Ah but your argument is flawed in that you are only applying the rules to smoking.

Where I agree that if I am smoking in an enclosed area I am not giving people a choice (this is not an option for me however, as I confirmed before I am from Scotland where smoking in enclosed public places is not allowed), however if you are smoking outside it poses no greater risk than many of the other carcenogenics floating about in a city envioroment, car exhuast fumes for example, I don’t drive a car so why should I suffer because other people can’t walk the five minutes to the shop.

So to recap, I only smoke in open areas or in non-public places where the choice is my own, thus backing up my point of for me it being a lifestyle decision.

Also no matter what you may believe to the contrary, there is no hard sceintific proof that confirms that passive smoking is in fact as bad for you as the media make out.

Okay now I know every non/ex smoker is going to start on me now, but I am sorry you can’t put every case of lung cancer down to passive smoking if you don’t smoke yourself, as the people that suffer this need to take into account the specific genetics of their family medical history and appreciate the other carcgenics they have come into contact with throughout their lives, if you want to get accurate proof it would require two subjects not affected in any way by their previous enviroments to undergo testing and this to my knowledge has still never happened.

Smoking enhances the chance of cancer, that’s a no brainer. But there are of course more factors that need to be taken into account, just like you said.
Like I said before what you do with your body is your choice and you can smoke outside asmuch as you like. I’m from Holland and here it’s legal to smoke in public places. I don’t mind people smoking, because I enjoy the subtle pleasure of a joint once a while, so I would be a hypocrite to judge them. But I can understand that it offends non-smokers if you smoke next to them, so I adept. Sure people bitch a lot about smoking, but you have to admit that it’s a serious issue and people have died because of sigarettes. So don’t be mad at non-smokers, they are people to ;).

Wow, never expected this… I was just saying, get it some other way.

Better than just calling each other a bitch though.

Don’t even know how I managed a structured argument like that on a Monday at work.

It kills time, that’s for sure :D. Just 45 minutes to go!

Anyway, back to it.

I do appreciate that smoking has had an effect on peoples health but this is a vastly different statment to the commonly accepted view that smoking is the main cause of lung cancer (as I have said in my previous post this cannot be proved with the current experments done) it is only a contributory factor.

But many other things have a contributory factor to human deaths and these things are not bannedor hated with the same venom associated with a smoker, because we are deemed adult enough to make the choice on the direction of our own lives(drinking, driving, bizzare sexual fetishes) this attitude should be applied to everything not just the facets of peoples lives that only your opinions agree with.

Being Dutch yourself I imagine you will have a better understanding than most that integration and acceptance into society is a two way thing and important to a peaceful life but my argument is that as a smoker who goes out of my way not to have my habit of choice upset other people but I am the victim of these people who I go out my way to accomodate, their opinions are there own but for some reason they usually have a holier than thou attitude and seem to think their opinion has more weight than anyone elses, so while non-smokers are people the same amount of respect should still be given to smokers.