I recently saw a number of people "sharing a cigar" in a restaurant precinct. I just happened to be walking by and had to breath this in, and it was awful.

I don't how people can do this - but one person had a big happy smile on his face.

Just this week, I was diagnosed with Hypothyroidism, which I'd never heard of it and it was a complete shock as I will now be on more medications, from 7 to 8 per week.

I have 3 medical conditions, now 4 (none of my own choice) and yet smokers, think they have some holy right to treatment and take away doctors, nurses and other health services when they end up with severe illness.

I'm now waiting for the time when I get told I have smoking related illness from other smokers in Australia.

Don't hold your breath, NathanJ

>>I'm now waiting for the time when I get told I have smoking related illness from other smokers in Australia.<<

Oh, wait...

Hi Nathan,

As a three-fags-a-day criminal, I realise how similar my behaviour is to the hacking off of the head of an 82-year-old world-regarded, hard-working antiquarian by a bunch of [non-smoking] fascists, and the destruction of the priceless heritage of all of humanity, at Palmyra, Mosul, etc.

I'm trying to cut down, maybe just one in the morning and one at night: legislation to forbid me from smoking in my own yard [I won't smoke inside] might help that along, perhaps policed by an attractive woman living-in, and checking me out at 2 a.m. to see that I'm not smoking in bed. Not so much a nanny, more a 'companion'.

Seriously, there really are more important issues. Get a grip.

Cheers,

Joe

Oh come now Joe, this is obviously not just an issue for NathanJ, but for the wider community, given all the new anti-smoking laws that have been enacted.

NathanJ, I know how you feel with having yet another medical condition that you didn't bring on yourself, but many smokers will tell you they are fine and that emphysema and lung cancer only happen to other people!

Or they will say they know this bloke or that woman who got lung cancer 'when they never smoked in their life'. Then, upon more questions, you find out they lived with a smoker, or they worked on a farm or in an industry with chemicals or other substances that affected their lungs.

As a nurse, believe me I have heard it all...and looked after all the consequences of both active and passive smoking , including peripheral vascular disease, lung disease, mouth and throat cancer and poor wound healing.

I love the first two responses. Poor old Nathan. Thanks for sharing your health problems with us.

Should Australia be constantly adding to a problem that the Labor Rudd and Gillard governments regarded as so serious as to warrant bans?

"..studies have shown that in the Arab-speaking population in Sydney, more than 50% of both males and females smoke, that among the Sydney-based Lebanese community, about 49% of males and 29% of females are smokers, and that male members of the Vietnamese community in Sydney have smoking rates of 53%.4" [www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au]

Maybe one of the experts in multiculturalism and the 'diversity-Australia-has-to-have' could advise?