Does the smoking ban help us asthma suffers?.

How does the smoking ban help us asthma suffers. What do you think?.

I am finding that people secretly smoke in pub and cafes which does not help us, in the winter. Plus in the the summer it will be to smoky outside for us too.

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Well I am finding it way better than it was. Especially in pubs! Outside is big, so if it is bothering me I just go somewhere else. I think it changed for the best I havent really had any experiences of people breaking the rules inside. In the summer people will smoke out side even if they were allowed to smoke inside.

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in the summer me and family go to places and more people than before smoke outside right in the entrance to places and i have to hold my breath 9that is hard ) smoke is a trigger for me so i stay away away as i can. even my mum has finally given up even when she smoked out side the smell made me wheeze. at our old pub the smoking tent is next door to the play area so thats not good for us kids out side shops more people smoke and even in the hospital people still rule break and smoke. if they want to kill them selfs slowly let them do it in own homes and not let others breath in the 1000s of cancer causing chemical and get help giving up if my mum can after smoking from 10years old over 30 a day them any one can i am very proud of her for doing it. the only good thing is you can be inside and not be ill.

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The smoking ban has made a truly massive difference - I'm not quite sure what else (except banning smoking altogether) could be done. It's better to have to hold your breath for the 10 or so seconds it takes to pass through the door of an establishment than it is to suffer a smoky environment for hours, surely?

As for people smoking on the sly in a building... it's now illegal, and it's also illegal for the owner/manager of the building to allow anyone to smoke in there - the fine for the owner in this case is a quite staggering £2,000 - so if you see anyone smoking in a building, tell the manager; include a thinly-veiled threat to call the police if you think it'll help!

Pubs, etc. were smoky on the outside in summer before the smoking ban was put in place, so I don't think it's made a difference there.

Finally I can play at a club and not smell like a stale ashtray when I get home. Cathy no longer has to worry about whether the venue we're going to is a ""smokey"" one or not; it's made a huge difference.

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I've found the smoking ban has made a huge difference to me. I wasn't sure about it until I went abroad to a country where they were allowed to smoke anywhere and it was quite difficult to find places we could go or eat in.

It makes it easier when we go out as a family as my dad has to go outside to smoke and we don't have to worry so much about finding somewhere that is more asthma friendly.

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ive found the smoking ban has made a huge difference - yes people do tend to smoke at the doors, but then they do that at costa anyway most of the time - and it's only when you are going through the door - i can now go out for an evening and not splat - something that hasn't happened much since i was about 18! I'm loving it!

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The only slight inconvenience I have encountered was one night in Newcastle when ,due to lack of space,I was sitting next to the door and anytime anyone walked in,a huge cloud of smoke followed them in-it soon had a detrimental effect! but that was rare exception to the overall positive benefits of the smoking ban.

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its better that it is by the door rather than inside. Be thankful for what it has come to, i doubt it will get any better. I see that a lot of you are 'complaining' that it is by the door and that you have to hold your beath for a few seconds while walking in. It is way better than it used to and i think that everyone should appreciate it instead of demanding more. I dont mean to sound rude, but a lot of people always think about what they don't have instead of appreciating what they have. I think its human nature. But just realise that you are lucky that they have the smoking ban here, many countries don't.

I wish you all a very merry christmas

Take care of yourselves!

[yaf_user681_30003]

Magnificent difference, but I now worry about getting run over having to walk in the road getting round the smoker-full pavements (whilst also trying not to breathe in the smoke)!

AlanJ

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I actually agree quite whole-heartedly with Haagendaaz. People smoked outside doors before the smoking ban; they still do it now, so it's really no different. The big difference now - as alluded to by Steve below - is the ability to not have to worry about where we're going, whether it will be smoky or not; and the ability to go out for the evening without coming back stinking of smoke.

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One of the best things that's happened this year for me - absolutely liberating. I can now go out to all those pubs and clubs I was being excluded from for most of my adult life (in my area there was only 1 no smoking pub and not a single nightclub or music venue so that's pretty much everywhere). It also makes commuting by train everyday more comfortable as the train station was hell some days. It's not solved everything - I find smokers are still not very conscientious and if they think they can get away with a crafty fag they will - the worst thing is in bus shelters that technically should be no smoking but everyone ignores it so I still have to stand out in the rain, and sometimes on the top deck of buses you get some idiot kid that lights up but I'm not afraid to challenge them. We also get smokers still hogging the benches at my local hospital (where I work some of the time as well as having been a patient many times) and I find the security tend to turn a blind eye. So we have won an important battle but there are more to come.

I think the key thing is education - I don't like that smokers clearly feel they should only comply with the ban when they have to. I think it would be far more productive to educate more smokers to be more considerate to others and to make it clear that it's bad manners to just sit next to someone and light up without asking them or to light up in an enclosed space like a bus shelter or hang around every entrance.

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Absolutely!!!!!

Smoking is nightmarish for most (if not all) asthma patients and it certainly didn't do us any harm when a ban finally came into force.

I am a much happier bunny for it and wish all of us wheezy-coughing people all the best for 2008.

Much love, Fluffy. xxx

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hi

hi well i so hate when they smoke outside now because it affects my asthma still so and take my inhaler as people are so inconciderate blowing it in your face and it makes me bad when you just about to enter a pub or cinema or cafe.but hey if they want to smoke loads a day and die of cancer so let them at least i dont think were paying their expence but the nhs is and what a big pay packet it is.maybe they ought to bring cigeratte prices up then they will quit.and bring the price up for roll ups that will make them stop.lol

from groovy chick

[Moose1]

The bad has really helped me. I started uni last september. I'm doing Interpreting (british sign lang.) and there is a large deaf community here. I go to a Deaf Club that happens in a normal pub in the city centre and if the smoking ban hadn't happened i very much doubt i would be able to attend and I certainly wouldn't be able to stay there all night.

People smoking in door ways is annoying but it's always happened, i just hold my breath (and maybe make sure they know i am lol), i frequently have to do that with buses and other diesel vehicles or old petrol vehicles.

Christine

[yaf_user681_25820]

I think there are more smokers in the high street .Its not as if they could have smoked in the shops before but it seems to me that there are more smokers to dodge along with the heavily perfumed and the flowers!

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There's 'nothing' (well not literally) worse than being down-wind of a smoker walking down the street! Pubs are great now but stale beer smell is the trade-off!

The real pain though is that the outside areas are hijacked so that's ruined as the concentration of smoke makes it pretty unfriendly.

A

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'Does the smoking ban help us asthma suffers?.'

no i don,t think it does where i live poeple don,t seem to care if they are blowing it in your face at the moment i,m have some physiotherapy for a neck problem and standing at the bus is a no no people just stand blowing there smokein your face and don,t seem to care in the end i had to move just so i did not have to breath it in i am an ex smoker and i always kept my bad habit to myself

cross-stitcher26

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Cross-stitcher26 - surely the problems you describe are not actually related to the smoking ban, but to inconsiderate smokers in general. The ban is a massive move for the benefit of non-smokers (not just asthma sufferers), but it isn't possible to ""ban"" the things you mention without banning smoking altogether (and that's never going to happen, even though a fair few of us here probably think it should).

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I think Cross-stitcher26's points relate to the wider issue I was trying to address which is that we have won a victory in one sense (and it is very nice to be able to go out more) but in some other senses the ""ban"" has detracted from the broader issue of how do we (or indeed can we?) educate smokers to be more considerate towards people with breathing disabilities generally? I don't think this is something you can just legislate away (nor should it be) and in many respects is part-and-parcel of the me-me-me"" attitudes in society generally. However I think it may be worth exploring ways of shifting people's behaviour away from the default position being just to light up regardless of who is near you, to it being seen as polite behaviour to ask people first and give them the option of saying no (rather than what usually happens which is us having to grin and bear it, move away or if we do speak up for ourselves, face a torrent of self righteous abuse). I don't think it's so much a case of educating individual smokers as changing the prevailing cultural norms and values regarding what is acceptable behaviour and what is not.