Banning Smoking in Pubs

The sooner you get independence or join paddy land the better.

my dream is for a united ireland within the united kingdom.

I bet your popular in Derry.

perhaps among the unionists

Excuse my ignorance. I thought it was mainly a nationalist area (not that up on N.Ireland politics I'm afraid)

its about 75-25 in favour of the catholics

Oh, plenty to shoot at then?

They wouldn't have to if we established and distinguished "smoking bars" from regular bars. (something you seem to find impossible to envisage) That way I can smoke and fart and drink to my hearts content in the Bricklayers Arms and you could fcuk off across the road and enjoy your orange juice in the smoke free environment of the Adam & Eve. Now what's so hard about that?

My local is called the bricklayers arms...

if thats your cup of tea.

NI, generally, is split south and west-north and east. predominately catholic in the south/west, protestant in the north/east

Imperial College research suggests "Children regularly exposed to smoking are three times more likely to contract lung cancer in later life than those in non-smoking homes."

see link;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4214369.stm

That would be interesting if I knew how likely one would be to get lung cancer if not exposed at all. Humor me for a moment gentle reader while I chuck some numbers at this.

There are something like 39000 new lung cancer patients in the UK each year; agreed? Good. 90% of them are smokers? Agreed? Look it up - I'm about right. That means 3900 are non smokers. With me so far?

The population of the UK is about 60 million. Roughly 1/4 smoke meaning that about 45million are non smokers. So, of 45million non smokers the number who contract cancer is 3900. That's a 1 in 11538 chance.

Apparently, if you were raised in a smoking home this chance may (we don't know for sure) increase to 1 in 3468. Not bad odds really.

However, this in itself is rather meaningless since of these 3900 some would have been smokers themselves at some point in their lives.

I'm also rather bemused by this. "The researchers tracked 123,479 volunteers - some of whom had never smoked, others had stopped smoking,[/B] but all had been exposed to second-hand smoke in their childhoods"

What's this supposed to do? If some had actually been smokers during their lives then surely it'd be difficult to distinguish who got lung cancer purely due to passive smoking. Or am I missing the point again?

In short: passive smoking seems to me to be much ado about nothing and the risk seems so minute it can barely be measured on it's own merits.

That would be interesting if I knew how likely one would be to get lung cancer if not exposed at all. Humor me for a moment gentle reader while I chuck some numbers at this.

There are something like 39000 new lung cancer patients in the UK each year; agreed? Good. 90% of them are smokers? Agreed? Look it up - I'm about right. That means 3900 are non smokers. With me so far?

The population of the UK is about 60 million. Roughly 1/4 smoke meaning that about 45million are non smokers. So, of 45million non smokers the number who contract cancer is 3900. That's a 1 in 11538 chance.

Apparently, if you were raised in a smoking home this chance may (we don't know for sure) increase to 1 in 3468. Not bad odds really.

However, this in itself is rather meaningless since of these 3900 some would have been smokers themselves at some point in their lives.

I'm also rather bemused by this. "The researchers tracked 123,479 volunteers - some of whom had never smoked, others had stopped smoking,[/B] but all had been exposed to second-hand smoke in their childhoods"

What's this supposed to do? If some had actually been smokers during their lives then surely it'd be difficult to distinguish who got lung cancer purely due to passive smoking. Or am I missing the point again?

In short: passive smoking seems to me to be much ado about nothing and the risk seems so minute it can barely be measured on it's own merits.