Smoking ban killed the boozers

[Squiggs]

The breweries destroyed pubs with their strict and unfair PUBCO's

 

^ this.....

[SnailyBoy]

Sitting and watching a film is a little different than the traditional act of working class man going to the pub after work to smoke & drink isn't it?

 

Traditions change, such as pubs changing opening hours. Which started from the 1st World War

[wellyman]

Get over your self will you??? You make out like every time someone lights up someone drops dead!! Haven't you got other things to worry about?

 

You seemingly haven't:loopy:

[Rupert_Baehr]

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has rejected appeals by the Obama administration and the nation’s largest tobacco companies to get involved in a legal fight about the dangers of cigarette smoking that has stretched more than 10 years.

 

Is that surprising? The Supreme Court will rule on the law - and particularly whether the lower courts made their rulings in accordance with the law. - Not whether 'smoking is bad for your health'. Doctors issue guidance on health, not judges.

 

The court’s action, issued without comment Monday, {1} leaves in place court rulings that the tobacco industry illegally concealed the dangers of smoking for decades. But {2} it also prevents the administration from trying to extract billions of dollars from the industry either in past profits or to fund a national campaign to curb smoking.

 

In asking the court to hear its appeal, the administration said the industry’s half-century of deception {3} “has cost the lives and damaged the health of untold millions of Americans.”

 

The appeal was signed by Elena Kagan, the solicitor general, a couple of months before President Barack Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court.

 

{1} Those rulings probably hurt the tobaco industry, but there's a world of difference between 'illegally concealing dangers' and 'Acting in a manner which they knew was likely to cause the death of smokers.'

 

{2} I wonder why the administration might want to extract billions of dollrs from the industry? They're not short of money, are they? They don't have an un-funded Health Plan (amongst other things) to fund, do they?

 

{3} "Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?" - pace Mandy Rice-Davies.

 

Philip Morris USA, the nation’s largest tobacco maker, its parent company Altria Group Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., British American Tobacco Investments Ltd. and Lorillard Tobacco Co. filed separate but related appeals that took issue with a federal judge’s 1,600-page opinion and an appeals court ruling that found the industry engaged in racketeering and fraud over several decades.

 

In 2006, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled that the companies engaged in a scheme to defraud the public by falsely denying the adverse health effects of smoking, concealing evidence that nicotine is addictive and lying about their manipulation of nicotine in cigarettes to create addiction. A federal appeals court in Washington upheld the findings.

 

Lying about the addictive properties of nicotine and manipulating the nicotine content. - Serious offences. Note that those 'adverse health effects of smoking' aren't detailed. Why do you think that might be?

 

Getting back to my original statement: No court has ever ruled (and not had that ruling dismissed at appeal by a superior court) that an individual who died of lung cancer contracted that disease through smoking.

 

(I'm not sure how we got here from a discussion on the damage done to publicans' incomes by the smoking ban, but: )

 

1. No country which has ever had a significant proportion of its inhabitants use tobacco has managed to eradicate tobacco. - Some of the penalties have been severe. Catherine the Great passed a law which required that smokers would have their noses cut off. - That may have reduced adult literacy in Russia (If you haven't got a nose, how are you going to keep your glasses in place?) but it didn't stamp out smoking.

 

2. Obama may well want to extract money from the Tobacco companies. He and his predecessors are (justifiably) very upset with countries which import other toxic alkaloids into America; why doesn't he ban the export of American tobacco to other countries?

 

3. The British government banned smoking in pubs (and in certain other places) but they aren't doing all they could to eradicate tobacco use in the UK. Why is that?

 

The answers to both of those questions are easy. Money.

 

The tobacco industry generates huge amounts of money for the economies of a number of nations. Furthermore, unlike the money generated by the trade in other drugs, much of that money is taxable.

 

It would be possible to reduce dramatically the use of tobacco in the UK, but it would take time, cost money (in enforcement, loss of tax revenue and additional expenditure on people who declined to die early.)

 

I understand that - at the moment - it is an offence to sell tobacco to anybody under the age of 18. If you want to (nearly) eradicate tobacco, then:

 

1. Make it an offence to import tobacco into the UK.

 

2. Make it an offence to grow tobacco in the UK.

 

3. Require all tobacco to be sold through licenced outlets.

 

4. Make it an offence to smoke in any public place (indoors or out of doors)

 

5. Make it an offence for anybody under the age of 10 to possess or use tobacco. Make it an offence punishable by 15 years imprisonment for any adult to supply tobacco to a person under the age of 10. That's the rule for 2011. In 2102, increase the ages by 1 year - So it becomes an offence for an 11 year old to possess or use; an offence punishable by 15 years for an adult to supply tobacco to a person under the age of 11 (and while you're at it, increase the '18' limit to 19.

 

In about 60 years time, neither of the people living in the UK would smoke.

[SnailyBoy]

(I'm not sure how we got here from a discussion on the damage done to publicans' incomes by the smoking ban, but: )

 

That's easy.....You got it here

[Rupert_Baehr]

... Especially that smoking causes 90% of lung cancers. Which in itself is the largest cancer killer of them all.

 

Where did you get that from? - The article stated that 90% of the people who contracted lung cancer were smokers. It did not say that those people contracted lung cancer through smoking. There's a difference between implying something is true and declaring it to be true.

 

I've no idea how many possible causes of lung cancer exist. If you - as the lawyer acting for somebody who was dying from lung cancer - tried to claim that the cancer had been caused by smoking, how long do you think it would be before the lawyers for the tobacco companies asked you to prove that the cancer was not caused by another known carcinogen?

 

And if you did manage to prove that the carcinogen they had required you to eliminate hadn't caused the cancer, what about another?

 

How long do you think it would go on? Who would run out of money first? - Your client or the tobacco companies?

[SnailyBoy]

Where did you get that from? - The article stated that 90% of the people who contracted lung cancer were smokers. It did not say that those people contracted lung cancer through smoking. There's a difference between implying something is true and declaring it to be true.

 

I've no idea how many possible causes of lung cancer exist. If you - as the lawyer acting for somebody who was dying from lung cancer - tried to claim that the cancer had been caused by smoking, how long do you think it would be before the lawyers for the tobacco companies asked you to prove that the cancer was not caused by another known carcinogen?

 

And if you did manage to prove that the carcinogen they had required you to eliminate hadn't caused the cancer, what about another?

 

How long do you think it would go on? Who would run out of money first? - Your client or the tobacco companies?

 

My client.......huh?

 

You're assuming every smoker who contracts lung cancer wishes to sue a tobacco company for compensation. If so the tobacco company would have to accept liability. However, the cancer sufferer would have to try and prove that they didn't know that smoking would damage their health. So the health warnings on the packs would ironically work in the tobacco companies favour.

 

This really doesn't have anything to do with a smoking ban in public places.

[Bonzo77]

Traditions change, such as pubs changing opening hours. Which started from the 1st World War

 

True, thats the whole point of this thread isn't it? The tradition of a pub being a place for working class men & women to visit after work & have a smoke & a drink has now changed........ and the trade has been directly affect by that change!

[SnailyBoy]

True, thats the whole point of this thread isn't it? The tradition of a pub being a place for working class men & women to visit after work & have a smoke & a drink has now changed........ and the trade has been directly affect by that change!

 

Has it been affected by the smoking ban?

 

Plenty of posters in this thread believe otherwise....

[Cyclone]

Too much of a coincidence for me how everywhere started shutting down when the fag ban came in, you can't just blame the breweries.

 

Didn't they start shutting down several years before that, if you look closely...