Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

World

The war on smoke.

Jaap den Haan. | 19.02.2006 18:47 | Analysis | World

Full employment.

The U.K. parliament has voted for a total ban on smoking in all public areas. One spokeswoman of the Liverpool anti-smoking campaign pointed out how they had been inspired by advisors from California, where the trend in this direction had started. A decisive argument for the ban in Britain however had been to protect the health of workers. From the time of the mining industry, pubs already closed early in Britain, to help workers go to bed and get up early. This has changed since last year. Yet, workers have always enjoyed much protection as such, not necessarily as individuals.
Ronald Reagan, who moved California and the world in the rightist direction, was an initiator of the war on drugs. Influential people like Noble Prize winner Milton Friedman have stated that such a war is an exercise in futility and can never be morally or successfully won, as it criminalizes the whole of society.
So it has been.
As indeed this war could not be won, its frustrated adherents have fabricated a ban on smoking as a form of compensation. The war on terror was based on the same premises, and perhaps the U.K has realized its error more gravely than the U.S in its involvement.
After the identity pass had been introduced in several European countries and then Britain, in the context of the war on terror- to make up for a lack of inner identity, we saw no terrorists being arrested, on this account, but many of the elderly and children.
Something similar we have observed with the Dutch ban on so-called 'wild' urination, one other variation on the war on terror. Only the elderly and children were caught from behind a tree, hardly any drunken hooligans pissing at your front door. High fines were given in many parks by an alerted police, hiding in the bush, in this moral renaissance. In the same line also are to be seen the many street benches in Amsterdam (Holland), having been divided by two iron bars, to technically prevent the homeless from lying down and rest.
The ban on smoking was inevitable in a global war.
Because the war on terror was a waste of time and a loss of face, the only effect perhaps having been rising oil prices, the U.K. could only vote for a ban.
Since the Masters of the Wisdom have returned to the everyday world, it seems only the least relevant aspect of their presence, their suggested immortality, has been absorbed by clever and ambitious people, who have immediately claimed this to be theirs, their own merit and succes, and even a favour to us, provided nobody around is smoking, that is. Yet, the aura of many such people remains quite smoky, even polluting. And those who are one of a kind won't prohibit each other poisoning- not either the spiritually more advanced minority. Instead of smoking, also so-called for others, people are now watching and hating each other, speechlessly.
In many public places it is not even allowed anymore to sit and read. Suspicion and consumption by the clock are already taken to be the same norm as non smoking since a long time, and either complete silence or talking, shouting affirmative nonsense about the many brands of beer in stock, is tolerated by law.
If politicians have nothing to do, let them at least not run wild and ruin all social structures by pretending to be busy. Let us pay sufficient taxes for their income on condition they keep their mouth shut once in a while and do nothing. To do nothing is at least not yet to do harm.
The problem is that full employment is needed to be able to destroy planet earth.
There is one negative side to a ban on smoking that has been overlooked. It has been scientifically proved how schizophrenics who smoke have a smaller risk in getting lung cancer.
And there are hardly any smokers who are schizophrenic. Who knows is smoking not an antidote to schizophrenia?!
Whom the cap fits, let him wear it.


Jaap den Haan.

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

Prescription Cigarettes

19.02.2006 21:34

"Schizophrenics, who tend to be unusually heavy smokers, may use cigarettes as a way of self-medicating with nicotine to compensate for their defect in this receptor, says Robert Freedman, a psychiatrist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine who led the study."
 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15320662.700.html


"Nearly half of all cigarettes consumed in the US are smoked by people suffering from mental illness, suggests new research."
 http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/drugs-alcohol/dn196

Danny


corporate cigarette companies

19.02.2006 23:40

ok - i admit i'm an ex-smoker and cos i went through cold turkey and all the angst and pain involved, i totally unreasonably don't see why anyone else should carry on having the fun or freedom of continuing to smoke.

having said that, well i eventually managed to give up by visualising maggie thatcher laughing at me everytime i nearly had to smoke. she of course famously received half a million pounds as a 'consultant' to a tobacco company. thus she made personal profit out of any cigarettes i smoked. kenneth clarke is a more recent example.

anyway, my point is, nicotine really isn't much of a fun drug. it's ridiculously addictive for very little pleasure, and it's been totally taken over by big corporate interests for sheer profit.

the most important freedom in my view is the freedom from addiction and the freedom from enslavement to corporate profits. any smokers bleating on about the freedom to poison my personal space just sound like addicts to me. i'm not into state legislation on this matter, but i am surprised that so many activists smoke who won't drive cars or support pharmaceutical companies or eat meat or shop at gap. it's all the same stuff in my view, and only the strong nicotine addiction clouds the issues. don't support corporations! er, that's it.

rikki


Quality

20.02.2006 18:10

Quote: "The U.K. parliament has voted for a total ban on smoking in all public areas."

False.

The Scottish Government voted for the ban some considerable time ago and it comes into play in just a month.

The UK Government voted for a total ban on smoking in all public areas in England.

Dunno what the Welsh are doing.

Not critical, but just an observation on our friend's grasp of UK politics and constitutional issues.

Big Bad Boab


A total ban on privacy.

23.02.2006 16:35

Schizophrenics mostly don't realize they are schizophrenic. But they have a heightened sense of smell, an oversensitivity to all kinds of odours. They are extremely repulsed by certain (even imaginary) smells, like for instance of smoke, as we can witness by the indignation of the ordinary bourgeois when we light a cigarette in public.
And most people who don't know themselves are more prone to be schizophrenic. People are not educated in schools to be able to know who they are, as this is not considered to be sufficiently useful to the State.
Urinating is not only forbidden in the street in some countries, like The Netherlands.
Even in public toliets one is increasingly controlled by hidden cameras, in the context of the war on terror and an associated general moral revival.
Unconscious people have little self-control, yet they are controlled by unconscious tendencies, by which they inevitably seek to control others.
Therefore, the next logical step in the unconscious schizophrenia of the State is a ban on smoking, as well as a ban on urinating in private rooms.

Jaap.


the smokey life is practised everywhere

23.02.2006 19:06

Urinating on the street is illegal in the Netherlands ? I've never been anywhere where so many men urinate in the street, which always surprised me as you aren't a hard-drinking country. I guess the men I saw pissing on every street were civil disobedience activists.
I started work in Leiden and they left an ashtray on my desk without even asking if I smoked, but they had such good air-conditioning smoke went straight up at high speed.

In Scotland there is an imminent ban on smoking in workplaces. I suppose government policy on smoking is schitzophrenic, although I hadn't thought of that previously. They talk about market 'supply and demand' forces being immutable and yet there are next to no voluntary smoke-free pubs - if non-smokers were really bothered by smoke to change pubs then there would be. They say bar staff who don't smoke may be damaged by secondary smoke, but they are also damaged by loud music and that isn't being banned and a lot of barstaff smoke anyway. The bar staff in smoke free pubs are still serving alcohol which is at least as deadly a poison - so alcohol-free pubs next ? They fund the health service here with cigarette taxes then deny smokers treatment for unrelated diseases as they don't have a high enough quality of life. They ban smoking here but if a third world country banned cigarettes completely then that would be seen as a trade barrier.

I learned two counterintuitive if uninformative facts recently. 1) Air quality in planes decreased after smoking stopped, leading to more disease. 2) We all get cancer many times in our lives but our bodies normally rids itself of it completely.

Danny


Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

World Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech