"What a lot of rubbish. It is common knowledge that nearly every child starts smoking because they are influenced by their peers and get cigarettes from their friends. ASH said that the smoking ban would be good for the pub trade, but over 4,000 pubs have closed since the ban and put tens of thousands of staff on the DOLE. A display ban will cause many small shops to close."

"The reality of such lies and bullying behavior is that businesses and livelyhoods along with jobs and personal freedoms will be lost forever. Until of course the money runs out on these fake charities and they move on to something else. Smoking will never be eradicated and prohibition has never succeeded. Anywhere."

"The heading is more than misleading Amanda Sandford does not represent an anti-tobacco lobby she is employed by government handouts (our taxes) to carry out their and the EUs long term goal of eradicating tobacco and smoking. The arguments that she is putting up could at best be described as clutching at straws, but will be passed of as fact by a government that will be pleased to hear what they want to hear rather than true facts. Only a week ago the government sacked a scientist because the truthful evidence that he produced was not what the government wanted to hear. The spin on true facts to date has led to the closure of thousands of pubs, clubs, bingo halls and the loss of thousands of jobs, small corner shops will be the next to close in a repeat of what is happening in Ireland. Its not difficult to find the true facts a quick internet search revealed that smoking in certain young age groups has increased in certain areas in Canada and Iceland where tobacco display bans have been introduced, there is also serious unrest in Ireland where small shopkeepers are being ignored and many will go out of business. In Canada youngsters are turning in increasing numbers to contraband cigarettes that contain such materials as rat droppings . I used to think of ASH as a creditable organisation, unfortunately it lost all credibility to me when I discovered it had morphed into a satellite government department capable of adding any spin necessary to achieve their goal. As for the large survey would it be one of those discredited ones revealed by a national newspaper whereby you get the results you want by asking loaded questions and send out the survey questionnaires to your supporters and exclude everyone else."

"SECOND HAND SMOKE IS A JOKE. Ask the anti-tobacco folks to tell you what truly is in second hand smoke...when it burns from the coal its oxygenated and everything is burned and turned into water vapor..................thats right water..........you ever burned leaves in the fall...know how the heavy smoke bellows off.......thats the organic material releasing the moisture in the leaves the greener the leaves/organic material the more smoke thats made......thats why second hand smoke is classified as a class 3 irritant by osha and epa as of 2006........after that time EPA decided to change the listing of shs as a carcinogen for political reasons.......because it contained a trace amount of 6 chemicals so small even sophisticated scientific equipment can hardly detect it ........they didnt however use the normal dose makes the poison computation when they made this political decision. However osha still maintains shs/ets as an irritant only and maintains the dose makes the poison position.......as osha is in charge of indoor air quality its decisions are based on science not political agendas as epa's is. We can see this is true after a federal judge threw out the epa's study on shs as junk science......... Wednesday, March 12, 2008 British Medical Journal & WHO conclude secondhand smoke "health hazard" claims are greatly exaggerated The BMJ published report at: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7398/1057 concludes that "The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality. The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer are considerably weaker than generally believed." What makes this study so significant is that it took place over a 39 year period, and studied the results of non-smokers who lived with smokers..... meaning these non-smokers were exposed to secondhand smoke up to 24 hours per day; 365 days per year for 39 years. And there was still no relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality. In light of the damage to business, jobs, and the economy from smoking bans the BMJ report should be revisited by lawmakers as a reference tool and justification to repeal the now unnecessary and very damaging smoking ban laws. Also significant is the World Health Organization (WHO) study: Passive smoking doesn't cause cancer-official By Victoria Macdonald, Health Correspondent " The results are consistent with their being no additional risk for a person living or working with a smoker and could be consistent with passive smoke having a protective effect against lung cancer. The summary, seen by The Telegraph, also states: 'There was no association between lung cancer risk and ETS exposure during childhood.' " And if lawmakers need additional real world data to further highlight the need to eliminate these onerous and arbitrary laws, air quality testing by Johns Hopkins University proves that secondhand smoke is up to 25,000 times SAFER than occupational (OSHA) workplace regulations. The Chemistry of Secondary Smoke About 94% of secondary smoke is composed of water vapor and ordinary air with a slight excess of carbon dioxide. Another 3 % is carbon monoxide. The last 3 % contains the rest of the 4,000 or so chemicals supposedly to be found in smoke… but found, obviously, in very small quantities if at all.This is because most of the assumed chemicals have never actually been found in secondhand smoke. (1989 Report of the Surgeon General p. 80). Most of these chemicals can only be found in quantities measured in nanograms, picograms and femtograms. Many cannot even be detected in these amounts: their presence is simply theorized rather than measured. To bring those quantities into a real world perspective, take a saltshaker and shake out a few grains of salt. A single grain of that salt will weigh in the ballpark of 100 million picograms! (Allen Blackman. Chemistry Magazine 10/08/01). - (Excerpted from "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains" with permission of the author.) The Myth of the Smoking Ban ‘Miracle’ Restrictions on smoking around the world are claimed to have had a dramatic effect on heart attack rates. It's not true. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7451/ As for secondhand smoke in the air, OSHA has stated outright that: "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, To Leroy J Pletten, PHD, July 8, 1997 -harleyrider1978"

"Ms Sandford has more front than Brighton on saying "increasing youth perception that smoking is commonplace." Was it not you and your fake charity ASH were in the vanguard of the smoking ban. People in pubs were hidden behind frosted glass and any 13 year old walking past their local pub can see smokers standing outside. Also the smoking room at the office. What she fails to understand the more you bully, nanny and demonise smokers, the more youngsters think is is cool and rebellious. Or has Ms Sandford had a change of heart?"

"So, ASH claims that shop owners should be punished because ASH does not want the "appearance" of smoking? ASH claimed that smoking bans would reduce the number of smokers, yet Ireland now has 4% more smokers than they did before the ban. ASH claims that smoking bans would not hurt the pub industry, yet UK pubs are failing at record pace since the smoking ban. ASH presents surveys that they have developed, administered, and interpreted. When you pay for a survey, it is not hard to manipulate the survey. How about a survey from an uninterested 3rd party....bet the results would be different. My biggest question though is HOW ASH came to rule UK politics? Who voted them in? Why have the people of the UK allowed this self interest group to terrorize their nation? Other than the smell of smoke inside a pub having disappeared, where is the undisputed evidence that smoking bans and display bans have done ANYTHING other than destroying culture and small businesses?"

""And in the case of Ireland, research suggests the display ban is already beginning to have an impact" Indeed it has. "A survey of 4,082 people this summer revealed that 33pc of the Irish population had taken up or continued to smoke. It is the highest smoking rate recorded here in the past 11 years" Source: The EU (http://tinyurl.com/yj4wp9a) "The domino effect is now rippling through the UK, Australia and Norway, and other nations will surely follow suit." Just like New Zealand, who recently abandoned the idea as the stats from Canada and Iceland showed no benefits whatsoever. I wonder why Sandford misses such easily-discoverable facts? Agenda, perhaps?"

"Can we for the sake of clarity get the statics right for Iceland. Between 1999 and 2007 the numbers of non smoking 15-19 year olds stayed constant at 69.3%. While the number of occasional smokers went down to be replaced by regular smokers, 14.4 to 15.2%. Yes that is right the display ban led to more smoking. Apologies for the long URL but confirm it yourself. http://www.statice.is/?PageID=1406&src=/temp_en/Dialog/varval.asp?ma=HEI07102%26ti=Smoking+habits+by+sex+and+age+1994-2007++++++%26path=../Database/heilbrigdismal/afengiogreyk/%26search=SMOKING%26lang=3%26units=percent"