90 year old blows smoke in health fascists' general direction

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

financeguy

ONE love, blood, life
Joined
Dec 4, 2004
Messages
10,122
Location
Ireland
The Smokers Club, Inc. - Germany Helmut Schmidt flouting smoking ban

Public smoking ban makes rebels of Germans
May 29, 2008
BERLIN (AFP) —In Europe, even the Italians and French are respecting public smoking bans, but Germany's bid to implement one is proving as relapse-prone as the New Year's resolutions of nicotine addicts.
A ban has been in force in most of the normally order-loving nation since January 1, the day cafes in France put away the ashtrays after more than a century of tobacco-stained bonhomie and smokers decamped to the pavement.
That evening former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt was photographed lighting up at a Hamburg theatre and five months later the air has still not cleared.

Helmut Schmidt will turn 90 in December.
 
Personally, I've given up. Don't even miss them all that much.

However, if I make it to 65, I think I will probably take it up again. At that age, one needs something to occupy one's time, and I really hate golf.
 
Just proves that all those damned politicians think they are above the laws. :madspit:
 
German ex-chancellor accused of flouting smoking ban
Jan 25, 2008
BERLIN (Reuters) - German anti-smoking activists are trying to bring charges against 89-year-old former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and his wife for breaking a new smoking ban in Hamburg, the group said on Friday.
Schmidt, Social Democrat chancellor from 1974 to 1982, and his wife Loki are well known for lighting up in public. Many photographs of Schmidt, now revered in Germany as an elder statesman, show him through a cloud of smoke.
Anti-smoking activists in the western city of Wiesbaden have taken legal action against the couple after pictures of them puffing away at a reception in a Hamburg theatre appeared in the press and on television.
"They were recklessly smoking in public and someone like Mr Schmidt should know better -- he is setting a very bad example, so we launched legal proceedings," activist Horst Keiser told Reuters.
He reported them to the Hamburg authorities for personal injury and for breaking the new anti-smoking law.
Two German newspapers quoted Ruediger Bagger from Hamburg's prosecutors' office as saying they were looking into the case.
Keiser said he wanted the Schmidts to be fined a few thousand euros and for the money to be donated to a children's charity. He also wanted them to stop smoking in public.
Most of Germany's 16 states, including Schmidt's home state of Hamburg, introduced a smoking ban in indoor public places, including cafes, bars and restaurants, this month.
Police in some states, including Berlin, are not enforcing fines, which can be up to 1,000 euros, for violations.

What an appalling little uptight prig this Horst Keiser sounds like.

The f***ing cheek of these health fascists. It's terrible for them to see a ninety year old committing the unforgivable sin of enjoying himself, and they really can't stand the fact that he has accomplished thousands times more in his generous life than they ever will in their sad ones.
 
Just proves that all those damned politicians think they are above the laws. :madspit:

Seemingly the anti-smoking laws in Germany are in general more honoured in the breach than the observance.

I wonder if that tells us anything, given that nation's history. :hmm:
 
Nothing actually dangerous about smoking of course--that too would be a lie of the health fascists I suppose.

If someone wants to smoke, that's their business. I just don't understand the rationale behind deciding to start smoking. Perhaps some of the smokers on the forum would like to share? I truly am not trying to yank anyone's chain or anything--I'm genuinely curious.
 
I started kind of on a dare and after the initial dizziness, I liked it. It's a drug that both keeps you awake and calms you down, gives you your oral fix and stops me from tearing piles of napkins into little pieces when I'm at a bar. I'm a restless type.

I'm getting used to not smoking in public places though. No big deal.
 
I started kind of on a dare and after the initial dizziness, I liked it. It's a drug that both keeps you awake and calms you down, gives you your oral fix and stops me from tearing piles of napkins into little pieces when I'm at a bar. I'm a restless type.

I'm getting used to not smoking in public places though. No big deal.

I knew my Favorite Smoker in the World (or in FYM anyway) would step up to the plate! :) :hug:

If you don't mind my asking, were you concerned about the health risks when you started smoking? Does it worry you now? Or do you feel that those risks are perhaps exaggerated?
Or is it more like one of my heros Rich Mullins said:

"Life is gonna kill us all anyway, so you might as well go out doing something you like to do. Or eating something you like to eat--like cholesterol!"

I can't say whether he would have applied this philosophy to smoking--I don't, personally--but I always kind of liked that outlook.
 
I started smoking fairly young, so I wasn't thinking health risks. And though I have some concerns now, the benefits of it outweigh the risk. I've never seriously tried to quit. It's not out of the realm of possibility that I might, but not in the near future.

I don't think the risks are exagerrated, but I probably fall into Rich Mullins' court. I'm a pleasure person. I'm not going to live forever regardless. I figure on my deathbed, I'm going to far more regret what I didn't do than what I did. I think I'm going to take more pleasure in the memory of the butter pecan ice cream on German chocolate cake than I will on the carrotsticks. I accept the tradeoff.

I'm a polite smoker though.:angel:
 
I think I like your Rich Mullins guy.

:up: Check out his music (BESIDES "Awesome God" which is his most famous song--and far from his best--and one that most people consistently misunderstand). Whether you believe or not, I guarantee you'll be moved by the poetry of his words--and if not his spirituality, his honest humanity will touch you.
 
Pick an album for me and I'll order it.

A Liturgy, A Legacy, and A Ragamuffin Band. That was his "Joshua Tree" (or AB or whatever. . you get the picture. :)

After that I would recommend "The World As Best as I Remember It Vol. 1"

Both of those albums stopped me dead in my tracks the first time I heard them.

To get a sense of of who he was the video, "Homeless Man" is key (that's where I got this quote from). I've never been more moved or inspired by an hour of people sitting around talking and paying tribute to a dead guy.
 
Just ordered the first CD and the "Homeless Man" video. PS, love the title of the CD.
 
I don't think the risks are exagerrated, but I probably fall into Rich Mullins' court. I'm a pleasure person. I'm not going to live forever regardless. I figure on my deathbed, I'm going to far more regret what I didn't do than what I did. I think I'm going to take more pleasure in the memory of the butter pecan ice cream on German chocolate cake than I will on the carrotsticks. I accept the tradeoff.


so, not a question for you, but more of one for the OP: could gay men not say the same thing about using (or not) condoms?
 
I don't think the risks are exagerrated, but I probably fall into Rich Mullins' court. I'm a pleasure person. I'm not going to live forever regardless. I figure on my deathbed, I'm going to far more regret what I didn't do than what I did. I think I'm going to take more pleasure in the memory of the butter pecan ice cream on German chocolate cake than I will on the carrotsticks. I accept the tradeoff.

That used to be my thinking as well but I've modified it since. Basically, it's not about what I'll remember at the end of life so much as how pleasant my life will be while I'm here. So I wouldn't smoke because that really impedes some things, like for example lung capacity (important to me because mine is not fantastic due to allergies and Ii'm very active). It also explains why I really changed my eating habits when I turned 25 or so - I just felt infinitely BETTER and that made me happier in the long run.

Of course, I am a very huge fan of chocolate and it's really, REALLY hard not to eat a pound a day....
 
I don't get the point of this thread at all. He isn't the first one, and he won't be the last one, who is enjoying a pretty long live although he has been smoking since age 14.
Nowhere does it stand that cigarettes will in 100 percent of the cases kill you. He also isn't proving any findings on the health risks of smoking wrong.

And he and his wife both apologized for having had a cigarette at the theater in Hamburg on January 1st. They didn't think of the ban that just came into power, and the staff of the theater placed ashtrays on the tables. They haven't smoked anywhere where it's illegal since.

I agree with you on the Keiser guy. But seriously, that guy really is a very extreme case and I would qualify his obsession with smoking as a mental illness. Except for that guy and maybe a few others' this incident really was nothing to bat an eye over.
His case, as a little update, never made it before court. A few cigarettes don't qualify as physical injury, so there was no real case.

Since introduction of the ban of cigarettes in public places the sales of cigarettes have decreased, by 8.6 percent in the first quarter and by another 5 percent in the second.
One reason why many people have continued smoking in bar is, as always, the first six months it were considered a transitional period, so it wasn't enforced.
 
I don't get the point of this thread at all. He isn't the first one, and he won't be the last one, who is enjoying a pretty long live although he has been smoking since age 14.
Nowhere does it stand that cigarettes will in 100 percent of the cases kill you. He also isn't proving any findings on the health risks of smoking wrong.

And he and his wife both apologized for having had a cigarette at the theater in Hamburg on January 1st. They didn't think of the ban that just came into power, and the staff of the theater placed ashtrays on the tables. They haven't smoked anywhere where it's illegal since.

I agree with you on the Keiser guy. But seriously, that guy really is a very extreme case and I would qualify his obsession with smoking as a mental illness. Except for that guy and maybe a few others' this incident really was nothing to bat an eye over.
His case, as a little update, never made it before court. A few cigarettes don't qualify as physical injury, so there was no real case.

Since introduction of the ban of cigarettes in public places the sales of cigarettes have decreased, by 8.6 percent in the first quarter and by another 5 percent in the second.
One reason why many people have continued smoking in bar is, as always, the first six months it were considered a transitional period, so it wasn't enforced.

Hey now, Vince. . . Stop making sense.

You'll ruin all the fun! ;)
 
Back
Top Bottom