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I've copied this from an article in the Mail by Richard Littlejohn with whom I suspect a lot of us often agree, especially those with a few years behind them. I found the comments in bold quite interesting as I didn't start smoking until four years ago at the age of 55. The entire article can be read here
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...otic-duty.html
'They never give up. When the number of people smoking cigarettes fell significantly, the public health police turned their attention to 'passive smoking.Soon we were told that more people were dying of passive smoke than tobacco itself. Now the (admittedly filthy) habit of smoking is dying out, helped by the popularity of vaping, you might think Those Who Know What Is Good For Us would be happy.
Far from it. Always on the look-out for something else to ban, they've come up with the concept of 'passive vaping' which is going to wipe mankind off the face of the earth — that's if the global warming doesn't kill us first.
They've found 'experts' who have identified allegedly carcinogenic particles in the vapour given off by e-cigarettes, which they now want banned, too.
haven't smoked since I was about 19, but until fairly recently I always used to fire up a small cigar on National No Smoking Day, just to get up the noses of the anti-smoking nazis.
It was said of the puritan that he wanted to ban bear-baiting not because of the pain it caused the bear, but because of the pleasure it gave to people.
The same goes for the anti-meat, anti-cigarettes, anti-booze, anti-absolutely bloody everything brigade. They just can't bear the thought of people exercising the fundamental freedom to enjoy themselves, even if it puts their own health at risk.
Occasionally, someone tries to counter the constant drip-drip of abstentionist propaganda with a report attempting to prove that a little bit of what you fancy does you good — for instance, wine in moderation, etc.
One of my all-time favourite studies 'proved' the best time to take up smoking is when you retire — since nicotine can ward off Alzheimer's disease and the harmful side-effects of tobacco won't have long enough left to kill you.
I have only the anecdotal evidence of my late grandfather to support this finding.
A committed smoker of roll-ups all his life, he was persuaded to give up in his 70s. When he died in his mid-90s he had contracted Alzheimer's, but there was nothing else wrong with him, apart from old age. He might just as well have carried on smoking.'
I had a little dig around on the Internet and found several studies that suggest nicotine can have a slowing down effect on some cognitive effects of dementia but not on others. Experts are divided on whether nicotine in itself is addictive or whether it has to be combined with the other additives in cigarettes. When we smoke cigars we absorb nicotine through the membranes of our mouth and not through our lungs as cigarette smokers and I don't know anyone who is addicted to cigar smoking like cigarette smokers are so maybe there is something to it after all.
Anyway the thrust of Littlejohn's article is that we should just do what we enjoy, eat what we like and get on with our lives. Happy smoking!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...otic-duty.html
'They never give up. When the number of people smoking cigarettes fell significantly, the public health police turned their attention to 'passive smoking.Soon we were told that more people were dying of passive smoke than tobacco itself. Now the (admittedly filthy) habit of smoking is dying out, helped by the popularity of vaping, you might think Those Who Know What Is Good For Us would be happy.
Far from it. Always on the look-out for something else to ban, they've come up with the concept of 'passive vaping' which is going to wipe mankind off the face of the earth — that's if the global warming doesn't kill us first.
They've found 'experts' who have identified allegedly carcinogenic particles in the vapour given off by e-cigarettes, which they now want banned, too.
haven't smoked since I was about 19, but until fairly recently I always used to fire up a small cigar on National No Smoking Day, just to get up the noses of the anti-smoking nazis.
It was said of the puritan that he wanted to ban bear-baiting not because of the pain it caused the bear, but because of the pleasure it gave to people.
The same goes for the anti-meat, anti-cigarettes, anti-booze, anti-absolutely bloody everything brigade. They just can't bear the thought of people exercising the fundamental freedom to enjoy themselves, even if it puts their own health at risk.
Occasionally, someone tries to counter the constant drip-drip of abstentionist propaganda with a report attempting to prove that a little bit of what you fancy does you good — for instance, wine in moderation, etc.
One of my all-time favourite studies 'proved' the best time to take up smoking is when you retire — since nicotine can ward off Alzheimer's disease and the harmful side-effects of tobacco won't have long enough left to kill you.
I have only the anecdotal evidence of my late grandfather to support this finding.
A committed smoker of roll-ups all his life, he was persuaded to give up in his 70s. When he died in his mid-90s he had contracted Alzheimer's, but there was nothing else wrong with him, apart from old age. He might just as well have carried on smoking.'
I had a little dig around on the Internet and found several studies that suggest nicotine can have a slowing down effect on some cognitive effects of dementia but not on others. Experts are divided on whether nicotine in itself is addictive or whether it has to be combined with the other additives in cigarettes. When we smoke cigars we absorb nicotine through the membranes of our mouth and not through our lungs as cigarette smokers and I don't know anyone who is addicted to cigar smoking like cigarette smokers are so maybe there is something to it after all.
Anyway the thrust of Littlejohn's article is that we should just do what we enjoy, eat what we like and get on with our lives. Happy smoking!
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