Cigarette Displays Banned in England

I'm a non-smoker and I'm for this being banned. I remember as a child seeing cigarette commercials still on TV but I can't say it ever made me want to smoke.
Both of my parents smoked most of my childhood and almost all of my friends smoke.

I really hate when I see kids younger than me and even my age smoking. It's like, I saw you in the same health classes ALL through school, from elementary to high school.. why are you still smoking?!

It's still not cool and most kids do it to not seem like outsiders or whatever.

I think it's important to get tobacco products away from the view of kids. Including people smoking (which is why I'm happy Maryland put in the law banning smoking in and in front of restaurants and bars).

It's just so stupid to smoke.
Not saying you need to be villainized if you smoke ( as most smokers REALLY regret starting up), but I do think it can have an impact on children, especially if they look up to you.
"How could smoking be so bad if my favorite uncle smokes?"

Just my opinion...
Hopefully smoking is a thing of the past at some point.

I can agree to that too. It contributes with self-diagnosing, IMO.

The government is so concerned at the number of people still smoking despite their best efforts to turn smokers into social lepers, that they now intend to introduce legislation to outlaw interesting or attractive people from smoking.

With smoking still not entirely eradicated from society, health officials have decided that a blanket ban on sexy people smoking is the only course of action left available to them.

A spokesman said: 'I've never smoked in my life but I know that if Cheryl Cole appeared in public dragging on a Woodbine, I'd be on 30 a day in no time'.

Civil Servants will soon draw up a list of people who are too sexy to be seen smoking, and plans are already in place to pilot the scheme in Scotland where there are fewer attractive people.

The spokesman told DG reporters: 'We want to introduce this slowly and places such as Dundee and Aberdeen seem perfect places to start'.

The tobacco industry reacted swiftly to the proposals, insisting that this is further scaremongering by the government.

Harry Rag, a spokesman for the tobacco industry said: 'There is absolutely no evidence that the attractiveness of smokers is an encouragement to the young to take up smoking. It's all down to the hugely addictive nature of nicotine, insidious advertising and giving out free fags to kids outside school gates to get them hooked that does it'.

In a second strand to the intiative, the government intends to encourage dull TV personalities such as James May or Alan Titchmarsh to take up the habit.

Public health specialist Dr Harold Bannit writes in the Lancet: 'The numbers are clear. For every person like Alan Titchmarsh who takes up smoking, 10'000 people kick the habit. Dull and boring TV personalities are our secret weapon in the battle to eradicate smoking related illnesses.'

Yeah, it is totally unenforceable.

I do think this is the way things are heading, eventually. By raising prices, getting them out of sight, slowly banning places that they can be smoked. Not that it is a bad thing.

I actually think these small steps are insulting. Raising cigarette prices to keep people from smoking? Banning smoking from everywhere but your own home? All it does is make life hard for the smoker; it may give them incentive to quit, but quitting is hard! Besides, smoking is as much a right as drinking, but we don't see a bunch of stupid laws trying to get people to stop drinking.

I highly doubt anybody starts smoking nowadays because someone "cool" smokes. I don't think that's even happened in a couple of decades. Largely, smoking is a form of protest, something people do as kids to piss off their parents or make themselves feel bad or non-mainstream, which turns into an addiction.

Marvel Comics has, for several years, not allowed any of their characters to smoke, out of fear that some kid will want to imitate the heroes' actions. Characters like Wolverine and Nick Fury, who have been cigar lovers for years, suddenly never smoke. Never mind that they do all sorts of other unseemly stuff that shouldn't be imitated. Last time I checked, Wolverine still kills people and Nick Fury still cusses like a sailor. But God forbid they ever light up a cigarette. God forbid they do something they've been doing for decades, which is a part of their image - they're tough guys, and they don't give a damn about the damage smoking may do to their bodies, and they've earned that! Taking that away from them out of some fear that children will want to smoke because the characters do is nonsensical and, honestly, a fearful act that reeks of hostility.

People get lung cancer. People die. Yes, smoking sucks. But everyone has a right to do it. And really, there are a lot of people that don't want to smoke but can't help themselves. Like I said before, quitting is hard! As in, try giving up your favorite food, never ever eating it again, and also giving up the food you most commonly eat. That's what cigarettes are, a thing you have to have to calm down and relax, which you use more often than anything else. Few people can just put down their cigarettes and say, "That's it," especially if they have anything stressful in their life, such as a job or children.

If we really want to eradicate smoking, we need to invent a cheap pill that will remove people's addiction to nicotine, and then magically make everyone not want to smoke anymore. But that's not going to happen. It's not feasible, just like it's not feasible to think that we're ever going to get people to stop drinking. All the taxes and condemnation in the world won't do anything but make people suffer.




Yeah, that is completely pointless. Taking the adage, "Out of sight, out of mind" a little too far.

Which is exactly why the baby steps are so brilliant. They would never get anything more extreme to pass because it is a person's right to smoke if they so chose. They would never be able to pass any sort of bans.

What they can do is take all these baby steps that people aren't as strongly opposed to as something as extreme as prohibition. What they can do is ever so slowly ease our culture into one that largely finds cigarettes disgusting and pointless. I doubt that they would ever outright illegalise them, but our culture is slowly being worked into one that thinks negatively of them, or doesn't think of them at all.

It's brilliant, as annoying as these little changes are to the person who already smokes. This is how they are going to remove this as one of the major health issues, by taking their time and slowly changing the cultural view of it rather than making it outright illegal.

We have that in Canada. I think it was implemented 2yrs ago, can't recall.

I don't think it decreased the sales of cigarettes or deterred teens from smoking. Though I haven't looked at any recent studies on it, so I'm not 100% sure. Heck, even when the price of smokes went up, that didn't deter smokers to quit, the amount of illegal smokes being smuggled just increased.

We've had this in my area for at least two years now. Except our sliding things that hide the cigarettes are white/grey and they do not advertise on them about finding staff if you can't find what you want, they are not allowed here to give any indications or signs that cigarettes are behind the blinds.

I don't know. To me, telling people that smoking is the worst thing you can do and that smokers are ugly people with bad teeth is just insulting. There was an episode of How I Met Your Mother that was staunchly anti-smoking, and it offended me, and I don't even smoke! But my family does, and I don't want them seen as insensitive or gross.

The taxes, in my opinion, are just a way to get more money by targeting a group that many dislike. The majority of the time, smokers won't abstain from buying cigarettes because of the price; instead, they'll cut back on other things to be able to afford their addiction. I'd rather people had cigarettes and food instead of buying cigarettes and skipping meals because hunger pains are less painful than nicotine fits.

Smoking is already seen as a negative thing. Taxes and continued refusal to show smoking in any media outlet aren't needed. No one thinks that smoking is cool anymore. No one thinks you have to smoke to be hip. A ton of people hate smoking, but that doesn't stop them from smoking. It's not a cultural problem. Making it out to be the biggest killer or most despicable action in the world won't make people stop smoking; it won't even keep people from starting, because if it did, no one would have started last year, or the year before.

It's never going to prevent everyone, just a gradually increasing number of people.

As for the taxes, I think it's a bit of both.

And yeah, it is insulting, but there's no way around it-- smoking is foul.

They can start with Viagra and Cialis, because all they do for me is constantly remind me what I'm not getting.

The problem is that smoking is cool, making it seem more elicit makes it seem more alluring and cooler does it not?

What they really need to do is ban French people from smoking. French people look classy as f*** with a wine glass in one hand and a cigarette in another, British people with a pie in one hand and a fag in the other don't quite pull it off in the same way.

So, keep your hands off your pie when you are smoking.

My main point on this is that in the UK, Im guessing alot of tax comes from Smoking and drinking, thats why they cost so much, there is a lot of deman so the goverment can make a lot of tax. So as a smoker I can pay for single mums to never work again through my taxes.

Also the amount of tax made from cigarrettes is more than enough to cover the cost of smoking related diseases. So if people stop buying cigarettes all that will happen is tax will be raised, then everyone will be like boo hoo I gotta pay more tax. An I will be like yeah but no-one smokes thats what you wanted, get over it.