It is a common site to see people huddling at the entrances to buildings, smoking cigarettes. Hope Street, in Glasgow, was, and still could be, one of the most highly polluted streets in Britain. Could the person sent out of the office to smoke; sue their boss for forcing them into a potentially health threatening environment?
It is one thing to agree with sending smokers onto the street if they wish to pollute the atmosphere, and another to jump into your car; catalytic converter, or not, and roar off in a cloud of smoke. A child in a buggy can be kept well away from smokers, but on the other hand are in the right position to breath in the fumes from hundreds of cars, buses, lorries on a stroll to the shops; or in fact sitting in the back of their parents car. While the smoker is cast out into the wilderness; the car is welcomed with open arms.In the city centre, or anywhere people congregate, the car will be accommodated; multi-car-parks, drive-ins, special slip roads to the shopping complex; whole towns and street plans altered to make way for more cars. The ozone layer creaks under the strain. The city council sit in the vault counting the revenue from the parking bays: the car parks, the parking tickets and wondering how to squeeze more roads into the city plan. While only enough is done to appease the anti-smoking lobby, and at the same time; keep the tobacco industry happily churning out taxable product. Practically nothing, in comparison, is done about the social and detrimental health effects of the car.
All sources of pollution are bad news and need to be tackled effectively; but the biggest problems need the most attention.

Some comparisons

When we comparing he amount of advertising leveled at smokers and the damage to our collective well being created by smoking, to the amount of advertising leveled against, industrial pollution, cars; the manufacturing of environmentally unsound products and activities; It is zero it does't exist; in fact it is practically the opposite, we are encouraged to buy more cars to drive to more malls to buy more battery operated toys...

Should we wait; until we ban smokers of the face of the earth, before we start worrying about the car, or the ozone layer?

Sure it is progress if we are protected from other peoples smoke. But the concentration on smokers should not divert us from the bigger picture - industrial pollution - in a massive scale.

The concentration on the smoker, can be read in much the same way as the vigorous, focus of attention given in the media, concerning social security fraud; while the small time crook, and poor are hounded for pounds, no attention is paid to big business, who defraud the public purse for billions.

I am not inculcating the merits of smokers, who defraud the social security system; but merely focusing some attention on the bigger, events that are destroying our health and environment; of which smoking is an important, but in the larger picture; a minor player.

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Having said all this I do not wish to advance the notion, or give the impression that smoking is OK. Smoking is an habitual drug; that can kill you; slow you down; take over your life; and cost a fortune; and for these reasons should be avoided at all costs

www.givingupsmoking.co.uk