ASH: how to ban smoking in the home
Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 13:28 ASH has just admitted what we've known all along.
This publicly-funded "charity" wants to outlaw smoking in the home.
Until now, to the best of my knowledge, ASH has always denied that they want to encourage such a drastic step. Then again they used to deny that they wanted to prohibit smoking in every pub in the country.
Now, however, they have finally come clean and issued a briefing paper entitled Smoke drift in the home and workplace.
It asks questions such as:
- How widespread is the problem of smoke drift?
- How does tobacco smoke get into the home?
- Can smoke drift be measured?
and then suggests 'What residents can do'. Advice includes:
If there is still a smell of smoke after you have blocked up all the cracks and holes and if you are certain that the source of the smoke is from a neighbouring property, the next step is to
contact the neighbour whom you believe is responsible.
Be clear about what you want to achieve, that is, to stop their tobacco smoke entering your home and consider what compromises you might be willing to make. For example, the neighbour may be willing to limit the time or place where s/he smokes to minimise smoke penetrating your home.
If you are troubled by smoke coming from a property that is rented, you should contact the landlord or managing agent and ask to see a copy of the tenancy agreement to determine if any “nuisance clause” prohibits activities that interfere with the comfort of other people living in the locality.
It is important to keep a record of all incidents of smoke seepage and any action taken to try to counter the problem. This should include any health effects and any medical consultations connected with this matter as this will add weight to your case in negotiations with the landlord and/or any subsequent legal representative.
Download the full briefing here.
Reader Comments (30)
ASH now do comedy!
You know where these half-wits have picked this up from don’t you? California of course - this is the first place in the world to implement such personal interference. Over there residents can be taken to court for SHS seepage into adjoining properties.
Only when a high profile court case exposing the nonsense surrounding SHS has its day, will this crap then begin to subside.
How widespread is ‘smoke drift’?
1. A damn sight less than carbon-monoxide poisoning from millions of tons of vehicle emissions.
2. Or industrial pollution from home and abroad.
3. How about pesticides, fungicides and herbicides sprayed on farmers’ crops and fields, and on gardens up and down the land.
All of this swirls around in the atmosphere and we breathe it all in, but the vacant possession heads at ASH wet themselves senseless about a few wisps of smoke that emanate from someone’s cigarette, cigar or pipe which dissipates into the surrounding atmosphere and is 90% water vapour – can anyone tell me how this harms anybody or even kills?
John: Everything that ASH do is targeted at the Legislature. At this point, they have little hope in any Court case, in spite of their bluster, as the levels of proof required, even on balance of probability and with a sympathetic Judge, would exceed anything they and their 'experts' could provide. They operate on perception and conjecture, frightening the lesser likes in the population by using a compliant mass media.
A Court case would be brilliant, but they would avoid it like the plague.
The slight comfort from ASH's press release and stance is that they tried to encourage employees to sue their employers in 2005 for exposure to SHS and I cannot think of one case that got to court.
More wasted tax payers money.
http://www.ash.org.uk/files/documents/ASH_290.pdf
I have to say how noticeable it is that the likes of ASH attempt to manipulate others to take action. Never them. I can't blame anybody for not wanting to lose a high profile action with all the costs involved as well, but it indicates just how slimy these people are. You take the action, you stand the risk. We'll provide 'experts' (for the normal 'expert' fee) but you take the risk. You lose, you pay.
I also must say that I was very surprised that ASH involved a firm of Solicitors to circulate what they called the date of responsibility prior to the ban. It 'read' as though any decision was a foregone conclusion. I can assure you that Courts do not like that approach and can be very nasty when it's applied. I'm very surprised that nobody took them up on it.
All of this indicates strongly to me that if a case can be found relating to SHS, it would have a bloody good chance of succeeding. Its puzzled me as to why its not yet occurred.
It is a policy that encourages bullying of smokers and hatred against them. It should be illegal and defined as hate crime.
Please stop voting for a Govt that pays ASH to encourage such hatred.
Chris Snowdon has just posted an article analysing a recent paper which makes claims about the decline in non smokers exposure to smoke following the ban. Implicit in this claim is that the average non smoker, before the ban, was exposed to around the equivalent of 3 cigarettes a year. This includes spouses of smokers and non smokers who visited smoky pubs. The extra exposure to smoke from a neighbouring property will therefore be equivalent to smoking a minute fraction of one cigarette a year and any accompanying risk would be of the order of standing next to a road for an extra couple of minutes each year.
'All of this indicates strongly to me that if a case can be found relating to SHS, it would have a bloody good chance of succeeding. Its puzzled me as to why its not yet occurred'.
Cost Frank...cost.
Tobacco manufacturers? Pubcos? Pub chains? Nah, something else is at play. It's best done from the bottom where commercial threats don't have an impact. Find the claim and quantum, whip round, I'd certainly donate. I'd act on it. too, in my own name.
Question of balls and brainstorm. Have we got them?
These are the types of ads, paid for entirely by government money stolen from taxpayers, especially tobacco tax payers, to then be used entirely against the smokers to incite hatred and eventual violence against smokers, thus normalising enough hate and violence to have people rally against in-private-home smoking as the "next logical step" and "final solution".
They run these ads day and night in prime time television spots and then reinforce the themes by placing billboards and bus signs to travel all over town, thus the idea of it becomes saturated and inescapable, inculcated into normality and eventually results in smokers living in fear and bullies out on the streets threatening physical attacks on smokers - which is fairly common these days in some parts of California, where they've had a 16 year head start and one of their major research centers on how to inculcate hatred against smokers situated at UCSF campus in San Francisco.
http://www.tobaccofreeca.com/
http://www.yousmoketheysmoke.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54bN6Yc7W4s
http://www.lunguk.org/media-and-campaigning/media-centre/latestpressreleases/new-research-shows-when-you-smoke-they-smoke
Imagine some of these ads on television day and night, nonstop, in prime times accompanied by widespread billboard campaigns all over UK. And that gives you an idea of how they will denormalise, or make it seem okay to hate, smokers in their own homes as the final last straw.
If there was ever a case to STOP the funding of ASH, it has to be this nonsense written in this "smoke drift" advice sheet. ASH really are scrapping the barrel with this publication.
In the current economic times, HMG should stop funding these organisations and see how long they would last with public donations. I suspect they could not afford to pay more than three days worth of staff salaries and operating overheads from the total annual donations.
"Smoke Drift in the Home and Workplace"???
How can there possibly be any smoke drift in the workplace when there is No Smoking?
This is a charter for malicious action.
Pat is absolutely right that ASH incites hatred towards smokers and I wish to God its MO could be exposed and its leading lights suffer the opprobrium they deserve.
There ought to be a counter movement called " The Rubbish about Smoking and Health" exposing Arnott and co and called TRASH, maybe it would ridicule the Anti's into backing off.
"There ought to be a counter movement called " The Rubbish about Smoking and Health" exposing Arnott and co and called TRASH, maybe it would ridicule the Anti's into backing off."
As already pointed out - "Who is going to pay for it?"
ASH et al are massively funded by the unasked taxpayer and the pharmaceutical industry. They have the wherewithal to mount similarly massive propaganda campaigns. Smokers have FOREST, whose accounts (I would guess) run in thousands rather than millions.. What chance do they have against the anti-smoking behemoth?
That's the whole beauty of their system. They take our money and use it against us. So while we rely on people donating their time, they are bloated with our cash, to use as they please in their war on us.
No, unless some billionaire of a libertarian bent steps into the breach, we will continue to be steamrollered until such time as the anti-smoking machine runs out of steam.
Yet Jo Public's led to believe that the Government don't fund lobbyists anymore. How misled Jo Public are....
The Tories/LibDems/Coalition (whatever you want to call them) are funding this lobbying, despite their promises to a naive Jo Public.
If the government in power believes they can represent the wishes of their people, why do they have to continually lie to cover up their own agendas?
I'm looking forward to seeing the ministerial response to this blatantly obvious lobbying organisation.
Blatantly obvious to most people, but ASH have been complained about to the Charity Commission for lobbying (they're not allowed to) several times, and each time the complaint has been rejected. ASH are "protected" in ways that even other fake charities like Alcohol Concern, are not.
ASH is protected because the DoH set ASH up in 1971 using the Royal College of Surgeons as a front group. It is Govt quango in all but name.
Smokers in Holland have a benevolent multi-millionaire. Small bars in Holland are now free (not 'smokefree'). They also have a Health Minister who is not wearing Tobacco Control any more.
That's what we need - a multi-millionaire smoker. Where is he/she? A few full page adverts showing the nonsense of SHS would see off the likes of ASH pronto. That is all that is needed.
Think its about time the people at ASH sought psychiatric treatment as a matter of severe urgency.
There is somethink terribly wrong with the mentality.
I think we need to set up an e-pet asking Govt to debate this new phenomenon of Anti-Smoker Dysfunction Syndrome AKA Smokerphobia which has only risen with the smoking propaganda and bans.
These people need treatment. They are currently costing our NHS millions in supporting their phobia and spreading it to normal people through costly false propaganda that encourages the phobia to magnify.
We simply cannot afford to support these hysterics anymore and for their own good, they need help and support for this mental health condition that is damaging their health and those of others around them.
The Govt absolutely MUST look into the causes of this and what can be done to save the poor souls who suffer from it.
Nisakiman, Junican,
David Hockney comes to mind. Not a billionaire, but I believe he's worth about £80 million. A national treasure and very much against the ban. Saw him give a defiant talk at the HOC this summer.
A couple of paintings would buy a lot of media space.....
Well in America they already had their day in court and they lost their asses!
Schuman's Expert Witnesses Testify in Secondhand Smoke Trial
The plaintiff's expert witnesses spoke up on day three of David Schuman's case against his housing cooperative, Greenbelt Homes, Inc. (GHI), for its failure to prohibit the nuisance created by his townhome neighbors, the Popovics', secondhand smoke.
Courtroom and Plaintiff's Townhome Register Similar Carcinogen Levels
But, an incident from Repace’s testimony Thursday came back into play Friday during cross examination. Goecke pointed out that on Thursday, while demonstrating the carcinogen monitor, Repace had measured the concentration of carcinogens in the court room — which is in a smoke-free building — and the amount he recorded there was similar to what Repace had reported recording in Schuman’s townhome in July of 2011.
greenbelt.patch.com/articles/schumans-expert-witnesses-testify-in-secondhand-smoke-trial
Though I am not a smoker, I stand up for those who do, but I cannot understand the twisted logic of the Gov supporting an organisation that uses tax payers money to put forward a policy against people who contribute billions to the treasury in Taxes.
The father of the House of commons Sir Peter Tapsell said the other day that "Taxation without Representation was not Democracy" WHERE then is the representation for 20% of the Population who choose to smoke, and if there is no representation are the Taxes imposed on Tobacco legal in a so called Democratic Society.
I cannot remember the last time I read such crap. Can't wait for some interfering busybody to knock on my door and tell me I can't smoke in my own house. Bought and paid for over a forty year working life. I would be very polite but all my sentences would end with 'off'. Insert whichever first words you care. They would all mean the same thing. Ash are becoming a menace with their obsession with cigarettes. If I wasn't so clean living I would suggest that it is some sort of kink.
Personally (if this ever came into law) I would just stick a notice up saying that 'unless invited, you are trespassing' and prosecute the busy-bodies under trespassing laws.
ASH have now shown their true colours and anyone that takes them seriously needs their head testing. They must be obsessed and delirious.
Oh dear - I'm describing our Government aren't I? They take ASH seriously; so do MSM - shock, horror.
ASH have become a laughing a stock; the sooner the Coalition realise this, the better.
If the charity commission can question the charitable status of private schools, why has no one question the charitable status of ASH ?
The problem would worst for tenants, who are usually required to sign a contract. Not withstanding a loss of any deposit, a landlord could probably use smoking as an excuse to evict. I guess they have to prove smoking had taken place, but in this day and age any arbitration would probably favour the landlord...
I would never have beleived that my ciggie smoke could behave in this way. To creep out of my living room, along the hall, out through the letter box, down the drive, and across the road like something out of a low-budget horror movie, up my neighbours drive, through their letter box and poison a whole family of none-smokers. Surely this can't be the same ASH who advocated that smoking shelters should only have two sides.
Tony, sadly for all their Etonian and similar educations, it seems that none of todays' politicians actually understand the meaning of the word Democracy.
Either that or they have changed the meaning and forgotten, conveniently, to tell the rest of us!
Today, in the UK, we live in a Dictatorship that is growing stronger and more stupid and is ruining the lives of the majority of the people who have no choice but to continue living here!
None of the 3 main parties deserve any votes in the future as they are all rotten and corrupt to their very core.
As that excellent EU critic Mary Ellen Synon said, when she quoted an EU big chief (cant remember his name) 'we are now living in a post democracy era'.
The day we joined the europen union was the day we gave up all our freedom.
And it all started with the Smoking Ban.
Just count up all the Bans that have been implemented since that fateful day.
It was all in the big plan to bring us to - and to quote another dead fish politician - 'we are where we are'
Going forward.
The drop in smoking rates has presented severe revenue shortage and now the health mafia are looking at cultivating pot (the whacky tobacco). Time will come when Ash will have to downsize due to lack of government grants.