Writing about the smoking ban
So the tenth anniversary of the UK smoking ban is nearly upon us.
I will be honest and say that it leaves me in a bit of a quandary.
Do I write about it or not?
I could be arming myself to counter all the mythical statistics which are bound to fill the meeja, but Christopher Snowdon has already done that.
I could do my own little bit of nit picking by saying that they claim one in every six deaths is caused by smoking, while I claim that over half of all deaths in Ireland are caused by having blue eyes. It’s the same logic. More than one in six smoke, so naturally one in six deaths are smokers, and the same applies to blue eyes. The Church of Health hasn’t copped onto that one yet?
Or I could harp on about the number of pubs that have closed as a direct result of the ban, but Forest have already covered that.
So here is my quandary – what the fuck is left for me to write about? Apart from anything else I get the distinct impression that I am preaching to the converted, though I am delighted to say this site gets a lot of people looking for information on smoking [top search term for today – “anti smoking propaganda lies“!].
Maybe I will just mark the occasion by writing about cute little doggies?
[Thanks, Darryl!]
If you like statistics then how about this. Thirty thousand people die every year in Ireland from all causes according to CSO. A fifth to a quarter of those are statistically smokers so six or seven thousand smokers die a year from all causes . Oddly then that means that 24,000 non-smokers die every year. What could be killing them?
Boredom?
Actually you could tweak the figures even further because according to the propaganda half all smokers die early so only three or so thousand die from actually smoking, whereas the rest live longer than average.
Ha ha – love the dog!
He needs a match if anyone has one handy?
Love the one about the blue eyes.
Mine are green – does that mean I’ll live forever?
Sorry, but no. Apparently you have a one in three chance of dying at some point in your life.
Now logically since I have green eyes I have a 1 in 3 chance of dying at some point in my life. I could then conclude that I have a 2 in 3 chance of being immortal. Now since I have a better chance of living forever than dying I’m going to smoke all I want.
It all depends on your other little bad habits. Are you aware that eating fried food doubles your chances of dying?
Just to add, association and correlation are always mixed to produce misleading assumptions. The best example I can think of is, “Skirts and dresses are associated with breast cancer.”
Dammit Grandad, I was hoping for some good ol’ grumbling about the ban from you. I’m somewhat disappointed 😉
I used to smoke and then I didn’t. Nobody talked me into anything, I just quit. And I have brown eyes and I’m pretty much guaranteed to die no matter how you look at it. What this means I haven’t a clue. What this comment means I also haven’t a clue so I’ll wish you and yours a fine day and hope you can avoid all those damn statistics.