A study published yesterday allegedly shows a reduction in child asthma admissions following the smoking ban in England.
I'm no expert but – as I told one journalist – I am sceptical of the study's findings:
“Asthma rates have been going up for three decades, and we have always questioned how much that was due to smoking simply because most people accept that asthma is caused by a number of things.
“It was quite strange to us that they should be specifying children. The smoking ban only affects places where adults are present, such as nightclubs, bars and restaurants.”
Anyway, Chris Snowndon has written his usual excellent analysis so I recommend that you read and share that with as many people as possible.
Snowdon demonstrates quite clearly that it is very difficult to draw any conclusions about the impact of smoking bans on asthma rates.
It comes as no surprise that one of the authors of the study is Stanton Glantz (described by Snowdon here as "arguably the most influential anti-smoking activist of the last thirty years").
Perhaps the most devastating revelation however is the fact that the Daily Mail, Telegraph and Guardian "took more than three-quarters of their reports directly from the shoddy press release".
I know newspapers are short-staffed these days but there is no excuse for that. Tobacco control campaigners must have been doing high fives yesterday. They barely have to lift a finger and our compliant media rolls over.
To quote Snowdon again, "Pathetic."