More smoking lies and contradictions.

My grandfather died many years ago of pneumoconiosis. Black lung. Caused not by his lifelong enjoyment of rollups made with Franklin's Strong, but by the years he spent working in the coal mines.

Smoker's lungs are not like the ones on the packets. If they were, why the hue and cry over half of those lung transplants coming from smokers? No doctor would transplant something that looked like the forgotten burger on the barbecue grid. Smoker's lungs are deemed, by the same doctors supporting that ridiculous picture, to be good enough for transplant into non-smokers. Do you really imagine those doctors would be happy to give you a lung that looks like it's been soaked in Jeyes fluid?

Black lung is a coal-miner's affliction. The picture on the packets is an absolute and deliberate lie.

Then there is the picture of the teeth. Rotting, horrible teeth. We are to believe that these are the teeth of a smoker but there is no sign of nicotine staining. If someone has smoked so much it has destroyed their teeth, where's the staining? Further, where are the canine teeth? There are none, because this picture is of a child's first set of teeth, ravaged by dental caries. Not by smoking at all. This picture is an absolute and deliberate lie.

Don't believe me? Get hold of a copy of that cigarette-pack picture and visit the Scottish government's report on children's teeth from 2003. Pages 3 and 5 have something similar. The original photo in its original context is out there somewhere. I'll keep looking.

The aged hands are not aged by smoking. If someone smoked so much that they had shrivelled their skin, there would be definite and clear (even in a monochrome photo) nicotine patches on their fingers. These are the hands of a 90-year-old who might or might not be a smoker. This picture is an absolute and deliberate lie.

One picture shows a corpse on a mortuary slab with the slogan 'smokers die younger'. The corpse is an actor, his skin appears blue because the scene is lit with blue light and there is nothing to suggest he died from smoking. There is nothing to suggest he has died at all. The picture is an absolute and deliberate lie.

Tobacco smoke contains nasty chemicals, screams another warning. Well of course it does. Burning anything at all produces nasty chemicals. Burning MDF produces a toxic cloud no smoker could ever achieve even if they smoked their lifetime's supply at one sitting. Incense? Let's not even get started on incense. Or scented candles.

Traffic fumes contain all the listed chemicals and more. Crucially, what is missing from that list is the concentration of each chemical - most are so low that one cigarette does not produce a detectable amount. You have to burn a pile of tobacco in a sealed container to find them. It has to be done in a sealed container because all those chemicals are already in the atmosphere... from traffic, cleaning products and many other sources. The warning is an absolute and deliberate lie.

The lies that confuse me most are the warning that smoking causes impotence, and another that it damages sperm. If it causes impotence, what does it matter if it damages sperm? Mr. Floppy won't be doing any sperming. In fact, it causes neither. Take a look at the chain-smoking chavs on any run-down estate, and see how many kids they have in tow. These claims are an absolute and deliberate lie.

All those warnings are demonstrably false. How can this be? If smoking causes all these things, surely there is no shortage of real photos they could use, and real claims they could make? Has any antismoker ever questioned what they have been ordered to believe? Of course not. they don't like the smell and that is the only thing that matters to them. They will soak up any lie that supports their position and they will never, ever question those lies because they do not want to think, for a moment, that they are wrong. They have to believe that it is the smokers shivering outside every pub who are selfish, and the fact the pub is empty inside because the antismokers never visited and still don't - well, that does not make the antismokers selfish at all. It makes the smokers even more selfish for being outside and in their way.

So they lap up the nonsense of second-hand smoke, the patent absurdity of third-hand smoke, to the extent that no smoker can now buy an Apple product because if you smoke, they will not honour the warranty. There might be a tiny particle of tobacco smoke in there and that, as all antismokers know, is a million times more potent than ricin. Even reading about it can give them cancer.

It's all lies. All of it. No antismoker will ever hear that because no antismoker cares. They don't like the smell. It is their one and only legitimate objection and on that one personal preference, an entire section of the population has been designated subhuman. Worse, it is all on the basis of one hideous bint's personal preference. One.

Tiny Blur did it, and his reason was that his wife forced him to give up smoking. That. Is. It. That is the sole reason for the shrieking harpies we smokers encounter daily and the justification for making us all into pariahs. That is the reasoning behind the smoking ban. The Blair Witch didn't like the smell and forced the Tiny Blur to pack it in, and once he was a born-again non-smoker he empowered all those who didn't like the smell as his personal revenge on those of us who aren't married to Slotgob and aren't forced to quit against our will.

The Tories and that other lot also support this vicious, spite-driven ban and so do the SNP. They hate us all and want us to vote for them, then they will tax us to pay for more ways to make us suffer. Are you into masochism? I'm not. I won't vote for any party whose manifesto explicitly states that I am scum and will be disposed of as soon as they get into power. that's why, locally, UKIP are still my preference. They won't reverse the spite but they'll reduce it and that's a start.

Not content with claiming that we are killing ourselves and everyone around us even though far fewer people now smoke than even 20 years ago, the Righteous have now decided to put the frighteners on harder.

So, if you smoke while pregnant, your son will have reduced fertility. Like in China where smoking is endemic. As everyone knows, there are hardly any Chinese people left in the world. Logic? Not where smoking is concerned.

There are some very interesting remarks in that article. This one in particular:

Professor Sharpe, of Edinburgh University, evaluated studies from around the world on the effects on male fertility of factors such as smoking, obesity and exposure to chemicals.

A study of the after-effects of a major chemical leak from an Italian factory found no effect on the sperm counts of men who were adults at the time. But those who were in the womb grew up to have lower-than-expected sperm counts.

The professor's research concluded that chemicals found in food, cosmetics and cleaning products are to blame for some of the birth defects to baby boys' genitals and are raising the risk of testicular cancer in later life. But evidence that the same chemicals affect a grown man is lacking.

By the third paragraph, the 'smoking' part has been dropped from the list of things that cause mutant danglies. Because it doesn't. But note again this line:

But evidence that the same chemicals affect a grown man is lacking.

Oh, but those cigarette packs say it damages sperm and makes your doo-dah die. Now, this professor, who has studied smoking and all kinds of other chemical nasties says there is no evidence that it has any such effect on any adult. Smokers are not directly affected in the downstairs bits by smoking. So the focus has changed to an effect on the downstairs bits of the unborn.

The antismokers will lap it up and the comments show they've already started. Not one has noticed that the warnings of impotence and sperm damage have just been abrogated. There's something else, too. Let's try that line again.

But evidence that the same chemicals affect a grown man is lacking.

So if I smoke and it doesn't affect me at all, how come a whiff of secondary smoke affects others in such deadly fashion?

It does not affect grown men. Only babies (yeah, that must be true because all the rest was, wasn't it?)

So, antismokers. Which are you? Adult or infant?

Consider carefully before you respond with 'Poo, I don't like that stinky smell'.