quitting
smoking as good as
‘happy pills’

The smoking ban has
certainly caused a lot of anxiety, just ask the ex-bar staff that no longer have a job.

- NOT AFRAID OF THE CYBERNATS

Fourteen months off the 
cigarettes and I find this article utter nonsense. Happy pills 
indeed. When everything 
else is cut, why do these 
idiotic so-called scientific investigations still manage to obtain funding?

- Engineer Oldman

Makes sense. There’s a great
relief in taking off shoes that 
are too tight – but that doesn’t mean people with ill-fitting shoes are happier overall. 
Thankfully, tight shoes aren’t 
addictive, or promoted as 
rugged/grown-up/sophisticated/slimming, so it’s a fairly minor issue.

- ScottishJohn

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Not sure whether it is grant-
aided mono-subject research or selectively edited presentation of the outcome, but non-joined-up science is as, if not more, dangerous than no science at all. Weight gain is frequently a
result of quitting smoking,
leading to elevated risk of thrombosis – and there is often increased consumption of 
alcohol. The advice to take pills to counter these may well be out of the frying pan into the fire.
Laboratory models by their
nature cannot replicate the range of bodily and mental make-ups that are the human being. Notice online comments in the BMJ of an unnamed 
researcher are leapt upon by the professional anti-smoking lobby, grist to the mill of the one-sided debate.

- Borodino

if I had known at the time, 
I would have quit smoking and gone onto valium pills. Smoking does not depress, it reduces the activity of your imagination to a neutral base. Or did you not 
understand that, in the old 
days, after a spectacular sexual encounter, the first thing you reached for when it was over was a cigarette?

- Treacle Scone