by her philosophy. That philosophy has been comprehensively discredited. Maybe MF had a Road to Damascus experience when on the "Eminent Persons" committee in South Africa during the apartheid era.

Human nature is more geared to co-operation than it is to tough competition except if stirred by "us and them" indoctrination.

We were co-operative hunters and gatherers for millions of years before agriculture became our way about 10,000 years ago. Each group tended to have its own hunting territory and "them" contacts were probably few.

Dear Foyle,

<<Human nature is more geared to co-operation than it is to tough competition except if stirred by "us and them" indoctrination.>>

Yes, with two caveats:

1. Human nature is geared for co-operation within reasonably-sized groups where everyone knows everyone else. Also, when someone was unhappy with his group, they could simply cross the hill to the next valley and join "them". This experiment of forcing together a 6-9-digit number of people, is unprecedented and from an ecological point of view is not likely to last long.

2. While humans necessarily follow their nature, we are not humans: we only wear a human body for some 70-100 years, so we do have the potential and hope to grow beyond human limitations rather than be enslaved to them.

While Rachel is correct on every count, pity she chose to head her campaign with the lowest of freedoms, choosing of all things (though treading carefully) to campaign on an issue that is bordering on harming others. The elephant in the room is the involuntary nature of the territory-based state, that we are forced into a society of millions without ever being asked whether we agree to have anything to do with them, regardless whether or not we have common goals with them.

Had we freely consented to be part of the group to begin with, then I wouldn't see a problem with the group imposing its shared values on us. Yet this is currently not the case.

On the TV this morning were images of well heeled suckers pulling nicotine laden vapor into their lungs, and out their flared nostrils, from an E smoke!
Apparently, this satisfies the need to imbibe nicotine and the oral gratification that is also part of the addiction that is smoking.
Now, this form of smoking, doesn't foul the air, with carcinogenic tar or make my hair and clothes smell like an ashtray!
And kissing one of these addicts, leaves a very unpleasant after taste, like a very dirty tar filled ashtray! It makes me a former smoker, spit for literal hours!
I enjoy a few beers now and then, the outcome of my pleasure is increased urination!
But, I just don't have a right to climb on a chair and hiss on your head, to in a word, share the outcome of my pleasure.
I would be charged with criminal assault offence, creating a public nuisance and halve a dozen statutes that are yet to come to mind!
No smoker has the right to forcibly share his or her particular addiction, with those that don't!
And there are now just too many alternatives or treatments, for this antisocial behavior to be allowed to continue, in any public venue!
Except say, E smokes for the heavily addicted.
E smokes seem to result in a 60% quitting rate, far and away much more successful than any other alternative or substitute; and the only reason for tolerating this far less harmful, non tar example, in a public place?
Albeit, one with sheltered corners reserved exclusively for the E smoking nicotine addict!
Rhrosty.

If you want to ban smoking on health grounds, you have to immediately ban at least 90% of the council busses in Brisbane, & 99% of all other busses including & particularly school busses. Their exhausts make cigarette smoke almost pure by comparison.

If you were a doctor 20 years ago, the ploy of attacking smokers to divert the attention of how many clients your profession was maiming & killing was a good, & most successful one.

If you just like bossing others around, yea, smokers are a good target.

If there were still the same percentage of smokers today as 20 years ago, the tax they would pay would just about pay off Labour's deficit.

I'm a hard hearted bugger, with not much sympathy for most who cause their own problems, but older smokers are one group I feel sorry for. I reckon they have had a raw deal.

We continually have bleeding hearts crying for drug addicts, of all the illegal drugs, & spend billions on them. Studies I have read tell us that nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs known, but we do nothing but denigrate the poor bloody smoker.

Smoking is a omplicated topic.
My father was a heavy smoker, as was his father. My father died at age 84, with emphysema. He never had a heart problem. His elder brother was a non smoker who died of a heart attack at age 68. My brother was a non smoker who died o a heart attack at age 68. My younger brother is a heavy smoker and at age 70 has never had a heart problem.

I am a non smoker, and at age 68 had open heart surgery. Another brother gave up smoking, and now has heart problems.

Ehese are merely observations. I have no conclusions, but deplore some of the attitudes to smokers

The smoker who thoughtlessly fouls the very air others, including small children or babies are supposed to breathe, is offensive or anti social!
I have no smoking signs all over the place, and my smoking friends usually have the courtesy to step outside, to suck on another coffin nail.
One, a friend of a friend, had no such consideration, and blew her smoke in the face of one of my kids, who incidentally has asthma!
When my kid coughed and remarked the smoke was blowing right in her face, the smoker replied, shift your face!
None of the smoking population that I have seen, show any consideration for others, light up wherever they can, and dispose of their buts, in the most cavalier fashion!
Which all too often results in fires and possible loss of property, or even lives!
As others have commented, it is more addictive than heroin! But much more harmful!
A heroin user, doesn't impose his or her habit on anyone else, albeit, there is much criminality inherent in obtaining this substance.
Many reject the reasons for a heroin addict supporting his or her habit, but get all glassy eyed and empathetic, when something even more addictive is included in the conversation.
Drugs can and do kill, but usually only as overdoses.
Cigarettes on the other hand, kill you and slowly and rob you of very many things, including perhaps, your own home; or worse, your health.
Yes diesel buses, pour carcinogenic particulates into the atmosphere, but not ones fueled by CNG!
And if we weren't so busy selling the shirts of our backs, we'd keep this copious product, and use it exclusively at home, to build a really strong economy, and most of our transport solutions!
CNG works nearly as well in a ceramic fuel cell as hydrogen, and like hydrogen produces mostly water vapor as the exhaust product!
If enough of us made a fuss about using expensive fully imported diesel, the authorities would be left with few other choices, but to legislate, to convert our transport options to cleaner locally available alternatives!
Rhrosty.

Smokers taxes probably account for most of the health budget, If you are worried about smoking and its effect on the quality of the air that you breathe then I am sorry to tell you that just time spent out walking around in modest traffic can induce far more physical problems than smoking ! Believe it or not traffic causes lung cancer ! The problem with today's society is that we are scared to live and scared to die, there are carcinogens in almost everything you eat drink, put on your body like hair colors, dyes in clothing materials,fluoride in your tap water,high electricity poles that surround your house,alcohol,herbicides and chemicals that are sprayed onto crops,they even came out with a statistic that states four million Australian workers will die of cancer because of work related issues ! So what are you to do ? Live life and be easy on yourself because you will not escape death no matter what you do ! Start living or spend your life forever worried about your own mortality,stop reading about the negative and think about the positive before you end up couched on a psychiatrists chair unwilling and unable to face life ! Smokes who gives damn !

Leo Lane

I've always scratched my head about this sort of thing too.

I don't mean to refute all the research, or spruik for the tobacco industry, and I fully agree that life is generally better now that we don't have to put up with cigarette smoke fouling our lungs and public places, and stinkifying our hair and clothes every time we have a night out.

But how DO we explain these people who live well into their eighties, having smoked all their lives, yet don't succumb to smoking-related diseases - or if they do, it's at an age where they are going to succumb to SOMEthing anyway. Three out of my four grandparents fit this category, as well as several uncles and aunts, plus my mother, plus a few friends and acquaintances - who all grew up in smoking-friendlier times.

One of my closest friends - a smoker - was operated on twice back in the 80s for brain aneurysms. She was told that it was caused by smoking (not the fact that her father and grandmother had both suffered the same condition). She was ordered in no uncertain terms to stop smoking - one neurosurgeon threatening not to treat her if she failed to give up. Though she has tried many times to stop, she has more or less continued to smoke ever since - and, now aged 60, has remained aneurysm-free.

We all know people who fit this profile. Why does it never get factored into the smoker rights debate?

(Disclaimer: I'm a non-smoker.)

yes/kilar..the darn facts/that get in the way of a very proffitable tax..that bit of clever stuff done..in the 60.s..paidoff hansomly..in tax take.

a few might have noticed/the same 'science imposed guilt/they tried on globaly/taxing ac weigfhtless gas[by the ton]..[carbon/the basis of all life..officially..'mandated'..as a poisen..by some clean air govt dept..[its sickening]

and to explain..smoking weed..acts phisiologicly/thus smoke...toobacco..;narrows the arteries/increasing blood presure/but also thickening..the walls of veins aretieries/thus preventing blow up

smoke canabinols..and the veins areries expand[and your eyes get red]
thats about all/physiologicly..that happens with..smoking..[that 'rush'..people note].

anyhow i look at the cancer stats/and they are the same regardless/of it we smoke or not[ie smoking isnt a factor]..plus..the attempts/at laying it at the feet/of inhaling second-hand-smoke..is nullified/exposed..as fraud..by the same ratios/ie smoking/not a factor.

further..this thing about working in smokefilled rooms[employ only smokers/and sit smokers near the inlet[that draws/smoke outwards/but have clean air vents smokefree[smokedrifts]..regarding the oft heard/ciggie butt issue/half a fag=50 cents..quarter a fag=25 cents[simply put a true price/on giggie butts/and we will collect/them..and trade them in for smoke.

there are ways to be nice/but people chose to hate us
like we know we smell[when we all stank/no one got uppity/about it/but now we know to stay/downwind..[i gave up smoking and got astmatac/plus the world really stinks/like perfume\and that sex attractant/minks..should be banned from lifts.

i dont hear of the adverse affects from breathing in booze fumes[a known carcinogene]..but/its the huge lies[like smokers/mainly are thin[not obese diabetics/with margereene/in our veins.

and we know frostbite/not smoking/self deleted..then toes
but the 800 million/we smokers cost..not 32 billion..thats the biggest lie[thats how much we payin govt taxes]..when we only cost 800/million..[but its easy money/next years/the auto-indexed/price increases by 3 billion..[an extyra 3000 all smokers must come-up/with/not even mentioned..in the media

but why bother/trying to correct the lies..we will outlive..you
and we unlike you nonsmokers..we smokers paid our way..unlike you leeches guilting/us..cause our tax dont stink/yet we do/screw/the damm lot of you.

go tax abortionist's/or bankers.,,.make the rich/pay-their..own way.
get/your tax fix..from drunks or diabetics..[soon you have 2million diabetics]..just 6 more years/P/they will finally be taxing drunks and sweeties...cause the diabetics..sent us broke.

its all been said so many times
but the needy..love being better..[more holy/..than..stinking smokers]

even by those most offended..we are least deffended/
but here we got the balance..here..that was lost..here

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16263&page=0

there are no bigger threats/to humanities liberties
that you telling me what i can put into my body

screw/the lot of you/its time you worried
about what your allowing to be put..into your minds..;.you hate/me..ask why[by what right has govt declared war..on me and my people.

by what right punitive over taxation
based upon spin and collused lies.

nanny statist revenue raising law..by what right?.[que warrento?]
where is govt nanny moralisation tax allowed in the con?..federal/con..or satate con..

none autherise..sin taxation without representation.
how low will you go?

it has its karma/most likely diabetus.
as you feed..your..mouths lost\/love addictions...[afflictions]

*you lot are sensory deprived.
and terrified..of a lie.

Thanks for your observations, Killarney. I always regarded smoking as a filthy habit, which must be harmful to the participant.

When it was suggested to me some years ago that, for some people, there could be some benefits, I rejected the idea.

Having observed, over the years, what actually happens, I find it hard to rationalize the situation.

I have never been able to understand people who ride pushbikes in peak hour traffic, & claim it's healthy. Could it be that only not very bright people ride bikes? I don't have to spend very long in a traffic jam to start feeling sick on the stomach, even with car locked up tight, & the air conditioning on recycle.

Strangely I don't mind people smoking in my car. Provided the windows are down, & the air con off, I just don't smell it, although with the air on it starts to stink quite quickly.

Most smokers I have found quite considerate. Many will not smoke in my car, even if I tell them it's OK. One, on a trip from Sydney to Brisbane with me, would not smoke in my car, even though it was a convertible, with the roof down. I had to stop for him to walk around having that cigarette about every hour so.

He was exceedingly well trained by the antismoking Nazis. He maintained his courtesy to me even though we both thought it was funny.

I believe that when the do gooders have even your enemies in their sights, you should support your enemy. Once they have eliminated your enemy there is every chance you will be next in their sights, & there will be less left to oppose them.

its time/we exposed..how govt sets up big lies
to do/things..it need motivate..us into doing

The Great Global Warming Swindle Full Movie.
same/shame/sham..lies..inswtalling guilt..for a new tax.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-m09lKtYT4

OF THE LIARS,
BY THE LIARS,..AND FOR THE LIARS*
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/oftheliars.php

Let's start with some basic concepts. You live in an age of lies. Every day of your life you are literally being drowned in lies. Lies by government. Lies by advertisers. Lies by the corporate media.

Truth has become such a valuable commodity
that the government..is economizing it!
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/defense-department-refuses-tell-senate-groups-war.html

A reminder that rulers always lie to the ruled,
http://www.blacklistednews.com/DynCorp_and_Northrop_Suckered_Pentagon_into_Paying_Employees_more_than_24_Hours_a_Day_for_Narco-Terrorism_Programs/35374/0/0/0/Y/M.html
and the Government/is most assuredly not an exception!
http://intellihub.com/country/

http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/rotten-criminal-justice-system/

http://rinf.com/alt-news/latest-news/6-ways-monsanto-are-destroying-humanity/

RELEASE US: a short film on police brutality by Charles Shaw
http://xrepublic.tv/node/9037

Cop Assaults Air Force Capt for Not Knowing Neighbor,
Says He Could Have Tased or Shot Him Instead
http://xrepublic.tv/node/9036

http://investmentwatchblog.com/japan-begins-purposely-dumping-100s-of-tons-of-radioactive-water-from-fukushima-into-the-pacific/

http://investmentwatchblog.com/america-u-s-special-forces-foreign-troops-practice-martial-law-invasion-in-florida-may222014/