A quick update for anyone who is planning to join me and a handful of people to protest against the rise of Smokerphobia since the blanket intolerant smoking ban of 2007.
Anyone who wants to know the time and venue should either email me privately or check out the events page on Facebook - Flashmob Lincoln.
I have two placards to show the press who will be covering it and the following information to hand out to anyone who is interested in our cause. People are welcome to smoke in the filthy fume filled bus station but should be warned that it is illegal. The venue was chosen to illustrate that this is not about health but hate and ideology.
WE DESERVE TO BE HEARD/IT'S NOT ABOUT HEALTH
Lifelong smokers believe that the current Quit or Die stance pushed by the anti-smoker industry is dangerous for those who have smoked since childhood and we call for more balanced studies to be done on this particular lifestyle group because we believe that for them the issue is not so black and white.
The only study that has been done on this is the Arunachalam Kumar, Kasaragod Mallya, and Jairaj Kumar study done at the KS Hegde Medical Academy in Mangalore, India. They were "struck by the more than casual relationship between the appearance of lung cancer and an abrupt and recent cessation of the smoking habit in many, if not most, cases."
They claim that lifelong smokers who quit up their chances of getting terminal illness from 20% to 60% immediately after quitting.
We believe that in the 21st Century discomfort from the irritant of SHS, which studies show only affect a tiny minority, can be addressed adequately by state of the art ventilation technology. Moves to develop this were halted in favour of the smoke free ideology. This has led to poorer air quality for everyone indoors.
There are 33 studies into SHS and lung cancer and children. 3 suggest a risk, 11 suggest protection, 19 the null hypothesis (no effect). The science is most certainly NOT settled and never has been but one side of this debate has been given greater emphasis than the other for political and ideological reasons.
The most famous SHS study is the WHO's buried report where exposure to SHS in the home provides 22% protection. Children that are exposed to nicotine have less asthma and atopy (allergies).
To ascertain the effects of nicotine on allergy/asthma, Brown Norway rats were treated with nicotine and sensitised and challenged with allergens. The results unequivocally show that, even after multiple allergen sensitizations, nicotine dramatically suppresses inflammatory/allergic parameters in the lung including the following: eosinophilic/lymphocytic emigration; mRNA and/or protein expression of the Th2 cytokines/chemokines IL-4, IL-5, IL-13, IL-25, and eotaxin; leukotriene C4; and total as well as allergen-specific IgE.
http://www.jimmunol.org/content/180/11/7655.abstract
"Children of mothers who smoked at least 15 cigarettes a day tended to have lower odds for suffering from allergic rhino-conjunctivitis, allergic asthma, atopic eczema and food allergy, compared to children of mothers who had never smoked (ORs 0.6-0.7)
CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates an association between current exposure to tobacco smoke and a low risk for atopic disorders in smokers themselves and a similar tendency in their children.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubm...pubmed/11422156
The Antismoker Industry says that it has taken a very long time to "prove" SHS is a "killer" when in truth it just took them a very long time to over egg the results to get the wider public onside to harass and bully smokers out of existence and to destroy the tobacco companies which has always been their aim. It is no longer a case of Big Tobacco but Little Tobacco brow beaten and cowed by the Huge vastly wealthy Anti-smoker industry.
Thanks to their efforts, smokers are going underground, they are being discriminated against in the NHS that they have kept afloat for decades through the high tax on their product. A criminal black market that sells unregulated and unsafe tobacco has thrived alongside over restriction of adult smokers and all the good efforts to stop children buying tobacco from shops has been put under threat by over regulation which means that they can now get easier access to it with no questions asked from those black market sellers - some of whom use children in door to door sales.
The propaganda now dressed up as "Scientific research" is becoming more outrageous and bizarre everyday and appears to be taking us back to the days of witch doctors and witch hunts.
For example, a public health doctor said in the press recently that it is less harmful to put a pipe from the exhaust of the car into the vehicle and let the engine run than it is to smoke one cigarette inside a car. Please don't try this at home folks!
Smoke Free Lincs recently said that "new research" revealed that smoking one cigarette in a car was worse for children than being in a smoky pub. When challenged to produce this so called "research" they could not.
Since the ban four years ago a new concept has developed which can only be described as "Smokerphobia". A recent news story in the Guardian told of how smokers are being spat at and attacked in the streets and provoked unto violence by this push towards public bullying of smokers in the street.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/24/ban-electronic-cigarettes-smokers
Alleged smoke free "charities" like ASH Uk are funded massively by the Big Pharma industry and Govt via tax payers but they receive only £11,000 from public charitable donations. (The Donkey Sanctuary gets more - £2 million in public donations).
ASH Uk is a smoker hater quango that has unrestricted power in the DoH to make public health policy on smoking which is akin to putting the BNP into the Home Office to control and enforce immigration.
Meanwhile, they have created the inhumane policy of denormalisation of smokers and push the following aspects to ensure that smokers become unemployable, shunned and avoided by their friends, families, neighbours and colleagues which for any other minority group would be hate crime
DENORMALISATION promotes :
Smokers as malodourous (smelly)
Smokers as litterers (They don't promote the use of pocket ashtrays which is more productive in the litter problem that only arose after July 2007)
Smokers as unattractive and undesirable housemates (smokers do not have to smoke in those rented properties where smoking is forbidden but landlords still exclude smokers and rent to “non-smokers only”.)
Smokers as undereducated and a social underclass (Hitler took this view and when the Nazis came to power in Germany in the 1930s, smokers were sacked from academic posts. Hitler believed smokers were degenerates and they were on his hit list once he had finished with the Jews.)
Smokers as excessive users of public health services (Smokers tax puts £10 billion into the NHS. The alleged cost of treating them is £2 billion.)
Smokers as employer liabilities
SMOKERS DISCRIMINATED AGAINST IN EMPLOYMENT
A male smoker in Leeds was caught lighting a cigarette in his car after work and was fired on the spot.
Two supermarket employees in Gloucestershire were sacked for smoking in the car park during a break.
Smoker employees at a South Wales interior design firm were paid £1 an hour less than non-smokers.
Thurrock Council proposed making smokers work an extra two and a half hours a week.
Stockport City Council wanted to mark Smoker's ID cards with a red dot.
A woman was fired within 15 minutes of starting a new job at a Communications firm when her bosses found out she smoked.
In 1999 FOREST, the smokers' rights group, counted more than 300 job ads that said : “Smokers need not apply.”
These adverts are still appearing across the UK since the blanket smoking ban prohibited smoking in all indoor areas in 2007.
There is nothing in law to protect smokers from such employment discrimination when it applies to other minority groups.
THE PRESS
Is generally biased against smokers and too often reproduces the Anti-smoker industry's “Science by press release” without challenge or question. There are several campaign blogs online where results such as the post ban Pell miracle heart reduction study is analysed by epidemiological experts and statisticians and found to be fake. None of these blogs are funded by the tobacco industry except Taking Liberties by Simon Clark indirectly because Simon, a non smoker, is employed by Forest, but written by both smoker and non smoker volunteers who feel it important to expose the fraudulent anti-smoker industry.
Check them out : http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/ http://patnurseblog.blogspot.com/
http://freedom-2-choose.blogspot.com/ http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/ http://daveatherton.wordpress.com/ http://nothing-2-declare.blogspot.com/ http://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/ http://pro-choicesmokingdoctor.blogspot.com/ http://underdogsbiteupwards.blogspot.com/ http://taking-liberties.squarespace.com/
We protesters are not funded by the tobacco industry and have no connections with it.