Toot, toot, it's Edwin Poots
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 9:00 Northern Ireland's health minister has threatened to ban smoking in all vehicles.
Edwin Poots, a member of the Democratic Unionist Party who sounds like a character from a Charles Dickens' novel (The Pickwick Papers comes to mind), said yesterday that he would consider banning smoking in all cars and not just those with children as passengers.
The BBC has the story here: Edwin Poots launches car smoking ban consultation. It includes a short response from me on behalf of Forest:
"We don't condone people smoking in cars with children present. It's inconsiderate, certainly, but the evidence doesn't support the argument that smoking in cars is a serious health risk to children. Legislation is a gross over-reaction. What next, a ban on smoking in the home?"
I was also asked to write a few worde for today's Belfast Telegraph. Link to follow.
Simon Clark
Paul Rowlandson, a lecturer at the University of Ulster in Londonderry and Forest's spokesman in Northern Ireland, writes:
This is the predictable consequence of devolution - power is devolved to interfering arrogant busybodies. The tyranny of the council and the local assembly is worse than the tyranny of Westminster.
We now have a tax on plastic bags, a levy on large stores (Sainsburys, Tesco, M&S etc) to subsidise small businesses in city centres where consumers choose not to shop (IKEA are now likely to close their only NI store as a result), and now this illiberal attack on smokers. Nobody ever lost votes by attacking smokers.
In the BBC report it says 'The DUP's Jim Wells also said statistics from the Ulster Cancer Foundation showed 300,000 children throughout the UK are being referred to a GP every year as a result of tobacco smoke inhalation.
He said 9,500 of these cases led to hospital visits.'
Is there any evidence for this? The RCP estimates that 300,000 children are referred to GPs for consultations for ailments which the RCP attributes to passive smoking, even though their own figures show a “progressive increase in relative incidence for lower respiratory infections, wheeze, asthma and meningitis with increasing socio-economic deprivation” (p110 of the RCP report).
Reader Comments (4)
8 people have a pop at smoking in cars in that BBC article, 9 if you count the BBC (which one should). They let all the ones above quote stats and the like so by the time anyone gets to you, you've been drowned by them.
Ain't democracy wonderful :)
There is an article in the Guardian today.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/14/air-pollution-state-sanctioned-poisoning?INTCMP=SRCH
title: Air pollution. State sanctioned mass poisoning.
European Envirement Agency ( EEP) reported that air pollutants already lead to 500,000 premature deaths a year and are now a bigger killer than passive smoking, road traffic accidents and obesity put together.
Aint statistics wonderful
"Wikipedia says, "In the United States, it is estimated that secondhand smoke has been associated with between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections in infants and children under 18 months of age, resulting in between 7,500 and 15,000 hospitalizations each year." "
Are there any figures for 40 or so years ago, when the prevalence of smoking was much higher? Because anecdotal evidence would point to there being a much higher incindence of childhood asthma and other respiratory infection today than there was 40 years ago.
I am sure Simon is doing to be busy tomorrow as I will. Tomorrow it is all kicking off on smoking and cars. I have been passed a press release which is embargoed until midnight tonight, so I can't say too much. However I have been booked on the BBC Radio WM at 9.30
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/bbc_wm
And Radio Stoke at 10.20.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/bbc_radio_stoke