Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
Pulling a sweater from a drawer the other day, the smell of smoke took me by surprise.
It was only wood smoke, a legacy of pandemic socialising this freezing spring, when huddling around a garden bonfire was the only way of seeing friends. But it took me back decades, to the years when every night out meant coming home reeking of cigarettes, and every house party left a trail of beer bottles stuffed with fag ends floating in their ashy soup of dregs. Everyone smoked when I was growing up, pretty much everywhere. People lit up routinely on the bus, dads chain-smoked in cars all down the motorway to wherever you were going on holiday, and sweetshops sold candy cigarettes for little kids to pretend-smoke in the playground. The past is a foreign country, and sometimes better that way. But are we ready to consign it completely to history?
Oxfordshire county council recently unveiled plans to become the first county in England to go officially smoke-free – meaning fewer than 5% of locals smoking, down from 10% now – by 2025. Its aim of discouraging people from taking fag breaks even on the pavement outside offices, or in parks or in their own cars, seems doomed at first sight; councils have few legal powers to enforce such things, and a libertarian Tory government seems unlikely to grant new ones. The smokers’ rights organisation Forest is already protesting that it’s “no business of local councils if adults choose to smoke” – although technically speaking that’s exactly whose business it has been ever since David Cameron moved public health budgets from the NHS to local government.
www.theguardian.com
Eight out of ten of my friends smoked when I was growing up, and so did I. I stopped in 1995 when the price went over £2 a pack - I don't know how people can afford it now! 😱 Best thing I did for my health. When I was in hospital for my diabetes diagnosis I was given an angiogram and afterwards the surgeon said that my arteries were in 'pristine' condition, this was 13 years after stopping 🙂
It was only wood smoke, a legacy of pandemic socialising this freezing spring, when huddling around a garden bonfire was the only way of seeing friends. But it took me back decades, to the years when every night out meant coming home reeking of cigarettes, and every house party left a trail of beer bottles stuffed with fag ends floating in their ashy soup of dregs. Everyone smoked when I was growing up, pretty much everywhere. People lit up routinely on the bus, dads chain-smoked in cars all down the motorway to wherever you were going on holiday, and sweetshops sold candy cigarettes for little kids to pretend-smoke in the playground. The past is a foreign country, and sometimes better that way. But are we ready to consign it completely to history?
Oxfordshire county council recently unveiled plans to become the first county in England to go officially smoke-free – meaning fewer than 5% of locals smoking, down from 10% now – by 2025. Its aim of discouraging people from taking fag breaks even on the pavement outside offices, or in parks or in their own cars, seems doomed at first sight; councils have few legal powers to enforce such things, and a libertarian Tory government seems unlikely to grant new ones. The smokers’ rights organisation Forest is already protesting that it’s “no business of local councils if adults choose to smoke” – although technically speaking that’s exactly whose business it has been ever since David Cameron moved public health budgets from the NHS to local government.
Once unthinkable, a ‘smoke-free’ Britain may soon be a reality | Gaby Hinsliff
Even tobacco addicts no longer believe the government is being too draconian, says Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff
www.theguardian.com
Eight out of ten of my friends smoked when I was growing up, and so did I. I stopped in 1995 when the price went over £2 a pack - I don't know how people can afford it now! 😱 Best thing I did for my health. When I was in hospital for my diabetes diagnosis I was given an angiogram and afterwards the surgeon said that my arteries were in 'pristine' condition, this was 13 years after stopping 🙂
That first drag ... mmm ... I'm such an addict! I'd have to join Quitters Inc.
