At a bit of a loose end tonight. But I liked this photo of two school runaways:
She’s 17. He’s 16.
The kids are still smoking.
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Frank Davis 
The rate of teenage smoking in this small Scottish town of high unemployment and low expectation must be very healthy! I’m trying to look for figures, but I see from the arch enemy (or ASH enemy) that we Scots lead the field in the UK:
There is some variation in smoking rates by region in England (defined by the Government Office of the Regions) and between countries within Great Britain.
In 2012, Yorkshire and Humber had the highest prevalence (22.7%) while London and the South East had the lowest at 18%.
In England overall 19.5% of people smoke.
In Scotland 22.2% of the population smoke.
In Wales the rate is 20.7%.
In Northern Ireland the figure is 18.6%.
Source (pdf): http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CEgQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ash.org.uk%2Ffiles%2Fdocuments%2FASH_93.pdf&ei=cnTkUpffEsW47Qa7qIGAAw&usg=AFQjCNELJK5-f5h0wzr4XK2yktPfjcDMtA&sig2=DvLGlogHi3ufLf6jkYLvhQ&bvm=bv.59930103,d.ZGU
Alba gu h-ard! Scotland is #1!
But won’t they always? Teenagers down through the years have always, without fail, wanted to try the very things that the older generation either disapprove of or want to keep to themselves.
There’s a weird kind of blind spot that people who become parents seem to develop which completely erases any memory of their own instant desire to do whatever their parents told them they couldn’t – staying out late, skipping school, playing loud music, drinking, smoking, trying drugs, having sex – to be replaced with a usually completely unfounded belief that for some reason with their kids it’ll be different. They seem to firmly believe that for some undefined reason they won’t be seen by their children as square and old-fashioned, like they viewed their own parents, but will be seen as a “cool mum” or a “cool dad” by their children and their children’s friends.
The desire, usually occurring around adolescence, of children to spend time with their friends, as far away from their parents as possible, is something that parents themselves seem to have terrible trouble coming to terms with; I’ve often wondered if the teenage troubles experienced by many families at this stage in their children’s lives isn’t actually caused by the adolescents themselves with their newly-released hormones or their shakily-developing sense of self, but is in fact caused by the resentment that stems from their parents’ inability to accept that their offspring are no longer the little boys and girls who previously didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything without Mummy or Daddy tagging along, too.
And so it is with smoking. Parents seem to cling stubbornly to the view that if they don’t smoke, and if they make it obvious how bad they think smoking is, then their children will automatically agree with them (still clinging onto the days when “Mummy knew best,” no doubt) and avoid the habit altogether, when in fact the reverse is probably true. If some of these would-be cool, anti-smoking parents could just accept the fact that anything they don’t do will inevitably be seen as a “cool” thing for their offspring to do, then the best thing they could do, if they really wanted to stop their children trying smoking would be to take up (or re-take up) smoking, to put their kids off. After all, what self-respecting teenager wants to be seen to be anything like their old-fashioned, fuddy-duddy old parents, no matter how hip, trendy or “down with the kids” those parents like think themselves to be?
“Edward, whose father died at the age of 86”
Wow.
Of smoking, I suspect.
You’ve gorra laugh. So, I type into Google: “teenage smoking” in scotland statistics “dumfries and galloway” – and the fourth result is this (but it’s about funding): https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2010/10/09/tobacco-control-must-be-destroyed/
The picture is also interesting in that it reveals one of the little-talked-about-but-still-important aspects of social smoking. Think about it: how many other activities lend themselves so well to two more or less total strangers interacting in a helpful way, sharing something they have in common, and removing a possible negative between them at the same time — as offering someone of the preferred sex a light?
– MJM
I don’t think these two are more or less total strangers, though. They’re much more like Romeo and Juliet.
But I agree that it’s an interesting picture. After I came upon it, I kept going back to look at it. And I wasn’t sure why.
Well, he isn’t smoking but like an old-fashioned beau, he’s about to light her ciggie for her and she, like an old-fashioned girl, is waiting for him to do it :)
I always so loved it when a boyfriend lit my ciggie (and I still expect men to rise from the table when I do) :)
And they look so innocent! ;=})
And she’s asking / waiting for the light;- a world away from what “Gwen Sharp, PhD” was getting so exercised about in
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/10/10/should-a-gentleman-offer-a-tiparillo-if-hes-a-sexist-ass-then-yes/
(which I came across while searching for this remembered late ’60’s poster variant…)
“Should a gentleman offer a lady a joint?”
(and zoomed slightly)
~ RdM
On the subject of hotels, I’ve spent a fair bit of time on the Agoda hotel bookings site looking at hotels in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, and almost without exception the hotels proudly proclaim ‘Non-Smoking Rooms’, as if it’s a bonus point. However, as I mentioned before, the hotel I’m in at the moment (which also had the same boast on the Agoda site), despite the ‘No Smoking’ sign just inside the door, provided an ashtray in the room. I wonder if those kids were able to smoke in their luxury hotel room.
Totally off topic, I’m in Laos at the moment and finding it a bit of a challenge getting to grips with the currency. The exchange rate is 10,000 Kip to the Euro, and their largest denomination note is 50,000 Kip (€5), so yesterday when I changed some money, I had over 1,000,000 Kip in my pocket (Yay! I’m a millionaire!) – about one hundred Euro – a huge wedge of notes. They have no coins, only paper, down to 500 Kip as the smallest note. And they all look the bloody same to me. It’s a nightmare paying for anything!
Yes but how much are the pack of twenty in kip?
Or indeed petrol, or any other western staple. Genuinely interested.
Packet of twenty local (Lao) fags between 10,000 and 15,000 Kip, litre of petrol looks to be about 10,000 Kip.
There are some paradoxes between here and Thailand, most notably taxi fares. In Thailand, the wife and I can get a cab (new, air-con Toyota or similar) to an out of town shopping centre – maybe a 15 minute drive, for about 40 Baht on the meter. (Current exchange rate approx. 43 Baht to one Euro), which is incredibly cheap. Here in Pakse our hotel is about 2 Km from the town centre. There are no metered taxis, just the local tuk-tuks, which for the most part are ancient motorbikes, literally falling apart, with a sidecar which has a bench seat that two reasonably slim people can just about share, and the going rate from hotel to town is 20,000 Kip, double what we pay for a much longer ride in Thailand. I don’t think we’re being ripped off, because my wife (who is Thai and can communicate in Lao) asked the hotel receptionist. Also, they all quote the same price.
Large (660 ml) bottle of Beer Lao (one of the better Asian beers, 5% ABV) varies with the venue, but is about 12,000 Kip in a restaurant. Meal for two with beer for me and Coke for the missus runs out at about 85,000 Kip.
Forgot to mention that in the market there are stalls with big sacks of loose rolling tobacco. Haven’t enquired the price, but I will. I may even buy some, just to see what it’s like. I’m guessing it will be pretty rough!
On yesterday’s topic (day late, buck short):
I come down halfway on the issue. If at the very beginning of the bans there’d been a sudden massive and (crucially) sustained boycott, the immediate roars from the no-longer-hospitable “hospitality industry” might have influenced the politicians to repeal or at least soften their edicts because of a threatened economy, loss of taxes, rise of unemployment (which itself is a cost to government) and a loud lobby howling in their ears.
But to the extent that maybe 80% of smokers did, in fact, behave according to the Anti’s predictions (would not sacrifice a social life for a principle– did not see the now “shameful” “habit” of smoking as a principle worth standing up for, let alone recognize the wider implications of the principle at stake–did not want their nonsmoking mainstream friends, along with the rest of the local world, to think less of them–were bombarded with messages from left, right, above and below about how they really really should quit– and equally bombarded with messages about the lethality of their secondhand smoke) they did not stay away fast enough, long enough, and in sufficient numbers to penetrate the iron curtain and razzmatazz rationales of TC and their political and media abettors.
And then, too, the bans took most smokers by surprise. The few groups defending “smokers’ rights” and advocating boycotts were largely invisible and unknown and most smokers felt totally isolated and as though their own “making a big deal of it” would not only be eccentric but ineffective.
Finally, smokers are just people. And how many people, of any persuasion, are willing to stand up to Authority, or immune to losing the Good Favor of Others? And though I’d say, to a great extent, and for reasons I’m not sure of, that there are more such independent individuals among smokers, there still aren’t enough, and as time has gone on, the drum rolls of propaganda have exponentially increased along with the ranks of the fashionably offended.
But to the extent that maybe 80% of smokers did, in fact, behave according to the Anti’s predictions (would not sacrifice a social life for a principle– did not see the now “shameful” “habit” of smoking as a principle worth standing up for…
The problem, Walt, is that those smokers had already been ‘softened up’ by years of relentless propaganda, and most of them had been brainwashed into thinking that, as smokers, they were anyway second-class citizens who indulged in a ‘filthy habit’. Thus they didn’t feel they had a leg to stand on, since the antis were occupying the moral high ground.
It’s difficult to mount a defence, let alone an attack, when you have been comprehensively demoralised and are facing infinitely superior forces. It’s only the ‘awkward squad’ like us who have the temerity to face down the might of Tobacco Control, and we are, unfortunately, very much in the minority.
Nevertheless, I feel that all is not lost; our strength is growing thanks to the ever increasing hyperbole emanating from the TCI. Those smokers who had been convinced of their worthlessness are starting to realise that they have been well and truly gulled, and slowly but surely are starting to resent the opprobrium that has been heaped upon their heads. I think that eventually TCI will be the engineers of their own demise.
The advent of e-cigs has hastened the process, as the antis now find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to tacitly admit that their zealotry has nothing to do with health and everything to do with ideology. It’s giving me a good deal of pleasure watching the antis slither and squirm in their efforts to defend their position on e-cigs.
@ Walt & Nick
“might have influenced the politicians to repeal or at least soften their edicts because of a threatened economy, loss of taxes, rise of unemployment.”
Unfortunately it seems they’re like Lemmings. And so it is that in Jamaica, the country that brought us Ganja as well as other delightful strains of Marijuana, they got the carpet pulled from under them!!
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business/Smoking-ban-burning-into-Gov-t-coffers_15757727
Looking at the comments I see that one single individual seems to have grasped some of the financial implications saying that:
“Eventually the Govt. will have to increase the GCT to balance the loss in tax revenue.”
(You may recall that we experienced something very similar when VAT was hiked from 15%; not to return to the old level of 17.5%, rather to 20%).
However if my understanding of the social dynamics of Jamaica pan out, the production of tobacco is very simple indeed, and I fully expect that to sky rocket. The distribution system is in place for Weed, and tobacco is a useful add-on. And Smoky-Drinky’s are the norm in the less well off parts of that country!
In a relatively small economy like Jamaica the effects of what smokers do has an immediate impact. Buying outside official sources is far less expensive for the consumer, rewards the entrepreneur and – ultimately – leaves our cash in the private sector – where it does far more good anyway.
Our social infrastructure is less developed than Jamaica, however it cheered me enormously when I came across this yesterday.
“The couple decided to create the pub six years ago in protest over the ban on smoking”.
Not one, but four – massive – ashtrays, all cleaned and ready for action!
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/337078/Shed-load-of-beer
If at the very beginning of the bans there’d been a sudden massive and (crucially) sustained boycott, the immediate roars from the no-longer-hospitable “hospitality industry” might have influenced the politicians to repeal or at least soften their edicts
I’m not at all sure that this would have happened. After all, there actually has been a partial boycott. We know from the Isis survey that about 70% of smokers reported that, since smoking bans had come into force, they went to pubs and cafes and restaurants either less often or hardly ever. Would it have made much difference if it had been 100%?
The thing is that these monomaniacal zealots are quite certain that they’re right, regardless of whatever consequences flow from their actions. They’re not interested in adverse consequences. They look instead for any shred of positive evidence they can find. They even invent such evidence. They’re not actually rational people at all. Banning smoking was always going to be a good thing in their eyes, damn the consequences.
Maybe if all the non-smokers had boycotted the pubs too, and they’d all started closing within weeks of the imposition of the ban, the government would have been forced to act. But was that ever likely? And when non-smokers make up 75% – 80% of pub clientele, the loss of the smokers wasn’t going to be fatal.
I think that a large part of the problem is that smokers don’t really know what’s in tobacco and the only information they ever get is from anti-tobacco.
Frankly, after 60 years of warnings you’d think they’d find out for themselves, so they could hardly argue.
The whole thing falls down when you understand that non-smokers eat nicotine everyday in their food so it’s certainly not alien to them.
Vapers know this, but most smokers didn’t.
And when non-smokers make up 75% – 80% of pub clientele, the loss of the smokers wasn’t going to be fatal.
I seem to recollect that of regular pub-goers (before the ban) the figure was that something like 56% were smokers. Hence the quadrupling of the rate of pub closures in the immediate aftermath of the ban.
If a placed banned the smokers long ago,they already took the hit. If your customer base is mostly smokers like Pubs,coffee shops,bingos,casinos and the like you didn’t ban it voluntarily because if you did you cut your own throat! Mega Chains can ban it and lose the income and still stay in business,the lil guy cant. But on a side note when put into perspective if the big chain guys were shown they could increase their profit base by 20% by inviting smokers back in………………Theyd likely jump at it in these economic times.
But we also must remember non-smokers aren’t anti-smokers most could care less one way or the other.
‘But when non-smokers make up 75% – 80% of pub clientele, the loss of the smokers wasn’t going to be fatal.’
Well, it’s been fatal for a good quarter or so of the pubs — probably over a third of the small, wet-led, land-locked, traditional family pubs. As Nisakiman pointed out, the correlation between smoking and drinking overwhelms the 3 to 1 ratio of nons to smokers.
– MJM
Walking past here http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/23865695.jpg the other day I saw a boy and a girl, both in School Uniform, both obviously in the flush of first LOVE, sharing a cigarette. Cuddled up together against the Norfolk cold. Normally such a tableau vivant wouldn’t register with me but at that moment, grumpy Ol Git that I am, I found myself entranced,
Mind you, as this was rural Norfolkshire, they could quite easily have been brother and sister…
These days the local world walks past the bottom of my garden now that the old railway line is a nature walk , they even hold races on it occasionally, people walk their dogs, joggers jog, pensioners with their shopping walk back home the pretty way, children walk to school.
A couple of weeks ago I noticed a group of older teens sauntering along the track past my garden and every single boy and girl was holding what looked like a cigarette.
And I thought somewhat sadly that anti-tobacco have finally gone and done it.
Those deeply uncool people with their earnest faces and constant lecturing of the public insisting on plastering pictures of cigarettes on every door have managed to make cigarettes an object of desire to a new generation.
This must must be the worst possible time to take up smoking, but there we are.
The proposed even larger hideous pictures back and front, will probably add to the allure.
Still, “for the children” was only ever a stick to beat adults with, the kids don’t appear to care.
It was inevitable, Rose. In their fanatical, ideological drive to eliminate smoking, the fools didn’t pause to take into account basic child psychology. I can see smoking prevalence rising over the next decade, and the antis will not understand why. They will blame it on ‘glitzy packaging’, underhand tactics by ‘Big Tobacco’, e-cigs and any other red herring they can think of. It will never occur to them that the blame rests firmly on their own doorstep.
They can ne sure their efforts set just that in motion…………..High taxes equal bigger blackmarkets that kids can easily partake of. Especially since parents will likely be using the same sources for cheaper smokes due to the Insane taxes. Then kids as we all know will do just what is made fashionable by merely outlawing it!
And, judging by their role model examples (ciggybusters et al), they have absolutely no idea about teenage cool. They really only use the type of kid that wouldn’t have smoked 30 years ago anyway. The latest remind me a bit of young Christians. Nothing wrong about that, though they’ll never be cool in most teenagers’ eyes.
Prog the big in thing now for college kids of the well to do families at UK/ Kentucky university is to smoke openly on campus in defiance of the ban and or to wear their cool looking ecigs on a chain around their necks smoking them in class or the like. I just saw the proof at bingo when a few came in with my buddies kid…………….
Off topic but it does knock another nail in a different coffin
http://pindanpost.com/2014/01/26/its-the-water-vapor-stupid-and-not-the-co2-explained/
“I’m retired so I don’t need to keep my mouth shut anymore. Kept my mouth shut for 40 years, now I will tell you, not one single IR astronomer gives a rats arse about CO2. Just to let you know how stupid the global warming activists are, I’ve been to the south pole 3 times and even there, where the water vapor is under 0.2 mm precipitable, it’s still the H2O that is the main concern in our field and nobody even talks about CO2 because CO2 doesn’t absorb or radiate in the portion of the spectrum corresponding with earth’s surface temps of 220 to 320 K. Not at all. Therefore, for Earth as a black body radiator IT’S THE WATER VAPOR STUPID and not the CO2.”
Its the same thing here
Yet a simple look at the chemistry shows us that its:
About 90% of secondary smoke is composed of water vapor and ordinary air with a minor amount of carbon dioxide. The volume of water vapor of second hand smoke becomes even larger as it quickly disperses into the air,depending upon the humidity factors within a set location indoors or outdoors. Exhaled smoke from a smoker will provide 20% more water vapor to the smoke as it exists the smokers mouth.
4 % is carbon monoxide.
6 % is those supposed 4,000 chemicals to be found in tobacco smoke. Unfortunatley for the smoke free advocates these supposed chemicals are more theorized than actually found.What is found is so small to even call them threats to humans is beyond belief.Nanograms,picograms and femptograms……
(1989 Report of the Surgeon General p. 80).
THIS IS A SMOKING ESTABLISHMENT
The Surgeon General has made claims that cannot be backed up by Proof of actual Harm.
Osha has since stated:
Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)…It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded.” -Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec’y, OSHA.
This establishments seating area is________________________. After formulating OSHA Pels we have determined that it would take on the average 50,000 smokers continuously smoking to meet the lowest level of actual harm from the miniscule chemicals in second hand smoke.
From the SG REPORT 1989 PAGE 80. we find that the chemical composition of Passive smoke is:
About 90% of secondary smoke is composed of water vapor and ordinary air with a minor amount of carbon dioxide. The volume of water vapor of second hand smoke becomes even larger as it quickly disperses into the air,depending upon the humidity factors within a set location indoors or outdoors. Exhaled smoke from a smoker will provide 20% more water vapor to the smoke as it exists the smokers mouth.
4 % is carbon monoxide.
6 % is those supposed 4,000-7000 claimed chemicals to be found in tobacco smoke. Unfortunately these supposed chemicals are more theorized than actually found as only around 800 chemicals have actually ever been trapped and identified. What is found is so small to even call them threats to humans is beyond belief.Nanograms,picograms and femptograms.
You can be safely assured that after visiting our establishment for 120,000 years to receive an equivalent dose of 20 years of smoking you can still donate your Pink Healthy lungs!
If you work in our establishment for 2400 years even our workers can donate their Pink Healthy healthy lungs too!
The professional skateboarder/artist Ed templeton once did a series of photographs of teenagers smoking:
http://www.robertsandtilton.com/publications/teenagesmokers.php
Very beautiful, moving photos.
Boredom has set in. No enemy to find.
I guess they all go to Sunday Big Government worship services
On teen (and for that matter, adult) smoking, if I’d had a million bucks in the early 90’s,, I’d’ve run ads with head shots of our leading Ants, David Kessler, John Banzaf, Stanton Glantz, and Congressman Henry Waxman with a caption that read: Be Like Us: Don’t Smoke! I wonder if it’s just coincidental that so many of the Founding F’ers of the movement are such repellent-looking wusses or if having been repellent-looking wusses as kids instilled in them a lifelong ambition to wage war against the cool who so cruelly excluded them.
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