CONFUSION reigns over the smoking ban among elderly people. They fought in the war and cannot understand why they are forced to go outside, no matter whet the weather, if their want to light up.
I saw a pensioner who for many years found a way of socialising by spending the afternoon at his local bookmaker.
The kind bookmaker provided a chair for him to sit on while having his cigarette, but nevertheless the old boy was saying why?
After fighting the Nazis in the war he could not understand the right to smoke has been traken away.
Never mind the rights and wrongs of smoking, this is about our elderly people being treated in a way which is alien to them, whether at the pub or playing bingo. Enjoying a ciggy is the most natural thing in the world for most pensioners.
The least we can do is to exempt pensioners from the smoking ban in public places.
If we cannot do that it would show how selfish we have become.
I am not a pensioner or a smoker.
COUNCILLOR DON THOMAS, Southampton City Council.
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