Sslip

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14 hey there Tammy, how goes the day?

Always this. Whether it is a slip or a relapse, if you are ready to go again we're here. Learn, share your experience and let's help one another fight the tough times and celebrate the good.

Congratulations on 22 months smoke free Diane and cracking that double duck figure mark! Fantastic work.

Congratulations on 2 months quit MattyBoy! Great job and KTQ.

Congratulations on 2 months smoke free kbc, that's a really good quit you have going there!

Congratulations on 11 months quit MM! Hope you are doing well and roll on that next month.

Treetop what an awesome quit! Congratulations and celebrate in style.

Silver, huge congratulations on that all important first month. Celebrate this milestone well.

Pippa, massive congratulations on 5 years smoke free!

Nope!

Good to see you back Jayhawk. Settle in and hope to see you around,

So coming on to the three things I would like to see done. Two of them pick up on things that have already been mentioned. 1. Restrictions on smoking in public places where meaningful. Not just because. 2. Measured education starting at an early age. Kids should understand from an early age that smoking is damaging, but avoid scaring the shit out of them, they are not equipped to deal with it. Traumatised kids is not the way to guilt trip parents into giving up. As they mature they are capable of processing additional information. If I recall correctly (and it was a very long time ago) we were shown a cartoon villain Nick O'Teen and then a little more in Biology, but there was really not a development of the education. 3. So here's the one thing that is slightly different. It is too easy to ignore the full horrors of what we let ourselves in for. So the one difference would be a license to buy tobacco. Not an expensive one, not a punitive one. But let's say every 5 years, a half day where you have to sit through a reminder of what can go wrong. Make it real, back it up with statistics of how many people it affects, back it up with real life stories. There's no point in saying smoke and your head will fall off if it's not what people observe happening. Make the options clear at the end and fully educate smokers on the support out there to quit at any time.

Have I Got News For You

Dolly mixture

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Okay, I'll do a couple of posts on this, first questioning the prohibitive pricing and then moving on to what I would do. So the prohibitive pricing, I can see why it is an appealing thought and it is something that the UK government has pursued as well, but with a little less gusto than in Australia. My objection to it has a number of facets. The first being the socioeconomic demographics of those that do choose to smoke. It is those from the most deprived areas, with the most depressing outlook on life, with the least opportunities that are most likely to smoke and also smoke more cigarettes than those from more privileged backgrounds. Just think about that for a moment. In the UK, what we are doing in pursuing this policy is increasing the burden of tax on those least equipped to absorb it. Now here we probably see this from a different angle, in that we are largely currently succeeding in the path of quitting, but let's not lose our humanity. There is a perverse and unnecessary cruelty in a legal, highly addictive product further imprisoning in poverty those with the bleakest economic outlook. Second objection. Lying, cheating, selfish, morally bankrupt arseholes who chase the biggest profit they can make and to hell with the human cost. Yes we are talking about too much of big business. Certainly we are talking about the tobacco companies. But, and its a big one, we are also talking about organized crime. At the end of the day I know that I want executives that are answerable to legislators rather than organized crime, supplying our (in the loosest sense) poison of choice. It is estimated in the UK that 20% of cigarettes are bought on the black market. You think the standard poison we willingly inhaled into our lungs is evil, you don't want to know just how much more deadly the black market stuff is. It is counter intuitive at a time where governments are seeing sense and loosening controls on some substances to create an additional environment where organized crime can thrive. Last objection and it is just repeating a really good point JetBlack made previously. Careful what you wish for, rights being restricted, even if those are ones that we choose not to avail ourselves of, is a bad thing. What comes next and when will governments get to something you do care about?

Brilliant post and absolutely this! I did not have a clue when I set out, but the further down the path I get the bigger the accomplishment and the more precious that accomplishment is.

^^^ They look moreish I do still like a finger of Fudge