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UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE SMOKE less now than when the smoking ban was introduced, but those in workplaces have barely been affected.
The findings come in an ESRI working paper published by Michael Savage on the effects that the ban has had on the numbers of people who smoke. The numbers were based on National Tobacco Control Board figures up to mid 2008.
The report found that the ban had “little or no effect on reducing smoking habits” on employed people.
The report says that the 2004 ban provided employed smokers “an extra incentive to quit” and aimed to discover if this was incentive enough for people.
However, the report says that working people were undeterred by the ban.
The workplace smoking ban did not induce a greater reduction in smoking prevalence compared to any of the control groups in the analysis. In fact, the evidence suggests a significantly larger decrease in smoking prevalence among the non-workers relative to the employed.
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The main positive effect of the smoking ban is that non smokers are not forced to inhale smoke for hours during work. That can only be a good thing.
Correct – this article is somewhat irrelevant as the purpose of the smoking ban was never to encourage smokers to quit, but was to protect the health of their non-smoking colleagues.
What I really got annoyed with was after the smoking ban came into effect…and to be honest I had no issue with it even though I was a smoker myself at the time…was the report by the WHO and UN that said Ireland had suffered no economic issues due to the smoking ban. That was patently obvious rubbish as demonstrated by the immediate fall in traffic to the pub trade and for the very first time in Irish history pubs began to close from lack of patronage.
In the office it was worse since the average employer now forks out about 20% of a salary to have a smoker burning a hole in their wallet whilst standing in the smoking area burning a hole in their lungs.
Any talk of “its fine, everything is grand” is utter rubbish because the smoking ban just punished smokers and ostracised them. It penalised employers and then those calculating the effect ignored the economic impact to make it look as if it all worked out roses and tulips. That smoking ban, which as I said I had then and have now no issue with cost this country billions in lost revenue from productivity, in lost tax revenue from lower returns in industry and done bugger all to reduce nicotine dependence across the board… it certainly did not do anything to safeguard the health of colleagues in the workplace that don’t smoke…not unless they intend on stopping cars from running in the cities too which output less toxins than tobacco smoke but those toxins are arguable more dangerous and exposure to them is ubiquitous.
And that’s what we get for having a bunch of total idiots from one party or anther deciding how to treat the issue.
It done nothing to address the actual addiction to nicotine just punished the behaviour cause by that addiction.
There’s nothing as bad as sitting beside someone that smokes,as an ex smoker I can’t believe I smelt so bad for so long
Me too, I never realised how rotten I must have smelled until I quit. Embarrassing.
I was one of those people huddled in the doorway in the lashing rain for my ‘fix’… Nearly a year off them now :)
35 a day – off the wretched things for 4 months !
you must be rich now! well done!
Well done, it’s very hard to give the dreaded weed up. But we’ll worth it. -:)
I gave up a 17 year habit 16 months ago. Best thing I ever did. Would highly recommend the patches to anyone thinking of giving up. :)
Me feeling too Annette, is’nt it a great feeling.
Would they be the patches with a 98.4% FAILURE rate over a year? Statistics prove that going ‘cold turkey’ has a higher quit success than the useless patchygummythingys regardless of how much they’re promoted by the anti-smoking movement. You have to remember that it’s the makers of these patches… the huge Pharmaceutical Cartels… (the other ‘player’ in the nicotine market), that give millions of euros funding every year to the anti-smoking industry to force through iniquitous bans and legislation. Big Pharma has to protect its profits from NRT, hence its ongoing campaign for legislation against e-cigs. IT’S NOT ABOUT HEALTH.
No,
The patches I used are for 5 weeks and that’s it. And you can spout all the stats you like, I know for certain that they helped me enormously in giving up smoking.
Not everything is a conspiracy. Some products actually do what they claim to.
Congrats for quitting Karol. However, you don’t give yourself enough credit! The 98’4% failure rate for NRT is actually the figure quoted by the NHS.
Study after study has shown that the best way to quit long term is by will power alone. Ignore the counter-productive propaganda churned out by Anti-Tobacco that you are “addicted”. Giving up a HABIT is a lot easier than quitting an “addiction” – and you don’t need “miracle cures” to help you. But of course, if every smoker gave up, the self-serving Anti-Tobacco fanatics would lose their lucrative careers and their sponsors and financial backers, Big Pharma, would lose a highly profitable market.
NRT FAILURE RATE SOARS TO 98.4%
http://www.prlog.org/10211087-nrt-failure-rate-soars-to-984.html
Have you ‘I used to smoke but I quit cos I’m a good little bunny’ guys no pride in yourselves? Grow a set for goodness sake! Giving in to these bullies and bigots is nothing to be proud of and why most normal people continued to smoke when anti-smoker bully-boy tactics were rolled out along with junk science and dodgy popularity polls etc. I bet you were those weedy kids who were always bullied at school with no bottle to fight back and no sense to realise that you were being conned! You want everyone to be like you? Give your heads a shake!
I think you’ll find it depends on the NRT concerned. For sure Gum and Patches are pretty much only a hairs breath away from the placebo and organic (willpower) quitting rate. But some NRT’s most notably the one I’m involved in certainly DO have a very high efficacy rate.
I accept that electronic cigarettes are not a smoking cessation method because they simply swap one behaviour (smoking) for another (vaping) but even so there’s not a study out there that doesn’t report high efficacy in both replacement and cessation.
As far as the story above goes…well I could have told them that (and did) several years ago but of course we don’t vote for politicians based on their keen grasp or reality and the in’s and out’s of understanding people. We vote for them because their father was a politician before them so they must know…and they don’t.
But to curb workplace smoking I’ve now taken matters into my own hands… -> http://www.stopsmoke.ie/giving-up-smoking/efficacy-of-all-quitting-methods/stopsmoke-plans-to-kick-workplace-smoking-in-the-teeth.html
Mick Wright…Taken matters into your own hands…and wrote an article straight from the anti-smoking manual of misleading facts. deception and bias!
Science is conclusive Mick: Tobacco increases work capacity!
http://dengulenegl.dk/English/Nicotine.html
…and from a personal POV, I’ve smoked heavily for over 40 years, have only seen a doctor once in my entire adult life (for salmonella poisoning), and not had a single day off work sick in all that time except for the afore mentioned salmonella poisoning.
Maybe my good health is due to the many health benefits of smoking… which oddly enough, never seem to get a mention in todays politically correct climate!
the workplace smoking ban was about protecting non smokers from inhaling second hand smoke from colleagues and customers. If people want to voluntarily inhale toxic chemicals it’s their choice but the ban stops them making others do it.
I found that some workers actually took up smoking when the ban was introduced, their logic at the time – smokers took more work breaks and spent longer in them.
again, their choice
Eric if they take up smoking to get more breaks then that’s natural selection at work, cleaning up the gene pool, Darwin was on to something!!
In my workplace over half the smokers have quit myself included however money has been the biggest incentive! A good few others have switched to e cigarettes…
I’ve always felt that if you want to make changes, it’s best to hit people where is hurts; their wallets.
That’s the same policy that herself’s hairdresser uses based on how much she was charged the last time she went there.
I’m amazed by these figures. Everywhere I look, people are giving up smoking. I’d have thought that well under 20% of the adult population were still smoking.
The figures are 5 years old. Not really up to date.
Replace social welfare cash with a smart card topped up weekly which you cannot use for tobacco, alcohol, a quota on junk food. Shocked that nearly half of those unemployed smoke. Demonstrates that our social welfare is too high. I wonder how many ‘mortgage holders in difficulty’ smoke?
Since when does banning somthing lead people to quit?
Or raising the price. Or making only packs of 20 available. Non of these things have ever proven to help people stop smoking.. How can it when smoking is an addiction?
More tax on 20 packs. More profit for tobacco companies as they don’t have the extra cost of producing 10packs any more. And they pretend it’s about the kids.
I’m a smoker myself but I go out of my way to make sure it doesn’t affect non smokers, both from a health and general respect point of view, but I can’t stand the spin that the gov comes with to pull in cash. If everyone quit smoking tomorrow they wouldn’t have a penny in the i.o.u coffers.
Rollies are back in fashion now with those young whippersnappers.
Learning to roll is a valuable lifelong skill that will widen your circle of friends.
Cos you’ll all have something in common such as cancer, emphysema and don’t forget phlegm lots of phlegm!
And cancer is not exclusive to smokers you know, also 50% of smokers will not die of a smoking related disease
THE SMOKING-RELATED DISEASE???
This is one of the antismokers’ cleverest inventions. To say that a disease is ‘smoking-related’ is
not the same as saying that it is directly caused by smoking, or that there is any actual proof
of anything. It means simply that someone has decided that smoking may be a factor in that
disease.
Over the last couple of decades, more and more diseases have been added to the list,
often with very little evidence. Heart disease was one of the first, even though it has something
like 300 risk factors, and some major studies have shown not only that the link with
smoking is weak, but that moderate smokers have LESS heart disease than nonsmokers!
More recently it has become fashionable to blame smoking for just about everything,
from ‘clogging up’ of the arteries (which happens to everyone as they get older) to blindness (well,
they can’t blame masturbation any more) to AIDS. It has also become fashionable, every time a
smoker dies, to try to find a way to blame their death on smoking.
Recent media scares have claimed that smoking ‘may’ cause impotence or infertility. But
people smoked more during the two world wars than at any other time in history, and what did
we have in the 1950s? A baby boom!
The fact is that many statistics about smoking (and especially ‘secondhand’ smoke) are
simply made up. For instance, until cervical cancer was recently proven to be caused by a virus, a
completely random 13% of cases were attributed to smoking. Many of the estimates of smoking
deaths are produced by one computer program. It’s called SAMMEC (Smoking Attributable
Morbidity, Mortality, and Economic Cost) and depending on which data you feed in, and which
you leave out, it can produce pretty much any number you want.
The great thing about the ‘smoking-related disease,’ is that it allows you to create the
perception of a raging epidemic. The UK government says that 100,000 or 120,000 deaths per
year (depending on who is speaking at the time) are caused by ‘smoking-related disease’. The
impression given is that these are all deaths specifically, and provably, caused by smoking, but it
is no such thing. It includes nonsmokers who die of bronchitis or strokes, and smokers who die of
heart attacks in their 80s. It includes people who quit smoking decades before. It is not exactly
lying, but it is deliberately misleading, it is fearmongering, and in my opinion these people should
be ashamed of themselves.
Nicely written Dave.
I must be the exception,i stopped smoking 6 years this year,i thought i needed ciggeretts but i was just deluded like most smokers,it was the best move thing i ever did,bar none.
Why would working smokers give up? Where I work the smokers get smoke breaks some get 5 6 and more smoke breaks per day. Management wont do anything about these the smokers making up time as you guessd it Management are among the smokers.
Depends what you’re smoking
This survey is not a true measure of the effects of the ban for a number of reasons:
1. Most workplaces already banned smoking by staff in the workplace for about 10 years before the legal ban was introduced. The only effect if the ban was on stopping members of the public (both employed and unemployed) from smoking when visiting the workplace (pub, restaurant,etc)
2. Increase in % of workers smoking could be down to those smokers being closer to a boss who smokes, and therefore less likely to be made redundant
3. Decrease in % of smokers in the unemployed population due to the number of non-smokers being made redundant
Only way a survey like this would be useful is if it measured the % of smokers among the general population before and after the ban, and if it measured the amount of tobacco consumed (people smoking fewer cigarettes when out for a meal or a drink)
Also the study looks at a four year period that ended five years ago…
So the whole landscape could have changed again…
“people who are unemployed have seen a bigger decrease in those smoking.” why , because they cant afford them , simple as that , what an absolute waste of an article , smoking ban me arse
In my workplace the smokers are allowed to go out for cigarettes, some employees in response to that decided to go out for coffee. I don’t know why one addiction is more acceptable than another but I suppose as someone already commented the managers often smoke making it somehow legit for the rest. Meanwhile the rest of us get more stressed from overwork I often considered taking up smoking myself just for this reason!
Right. We should have a proper go at people who smoke and drink coffee in the work place. Their the real time wasters in a company .
I hear what you are saying but in some companies yes they are. The drive for efficiency has lead some companies to adopt Japanese manufacturing systems. From an employee perspective that means you are locked down to your workstation requiring cover for toilet breaks, cigarette breaks and coffee breaks where cigarette breaks seem to be acceptable and coffee breaks are not.
There is always a Health and safety reason for leaving your workstation. Just use this if you really want to leave your station. But then that would be petty, so and so is having a break why shouldn’t I. If you don’t smoke consider yourself lucky that you are not addicted to them, because smokers are not taking extra breaks to get out of work. Which is what most people on here are bitching about.
Science is conclusive: Tobacco increases work capacity!
Of course more unemployed people have quit. How could they possibly afford the ridiculous amount of tax that’s imposed on every pack. These same people switched to roll tobacco and what happened? The gov missed it for a year and suddenly… boom!… 50c tax bumped on them while only 4c on a pack of smokes.
Same with wine… took them a year to realise that more and more people were drinking at home due to the cost of going out…boom!… €1 tax on a bottle of wine and a couple of cent on a pint.
Now they’re going after the e-cigarettes because they see a drop in income from the smokes. Where will they stop??
Why is it that smokers are entitled to an extra 8 breaks a day during working hours?
Bonding time with management.
Ciaran. when your in work do you sit at your desk all day and only leave it when you are on your designated break. Or are there times during the day when you drift off the canteen to get a quick coffee and maybe chat to a few people along the way. Everyone takes extra breaks during work. or stops to chat to someone in the corridor, or goes online to chat, or update or read the news. Why pick on smokers alone. were all as bad as each other.
I sit at my desk all day Simon till breaks come along. I presume smokers, on top of there 8 extra smoke breaks, also stop off for coffees on the way to an fro, and also stop off and talk to fellow workers as well ! Smokers get an extra hour a day break, it’s as simple as that. Smokers are untouchable ! If I had a coke problem could I go outside and snort coke 8 times a day? Possible not!
And before you ask, I am off today!
Ciaran. Sitting at your desk for prolonged periods is bad for your health. As you work in an office I’m sure you will have had to do the course on workstation assessments, and health and safety, I recommend you take these extra breaks you are entitled to and that health and safety recommend you take regularly. You are no matyr to your job and your boss/company will not have sympathy with you because you get repetitive strain syndrome. If you choose to have a cigarette or coffee while on these rest bites then that is up to your personal choice. I for one do not believe for one minute that you do not check your external emails or read online content not relating to work. or take personal phone calls while in work. In fact more time is lost to facebook and the likes than smokers could ever rack up. but again smokers get targeted first. Just the way it is I suppose.
Smoking is not a crime so smokers should not be treated like criminals .
Junkies need their fix. It’s disappointing that they get away with shirking off every hour without any official reprimand. Smoke on your own time!
Truck drivers are the ones breaking these laws & its not enforced. Everyday I see them smoking in their workplace & when I get in after they finish it stinks & the inside of the cabs are discoloured. Why is this not being enforced. Can the gardai prosecute them for this or is it the HSA.
Before the ban, I used to visit Ireland every couple of years. It was one of my favorite destinations, and part of the reason was that people seemed much less uptight and more enjoying of life than in the US. But from reading some of these comments, I get the idea that Ireland is just as overrun with small-minded, mean-spirited wowsers as my own country. Is this an odious byproduct of the Celtic Tiger days, or merely the latest incarnation of more traditional Catholic puritanism, now that it’s no longer fashionable to disapprove of sexuality?
This pretty well destroys the Myth of second hand smoke:
Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds.
By JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News.
Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe.
What’s more, the analysis of lung transplant data from the U.S. between 2005 and 2011 confirms what transplant experts say they already know: For some patients on a crowded organ waiting list, lungs from smokers are better than none.
“I think people are grateful just to have a shot at getting lungs,” said Dr. Sharven Taghavi, a cardiovascular surgical resident at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, who led the new study………………………
Ive done the math here and this is how it works out with second ahnd smoke and people inhaling it!
The 16 cities study conducted by the U.S. DEPT OF ENERGY and later by Oakridge National laboratories discovered:
Cigarette smoke, bartenders annual exposure to smoke rises, at most, to the equivalent of 6 cigarettes/year.
146,000 CIGARETTES SMOKED IN 20 YEARS AT 1 PACK A DAY.
A bartender would have to work in second hand smoke for 2433 years to get an equivalent dose.
Then the average non-smoker in a ventilated restaurant for an hour would have to go back and forth each day for 119,000 years to get an equivalent 20 years of smoking a pack a day! Pretty well impossible ehh!
You mean people won’t actually fall in and behave the way their “leaders” tell them to? Shocking.
The figures can be deceiving!! Who’s to say that those employed at the time of the ban have quit smoking but a new generation of workers and smokers have entered the workplace and have different social motivations to smoke. A prime example of this is the popularity of the ‘smoking area’ in pubs and clubs and its influence on people when out, regardless of their employment status!
Alongside this the number of employed and unemployed in the population has changed drastically which could also distort the figures!
I gave up smoking 6 years ago with the help of champix. They were brilliant. Within a couple of weeks the urge to smoke had completely gone.
Maybe if the €3,000 per year smokers cost their employers in smoke breaks were deducted from their salaries….
That just isn’t true.
Science is conclusive: Tobacco increases work capacity.
http://dengulenegl.dk/English/Nicotine.html
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