libertus

Smoking Ban

Posted on Mon, 27th February 2006 at 11:00 under England, Politics

none
~

House of Commons, Tuesday 14 February 2006, Orders of the Day ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Â Health Bill,
New Clause 5 ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Â Smoke-free premises: exemptions

Jim Devine (Livingston, Lab)

Is this not a simple health and safety issue? Passive smoking kills. Full stop. It does not matter whether it takes place in private members clubs or in public bars. Is that not the case?

Patricia Hewitt (Secretary of State, Department of Health)

My hon. Friend is right. It is also the case that about 95 per cent. of the deaths that result from passive smoking occur as a result of passive smoking in people’s homes, not in public places or in membership clubs.

Odd. If 95% of passive smoking deaths are caused at home, and this Bill doesn’t apply to homes, then a maximum of 5% of all possible deaths can be alleviated, 1 in 20, which according to the quote in the Minister’s opening statement amounts to “thousands of lives every year”. Saving a few thousand lives is a worthy cause, for sure, but will the Bill do so? Can it?

For every thousand people who die every year from passive smoking in pubs and clubs, nineteen thousand die every year from passive smoking at home. Your guess is as good as mine as to how many thousands there are in thousands of lives.

Those thousands of people every year who, after being saved by this Bill at work, go directly back every day to a place nearly 20 times riskier and spend more time there. Home. How can the Bill help these workers at all? It addresses a minor, theoretical risk factor and ignores a major, acknowledged risk factor.

This is not a medical health and safety issue. If it were, smoking would be banned outright and no-one would complain. No, this is a business liability issue. Employers, especially big employers, have asked the Government for protection from lawsuits by people who claim to have developed lung-cancer through passive smoking at work. Big companies are the first target of such lawsuits because they have money and don’t like bad publicity. It is the Government’s responsibility to provide this protection to business, as it is the Government’s fault that people believe passive smoking is harmful in the first place. Now we all have to pay the price, smokers and non-smokers alike, for that act of deception.

Of course, the real solution is to ban passive smoking. I would make it illegal for non-smokers to breathe anywhere near someone smoking. Your lungs are your own responsibility and there is plenty of clean fresh air for everyone, so get your own.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

21 Responses

Ann Onymous said: March 1st, 2006 at 20:50

Legalise all drugs except those which are smoked!! If you want to kill yourself that’s fine but if you kill others I have a problem.
Reply
Ann Onymous said: March 3rd, 2006 at 21:51

Especialy if that person is me.
Reply
Libertus said: March 4th, 2006 at 01:55

Smoking is really nice. The long-term effects suck, that’s for sure, but everyone surely knows the risks now. That the smell of smoke is actually harmful I doubt, but cannot say for sure, as it most certainly is physically irritating to some people.

If I wish to exercise my right to smoke, I automatically expect others bothered by it to either a) exercise their right to move, and if that is not possible, b) exercise their right to politely ask me not to smoke or mitigate the effects somehow, which I never reasonably decline, nor should any smoker, except in designated smoking areas, or when on fire.
Reply
Libertus said: March 4th, 2006 at 02:07
outreach
- none
- ~
Would smoke-free workplaces be a better life-saver than some means to combat the equally newsworthy MRSA and other hospital-acquired infections?

A Parliamentary written question to the Treasury on 4^th July 2005 on Hospital Infections is a start.

The real deal, MRSA mortality 1999-2003, is documented on page 62 of the Health Statistics Quarterly 25, Spring 2005.
Reply
Libertus said: March 5th, 2006 at 00:40

Another thought. These passive-smoking deaths, whether caused at work or home, must come after some type of medical intervention, likely protracted. People don’t usually drop dead of cancer like they do of cardiac illness, and both show signs and symptoms often years before becoming acutely life-threatening. Is it therefore true, that our modern technology is impotent to save the lives of relatively young, otherwise healthy people from the ravages of second-hand smoke, despite ever greater public awareness with concomitant earlier diagnosis and treatment?

What about all the decades of cancer research? Nothing? Still no way to defeat cancer? Especially cancer caused by tobacco smoke, the best known one, 50 years after it was established as a certain cause?

No, that doesn’t make sense. Our medical technology is getting better and fewer people smoke, direct or second-hand, so whatever the number of people getting cancer these days, the numbers dying from it must be declining.

Time for some research. How many people each year are treated for smoking-related illnesses as opposed to the number of people who die of them? How many people each year die from smoking-related illnesses? How old are they? Are there other factors at play, perhaps more global environmental or economic factors, that can result in the same illnesses attributable to tobacco smoke, that are on the increase which could explain the still alarming death rates despite efforts to mitigate? Establishing a causal link between tobacco smoke and cancer does not mean that all such cancers, or any particular such cancer is caused by tobacco smoke. What about pollution from vehicles and industry? Mobile phones in shirt pockets?

More fundamental, is an established epidemiological cause necessarily permanent? Were the original research to be conducted again today, under substantially similar, neutral conditions, would the causal link between tobacco smoke and cancer still emerge? The universe may be a deterministic machine but life is not. Life evolves. Epidemiology is not physics nor is it biology, despite being derived from both, so cannot claim transitive universality of conclusion, being a science of specific events, necessarily non-repeatable. You only die once.
Reply
me_lkjhgfdsa said: March 6th, 2006 at 22:33

Would you suport the right of someone to spread Sarin around in a public place reasoning that those who object to being poisioned can move?
Reply
Libertus said: March 6th, 2006 at 22:37
outreach
- none
- ~
Sarin is a lethal toxin at relatively low concentrations. Cigarette smoke is not. The two are not comparable.
Reply
me_lkjhgfdsa said: March 6th, 2006 at 22:37

Any reason why I’m in pink?
Reply
Libertus said: March 6th, 2006 at 22:38

You’re a registered user, so your own comments are highlighted.
Reply
me_lkjhgfdsa said: March 6th, 2006 at 22:42

Ok, slightly extreme example, but you understand my point. Smoking harms others and causes addiction. Especialy in a home if you have kids - they hardly have a choice in the matter.
Reply
me_lkjhgfdsa said: March 6th, 2006 at 22:43

Ah.
Reply
Libertus said: March 8th, 2006 at 19:14

I understand your point, but your evidence is faulty. To what evidence are your referring when you say that smoking harms others? Health warnings on packets? Government information? How credible is your evidence? Are you sure you are repeating the truth and not anti-smoking propaganda designed to oppress?

I already said that people who smoke have a responsibility to mitigate its effect on others, just as others have a responsibility not to breathe in something they believe to be dangerous to their health.

Children may not have a choice that their parents smoke, but few families these days are so impoverished that they all live in one cramped room, so the children need not be near, and if they were so impoverished, would not be able to afford to smoke.
Reply
KaosMark2 said: March 10th, 2006 at 21:32

It’s widely believed that passive smoking is harmful, just like Crazy Frog was widely downloaded……
Reply
KaosMark2 said: March 10th, 2006 at 21:44

It’s a matter of calculater risk though, passive smoking is considered extremely likely to harm those in the immediate vicinity, but then walking along a major road next to large volumes of slowly moving traffic is far worse, with more Carbon Monoxide taken in. However I support the ban, mainly because in those circumstances in which people cannot move away from the smoker, they won’t be harmed.
However I’ll be interested to see how much money the government spends on enforcing the ban.
Reply
Libertus said: March 10th, 2006 at 21:59

That’s a good point.

Crazy Frog was certainly downloaded. I don’t know why but I’m sure it is harmless. And it is certainly useful to know that people are prepared to pay for cheap harmless crap.

I wish I were as certain of the harmlessness of passive smoking, and no-one pays to breathe it. There doesn’t seem to be any profit.
Reply
KaosMark2 said: March 10th, 2006 at 22:27

Lock someone in a room for a day, feeding them normally, but have the crazy frog playing constantly. Check the state of their mental health, and tell me the you’re sure it’s harmless.
Reply
KaosMark2 said: March 10th, 2006 at 22:28

Anyway, back to passive smoking.
Reply
me_lkjhgfdsa said: March 11th, 2006 at 22:40
outreach
- none
- ~
Wikipedia has a few interesting stats on passive smoking.
Reply
Libertus said: March 11th, 2006 at 22:54

Oops! I appear to be involuntarily unlinking people when I edit comments. That surely has to be a result of my recent changes. Better investigate.

Yes, editing a comment automatically removes the commenter’s chosen URL, which isn’t polite.

Double oops! Not the result of any recent change. The result of an unfinished previous change. Now corrected, test it. Seems to work. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Reply
Sean said: June 2nd, 2006 at 11:53

Damn the smokers!
Reply
Libertus said: June 2nd, 2006 at 11:55

They smell.
Reply

Smoking Ban

21 Responses

Leave a Reply