Muted media reaction to "totalitarian" policy on smoking in open spaces
Thursday, February 26, 2015 at 14:25 Today's call by for a ban on smoking in parks and squares attracted only a modest amount of media attention.
We've been here before of course because former Labour health minister Lord Darzi made a similar plea in October 2014 before he was shot down by Boris Johnson who called the idea "bossy".
Darzi will no doubt return again and again to the subject, aided and abetted by an increasing number of politicians and anti-smoking campaigners, but for now there seems little enthusiasm for the proposal.
As I mentioned in my previous post I was put on standby for BBC Breakfast but nothing materialised.
BBC News did cover the story online – with a quote from Forest (Experts debate smoking ban in outdoor public spaces).
The Guardian also quoted Forest (Call for New York-style ban on smoking in public in UK) and there were reports in the Express and Mail Online.
All four reports featured comments by Australia's leading tobacco control campaigner Simon Chapman who surprised many of us with the vehemence of his opposition to the measure.
This apparent rift between leading "health experts" was highlighted by Politics.co.uk which headlined its report, Call for public smoking ban splits anti-tobacco lobby.
Frankly, I'm not sure what to make of it. I welcome Chapman's comments but he will never be an ally. Far from it.
I'm beginning to think he just likes picking fights and is never happier than when he's arguing with someone, anyone, even colleagues and former tobacco control allies (like Clive Bates on e-cigarettes).
Anyway, there's no doubt that bans on smoking in open spaces is the next goal for the anti-smoking lobby in Britain.
We've known this for some time but we've been pre-occupied with plain packaging and smoking in cars.
The problem is that bans are likely to be introduced at a local rather than national level. How many battles we can win remains to be seen but forewarned is forearmed.
Remarkably we don't have to resort to words like "totalitarian" or "draconian" in relation to this policy because Simon Chapman has already done it for us.
All we have to do is quote him. How bizarre is that?
Update: Cancer Research UK has issued a press release with the most misleading and pernicious headline I've seen in a long time.
It's embargoed until midnight so you'll have to wait ...
Reader Comments (3)
Vehicle fumes are the main problem in towns and cities - on rare visits to such places my eyes are badly affected, notably in the grounds of a supposedly healthy place called Derriford Hospital in Plymouth. The Chief Executive cannot even be bothered to reply to my letter on the subject !
I think people either haven't heard or don't remember that Chapman has said this as far back as 2007:
"To me, 'going too far' in [secondhand smoke] policy means efforts premised on reducing harm to others, which ban smoking in outdoor settings such as ships’ decks, parks, golf courses, beaches, outdoor parking lots, hospital gardens, and streets.
"[W]hile tobacco smoke has its own range of recognisable smells, there are few differences between the physics and chemistry of tobacco smoke and smoke generated by the incomplete combustion of any biomass, whether it be eucalyptus leaves, campfire logs, gasoline, or meat on a barbeque. Secondhand smoke is not so uniquely noxious that it justifies extraordinary controls of such stringency that zero tolerance outdoors is the only acceptable policy."
-- Going Too Far? Exploring the Limits of Smoking Regulation, William Mitchell Law Review, October 23, 2007
http://publichealthlawcenter.org/sites/default/files/resources/tclc-symposium-law-review.pdf
I've always pointed to this quote when saying that sometimes the antis are useful at appropriate times. How does it hurt us to point to these moments at moments (outdoor ban proposals) where we can say "even the most rabid of anti-smokers have said so."
Ah yes, wait, it goes back even further than that, to the year 2000:
Banning smoking outdoors is seldom ethically justifiable
SIMON CHAPMAN, Editor
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/9/1/95.full