Smoking in cars: head-to-head with the British Medical Association
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 9:07 I spent yesterday morning writing an article for The Times.
They wanted me to go head-to-head with the BMA's Vivienne Nathanson on the subject of smoking in cars. Unless you are a subscriber you probably won't be able to read it online so here are our responses, as published in today's paper:
Vivienne Nathanson
British Medical Association
Ten days ago doctors at a British Medical Association meeting voted to ask the Government to legislate to ban smoking while driving a motor vehicle. Is this a daft conceit or is there reason behind the concern?
Burning tobacco produces toxins — micro-particulate matter and hundreds of chemicals that are hazardous to health. The evidence on passive smoking is well accepted. It was the reason behind the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces. Passive smoking is a major health hazard with the unwitting smoker’s chances of getting cancer or having a heart attack increased. And the ban has meant that non-smokers have not had to seek cleaner air, it is theirs as of right.
Cars are enclosed spaces. The concentration of toxins reaches staggering levels — particulates 27 times higher than in a smoker’s home and 20 times higher than in a pub in the days when smoking was allowed in pubs. Air filtration and cleaning systems, including opening the windows, do not fully or effectively remove the toxins Public service vehicles such as taxis are already covered by existing bans. The new legislation would cover private cars. Why? Given that tobacco is a legal product why does the health lobby not just let smokers get on with poisoning their own environment? The simple truth is that non-smokers are often passengers in private vehicles.
Pregnant women, children and those susceptible to tobacco toxins are at risk if travelling in the car of a smoker, even when he or she stubs out before they get in the car. Children who travel in smokers’ cars risk respiratory and allergic disorders, and shockingly nicotine dependence. A British Lung Foundation study showed that 51 per cent of 8-15 year olds have been exposed to smoking in cars, 86 per cent of children want people to stop smoking in cars in which they will travel but 25 per cent were too afraid to ask the adult to stop. So should the ban be universal or should we allow the smoker who never has a passenger to continue to smoke?
Although some smokers claim they are only safe if they smoke because the nicotine helps them to concentrate, the evidence is that smoking increases driving-related risks. The 2007 Highway Code advised against smoking while driving — smokers have more crashes. Lighting up, stubbing out, flicking ash all distract attention, and 72 per cent of experienced drivers recognise this and support a ban. Smokers should use nicotine replacement in a format that leaves their hands free and does not distract from safe driving.
So where next? There is clearly more to be done in getting the public firmly and fully onside, and making sure that everyone understands the evidence. This will take time, and legislation should follow a campaign to inform and engage the public, as happened with seat belts. Doubtless the tobacco industry will lobby against this. But in terms of the ladder of interventions this is a clear winner. Failure to act condemns the vulnerable to continuing risk, and action will reduce health and road traffic crash costs for all of us.
Simon Clark
Forest
I wouldn’t encourage anyone to light a cigarette in a car with children, out of courtesy if nothing else, but a ban is out of all proportion to the problem.
According to a survey last year of 1,000 adult smokers, 85.3 per cent said that they would not smoke in a car if a child was present. A further 6.5 per cent said that they would ask before lighting up, and only 8.2 per cent said that they would smoke as normal.
What this tells me is the vast majority of smokers have changed their behaviour voluntarily, without government intervention. So why do we need another law that even its supporters accept would be difficult to enforce? Education has to be better than coercion.
Legislation is justified, we are told, because of the serious harm caused by “passive smoking”. Speaking at the BMA conference in Cardiff last week, Douglas Noble, a public health doctor, argued: “It would be safer to have your exhaust pipe on the inside of your car.” What nonsense. Sadly, it is typical of the myths and hyperbole we have come to expect from the militant anti-smoking brigade.
Another claim, often repeated, is that second-hand smoke is “23 times more toxic in a vehicle than in a home”. Yet last year an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal stated that there is no scientific evidence to support this argument.
“In [an] exhaustive search of the relevant literature, we failed to locate any scientific source for this comparison,” Ross MacKenzie, of the School of Public Health at Sydney University, said.
Others have described smoking in a car with children as child abuse. The entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne wants children to be able to report parents who smoke in a car to the police. He also believes that it should be illegal to smoke at home in front of children. The only way that this could be enforced is for neighbours, family members or even the children to go to the police or social services. Is that the type of over-regulated, curtain-twitching society we want Britain to become?
Significantly, campaigners aren’t satisfied with banning smoking in cars with children. Just as smoking is banned in every pub and private members’ club, the BMA wants a ban on smoking in all cars, regardless of who is in them. In other words, individuals would be prohibited from smoking even if they were the only person in the vehicle. How can that be justified, and is the Government really going to waste police time enforcing such an illiberal, spiteful law?
Grasping at straws, campaigners argue that smoking while driving is a threat to other road users. Large international studies show that smoking while driving is one of the least distracting activities in which a driver can engage. Far more distracting are chatting with passengers, outside activity, changing a CD or tuning the radio. Should we ban those as well?
Banning smoking in a private vehicle, with or without children, is an unnecessary infringement of people’s civil liberties. The Government, and the BMA, should butt out.
PS. You'll find it on page 65 (!) of today's paper.
See: A plague of doctors (Frank Davis)
Reader Comments (21)
I have a solution, round up all the banstubators and transport them to Australia !! It`ll never happen but its a nice thought though, a private car is just that, private, or have these idiots forgoten the meaning of the word. I really do despair at what is happening to this country.
The evidence on passive smoking is well accepted.
Only if they don't look at the evidence. Most of the studies show no significant risk.
BMA state:- The 2007 Highway Code advised against smoking while driving — smokers have more crashes.
Facts:-
Outside object, persons or event = 29.4%
Adjusting radio/cassette.CD = 11.4%
Other distractions = 25.6%
Smoking Related = 0.9%
Other occupant = 10.9%
Proof that you are safer having a fag in your car than kids (well, that's how the anti's would twist it!) Make the 'leeeettle daaaarlings' walk everywhere, then they won't get fat and be a drain on the NHS!
And how can any moving vehicle with two windows, even slightly open, only circulate SHS and ignore the inrushing 'freshly car polluted' ait from outside?
"Passive smoking is a major health hazard with the unwitting smoker’s chances of getting cancer or having a heart attack increased." - Vivienne Nathanson. BMA.
It's official BMA says passive smokers harm the health of smokers. If you pick up a hitch hiker who is a smoker, do not, repeat do not passively smoke in their presence because you will harm them. Avoid passive smokers and avoid places that passive smokers go. If you see a passive smoker, ask them not to passively smoke near you, if they refuse to stop passively smoking, report them to Vivienne Nathanson. BMA.
"Doubtless the tobacco industry will lobby against this."
It is a shame that you did not point out that this particular legislation would not affect the Tobacco Industries personal choice or sales. Also, that although Forest is funded by the Tobacco Industry, you were not speaking for them, but the consumer.
"The evidence on passive smoking is well accepted. "....not by any objective criteria it's not!
"Smokers should use nicotine replacement in a format that leaves their hands free and does not distract from safe driving."
Is this part of a marketting campain?
It is possible to construct a (weak) case for banning smoking in cars on safety grounds. But to seek to do it as a health measure, especially when the smoker is the only occupant, is ludicrous.
I suspect we will eventually see a ban on smoking in cars when children are present. But, as there are no traffic police nowadays, it will never be enforced.
I'm starting a business converting cars to tinted windows the moment the law is passed. Demand will be high.
There is no proof whatsoever that children are harmed by tobacco smoke. In fact, the mere fact that children are NOT harmed by tobacco smoke speaks for itself. No child has ever suffered in any way at all because a parent smoked, unless that child was in some way vulnerable, for whatever reason. Even then, it is difficult to decide why any specific child was vulnerable.
ASH ET AL have had a free ride up to now. As a fake charity, and a front for the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Physicians and the Chemical Industry, it has not been challenged - so far.
It really is the most abysmal thing that Politicians have not challenged the effect of SHS on children. In my opinion, there is no justification for the assumption that SHS permanently, or temporarily, harms children. Of all people, children are the least likely to be harmed by SHS. So where is there any proof whatsoever that children are in any way whatsoever harmed by SHS?
What I find most extraordinary and depressing is that the BMA is prepared to be associated with such palpable nonsense.
What nobody seems to check is how these anti smoking brigade have their salaries paid. They accept money from 'Pharma' companies and any organisation that promotes products that are no different from watered down medicines.
Ronald Reagan got it right when he gave one of his many quotations.
Politics is the second oldest profession and is closely related to the first. I would add an even older quotation that is equally applicable. Genesis 1:27. "God made man in his own image"
Why do anti smokers or prohibitionists always look so, "severe".
Severe as in sucking a lemon.
Its because those are the prats that have given up smoking and therefore, you expect as such.
If SHS does so much harm to children, how come that in the past few decades, as the number of smokers has decreased that more and more children are, according to ASH and these so called doctors, suffering from respiratory conditions?
I have said it before and will say it again, my daughter grew up around smokers both in the car and in the home and was never, ever ill! Since the smoking ban (she worked in a pub before and after the ban) she is always ill or ailing with some minor illness. She even took up smoking, I have recently found out, and was much healthier for it. Unfortunately she had to give up again due to cost and so has gone back to always being ill!
Another thing about NRT for drivers - if my husband uses NRT it knocks him out cold for 24 hours or more - extremely safe when driving!!
Yet another thing, when the smoking ban came in and included no smoking in trucks, for the first few months there were far more accidents reported involving trucks. Since then most truckers who smoke now continue to do so. It does help with concentration, particularly when on a long motorway drive when restricted by limiters to between 50 and 56 mph - after 50 or 100 miles the soporiphic effect kicks in and smoking is the smokers way of dealing with this and remaining alert. The danger now is trying to smoke subversively so as not to be caught and fined. The actual act of smoking is no dangerous, but having to try and hide it is!
If these bloody do gooders want to save lives then leave us the hell alone and get along with own miserable existence without interfering with everyone elses pleasures.
I am coming up to 76. There are a lot of us about, many of them even older. Why are we all still here?
And the medical profession's establishment is betraying its own sacred trust which is to do no harm.
Is it about anything else, other than control ? They are trying to create yet another place where they force people into not smoking. Except this time its in their own private vehicles.
They will carry on banning smoking until its something that's only permitted in the home.
But then they are likely to insist on smoking bans, in homes with children.
Do government not trust adults to behave responsibly, around their own kids?
Is it not time they came clean and admitted that this is just another proposed extension of their detested smokerfree legislation ?
They continue to use ' the children ' at every opportunity to further their campaign of smoker persecution. Where does this nonsense stop and more importantly, how can we stop it ?
I remember a few months ago on a BBC Breakfast show when they discussed the item of Cot Deaths. At no time did they mention smoking during this item. However, when they recapped on the possible causes there was a short pause which ended with - and of course smoking.
This Country seems to decry the standard democracy in other countries but then does the same or even worse in ours. If people are so gullible as to believe there is such a danger in SHS then do emigrate to other countries and allow the unemployed to get jobs that they so badly want. Politicians who support this ban and the damage it is causing to our economy should be lined up against a wall and shot for their crimes against HUMANITY.
"Politicians who support this ban and the damage it is causing to our economy should be lined up against a wall and shot for their crimes against HUMANITY."
Alun C-how strange you you say that for those are the exact words I used in a communication with Glenis Willmott, MEP, 21 days ago. It would seem, by her extremely short & terse reply, that 'crime'-'wall' & 'shot' are most certainly not part of their vocabulary. My response to her reply, explaining that no offence was intended but that smokers were now simply 'open targets' for the establishment has yet to receive a response.
I can only deduce that 'smoker-baiting' is quite acceptable in government terms-just so long as we don't talk about it!
This is yet more 'mission creep' by the anti freedom, anti smoking hysterics who will not stop until it is not possible to smoke anywhere - not a car or home that does have children in , nor ones that don't - because somewhere down the line the car/house may be sold to someone who |DOES have kids and thos kids will then be subjected to 'third hand smoke'.. Read my predicition - if we don't put a stop to these twats ..that is where we will end up