I don't smoke, have never smoked (although my father got through enough Golden Virginia to produce a huge 'library' of 2oz tins holding nails, screws, hooks, etc. I managed to avoid it) and hate the smell of smoke...
However, I'm totally fed-up with the demonization of smokers which not only stops them smoking just about anywhere but has trained the sheeple to cough, splutter and wave their hands in front of their faces like fans at the very sight of an approaching smoker.
Unfortunately, this disease has spread to Cyprus...
Although 99% of the population smoke here an EU ban forces bars and restaurants to become non-smoking. Even more liberal restaurants that still allow it (presumably because their owners are desperate for a fag) risk huge fines and non-smoking customers voicing their disgust and health fears over a lone smoker having a drag twenty tables away.
What happened to freedom of choice? Why can't there be smoking and non-smoking restaurants or restaurants with non-smoking areas?
Anyway... I prolly wouldn't have mentioned it at all 'cept I was setting up the new Chrome browser and looking at my bookmarks. I clicked on the Wiki link and the article of the day or whatever the bloody thing is called was: -
Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi GermanyI gave it a read and...
Nazi Germany initiated a strong anti-tobacco movement and led the first public anti-smoking campaign in modern history. Anti-tobacco movements grew in many nations from the beginning of the 20th century, but these had little success except in Germany where the campaign was supported by the government after the Nazis came to power. It was the most powerful anti-smoking movement in the world during the 1930s and early 1940s. The Nazi leadership condemned smoking and several of them openly criticized tobacco consumption. Research on smoking and its effects on health thrived under Nazi rule and was the most important of its type at that time. Hitler's personal distaste for tobacco, and the Nazi reproductive policies, were among the motivating factors behind their campaign against smoking, and this campaign was associated with both antisemitism and racism.
The Nazi anti-tobacco campaign included banning smoking in trams, buses and city trains, promoting health education, limiting cigarette rations in the Wehrmacht, organizing medical lectures for soldiers, and raising the tobacco tax. The Nazis also imposed restrictions on tobacco advertising and smoking in public spaces, and regulated restaurants and coffeehouses. The anti-tobacco movement did not have much effect in the early years of the Nazi regime and tobacco use increased between 1933 and 1939, but smoking by military personnel declined from 1939 to 1945. Even by the end of the 20th century, the anti-smoking movement in postwar Germany had not attained the influence of the Nazi anti-smoking campaign.
SourceFuck!
