Open letter to Andrew McNair
Sunday, June 30, 2013 at 17:17 Dear Andrew,
Thank you for your recent comments on this blog.
You seem to fall into the 'quit or die' camp which makes you just as extreme and "dimwitted" (to use your terminology) as those who deny there are any health risks associated with smoking.
What some people question is the degree of risk associated with smoking, and that's a perfectly legitimate query given the number of smokers who live to a ripe old age without any apparent health problems.
The founder of Forest, Sir Christopher Foxley-Norris, a lifelong pipe smoker, lived until he was 92. Our chairman for 20 years, Lord Harris of High Cross, another pipe smoker, died when he was well into his eighties. He was physically and mentally active to the very end.
Nor are they isolated examples. There are millions of smokers, including cigarette smokers, who have lived just as long.
There must be factors other than luck at work and many of us would like to know what they are rather than be told "Quit – or don't start – smoking unless you want to die ten years prematurely of a horrible illness".
While there may not be any obvious physical benefits from smoking, a lot of smokers swear they benefit in other ways. For some people smoking is a pleasure as well as a habit and who are you to deny someone pleasure if it doesn't harm anyone else?
David Hockney, a good friend of Forest, has spoken about his peers in New York giving up smoking and ending up on Prozac, and he has questioned which is better. Ultimately it's up to the individual – not you, me or the state.
Hockney continues to smoke because he believes it is better for his mental health than a prescription drug. That's his choice. Is he a "dimwit" too?
Re smoking during pregnancy, I think it's sensible to err on the side of caution and not smoke whilst pregnant, but I don't think it's my job - or anyone else's - to lecture someone on the subject.
Curiously the baby boom generation, many of whom were born to mothers who smoked, is living longer than at any period in history. How has that happened?
I'm not for one moment suggesting there's a correlation between the two but if we believe the scaremongers it's hard to understand how a generation of children, millions of whom were exposed every day to tobacco smoke at home or in the car, have lived as long as they have. If you could explain that I'd be very grateful.
Mothers-to-be are almost certainly exposed to all manner of chemicals and carcinogens during pregnancy, including carbon monoxide from road traffic. The dose is the poison, so your firefighter analogy is pretty lame.
Finally, I don't think many people reading this blog object to reasonable regulations or restrictions concerning the manufacture, purchase and consumption of tobacco.
What is "vile" is the extent of those regulations – some of which have nothing to do with health – and the systematic "denormalisation" of a product whose consumers pay an exorbitant amount of tax to purchase legally.
I'm happy you're happy you gave up smoking. Why can't you leave it at that? Why visit a blog like this merely to hector and admonish people who have chosen to live their lives differently to you?
To me that's a form of bullying. There must be more productive things you can do, like minding your own business.
I don't like to say it, Andrew, but, please, get a life and leave others to live theirs.
Kind regards,
Simon
Forest
Sheraton House
Castle Park
Cambridge CB3 0AX
Reader Comments (5)
Well said Simon. I disagree only that denormalisation aka stigmatisation is no longer being directed at the product but the consumer who questions the quit or die approach - especially those of us who have smoked almost a lifetime like myself from conception to older age except for the 8 years after I was born.
Quitting rather than moderate smoking may be worse for people like us but we'll never get truth or studies into the effects of quitting on lifelong smokers because that does not fit the political agenda.
They don't care if we die or not. They care only that we live our lives how they demand. No one, however, cares more about our own health or that of our families than we do. Certainly not busy-bodies like Mr McNair who I am sure couldn't even name one of my children or grandchildren and cares nothing about them except for how they can be exploited to force through their own prejudices.
Nice going Simon.
My dad died at the age of 89, he smoked plain and filter for 75 years. My mum died aged 88 and had smoked plain and filter for 72 years. Neither of them died of lung cancer or any so called 'smoking related' disease. Throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s we still had open coal fires in the home. My father was a miner and so had coal concessions for life from the old NCB.
I grew up in a smoking environment but have only once used the NHS, and that had nothing to do with my parents smoking.
When I was at school I won a area cross-country championship in 1966 - so it would seem smoking parents didn't exactly slow me down.
Incidentally, I began smoking cigarettes when I first left school but suddenly gave up in 1980 because I began going to the local gym on a regular basis. No withdrawal symptoms or any gradual giving up - I just stopped smoking cigarettes completely one day.
I still smoke a pipe which I started in 1969 - and I am fit and healthy.
Good letter.
ps I never understood what a 'smoking related' disease is...is it a disease that non-smokers don't get? I wonder what disease that might be.
Excellent letter, Simon. The only thing that I would contest is the first sentence:
"You seem to fall into the 'quit or die' camp which makes you just as extreme and "dimwitted" (to use your terminology) as those who deny there are any health risks associated with smoking."
The phrase '....deny there are any health risks associated with smoking' is just too generalised. What we 'dimwits' contest is that a general risk can somehow crystallise into one person. Thus, if 100 people share 1 hundredth of a risk each, how do those 1 hundredths come together to afflict one person, and only one person? It is as though everyone's risk drains away into one person.
I suppose that you have wondered how the number of deaths caused by SHS (by the Zealots) is arrived at. Well, that is how it is done, The total of 10,000 one ten thousandths equals one. AND IT COULD BE YOU!
And so we dimwits wonder why the Zealots, presented with the perfect opportunity in the McTear Case, refused to bring forward before the court their substantive evidence that smoking causes ling cancer. We forget that the evidence is insufficient and believe the propaganda which has been thrust upon us from all sides for the last three decades or more.
The McMillan Group have forecast that 40% of us will be living with cancer within the next 20 years or so. That is, as smoking has decreased and decreased, with a long time lapse, more and more people are getting cancer.
So what are the proven health risks in smoking again?
I came across this blog via a Tweet and found some of the posts quite interesting. Surely you would have a very dull blog indeed if everybody agreed and there was no dissent? Tobacco use and nicotine addiction are minority pursuits that are currently legal and I really don't care if people choose to use tobacco as long as they don't impose their fumes on others. As you say, that's their business, not mine. I am concerned about public policy on tobacco control and I think my views on that policy and how it develops are just as valid as any others.
I came across a quote from Dr Chris Proctor, the Chief Scientific Officer of British American Tobacco (BAT), in an article in The Telegraph last month. He said "It is clear that smoking is extraordinarily dangerous; it causes heart disease, lung cancer and it needs to be extraordinarily well regulated". I concur with Dr Proctor's views which are presumably also those of his employer. Is there really any more that needs to be said, either by apologists for a lethal product or those seeking to control its use?
Yes there is Andrew. Perhaps you can ask the good Dr Chris Proctor this.
This is a question I've asked of CRUK (Cancer Research UK), the BHF(British Heart Foundation), ASH (Action On Smoking and Health), although these people are nothing more than propagandists and so wouldn't know, the DH (Department of Health), and then finally the ACS (the American Cancer Society), it's a failrly straight forward question to which I've never had a specific answer. Perhaps you can do better please.
1. What is the biological sequence of events whereby the inhalation of smoke from a cigarette, cigar or pipe mutates healthy lung tissue into cancerous lung tissue?
If you can answer the first then you must be able to answer the second. Let's see shall we?
2. To what extent is genetics involved, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% or not at all?
If you can answer those two questions then you would be the first person in the world to do so.
You know why...because nobody knows...and if they do then they're sure as hell keeping quiet about it.
For what it's worth Japan has the highest rate of smoking in the world but guess what...it has the lowest rate of lung cancer in the world. A recent study again from the US shows that 80% of lung cancers now occur in non-smokers. Wow! Now there's a thing.
According to the EPA (Enviromental Protection Agency), in the USA, motor vehicles emit several pollutants that the EPA classifies as known or probable human carcinogens, so how would anyone distinguish between air toxins which are carcinogenic, and which we breath in every day, and tobacco smoke.
I shan't bore you with any more stats, but the next time you come here with any twaddle I'll paddle your bottom with them.
Enjoy your day.