Smoking in the home - let battle commence
Sunday, October 15, 2017 at 9:36 Today's Sunday Times Scotland reports that:
Anti-smoking campaigners in Scotland are seeking to stop people lighting up at home as part of a drive to reduce the harmful health effects of inhaling secondhand tobacco smoke.
No-one should be surprised. Banning smoking in the home has been one of tobacco control's less than secret ambitions for years.
It took a while for them to admit it, of course. When they were campaigning to ban smoking in the workplace we were repeatedly assured there was no question of smoking being banned at home.
Then, in December 2011, ASH published a briefing note, 'Smoke drift in the home and workplace'. See ASH: how to ban smoking in the home (my title not theirs).
Since then tobacco control has been chipping away, getting people used to the idea. Earlier this year, encouraged by the ban on smoking in cars with children (the first time smoking had been banned in a private space, if you exclude private businesses) it was reported that 'Smoking could be banned in some new council homes in a bid to protect the health of children'.
Today's report in Scotland also focuses on social housing so the tactics are clear - first, discriminate against those who can't afford their own homes, then extend the ban to every private home and garden. (Have you never heard of a tiny bit of smoke drifting back in to the house? It's a serious health risk!!)
Children, inevitably, are the Trojan horse through which this and other prohibitionist policies are being slipped in.
Ban smoking in cars with children? Tick. Ban smoking in children's play areas? Tick.
Ban smoking in parks and beaches (to prevent children from being exposed to the sight of someone smoking)? Tick, tick, tick.
Now smoking in the home is under threat because, we are told, "hundreds of thousands of people in Scotland are still at risk from exposure to secondhand smoke in their homes."
I'd like to see hard evidence to justify this claim, not to mention the insinuation that people's health is at serious risk as a result. The level of risk is important. We're surrounded by chemicals and particles in the home. The dose is the poison and most of the time the dose is relatively benign. Same goes for tobacco smoke.
The Enstrom/Kabat report, which most readers of this blog will be familiar with, remains the largest ever study of the impact of secondhand smoke on non-smokers in the home.
The results and conclusions were unambiguous and in the absence of any study with a similar database or longevity must never be forgotten.
The study, published by the BMJ in May 2003, focused on "35,561 never smokers who had a spouse in the study with known smoking habits".
In plain English the authors concluded that:
The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality, although they do not rule out a small effect. The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed.
The report, as we know, provoked a huge outcry with tobacco control activists falling over themselves to dismiss the report and smear the authors by any means possible.
ASH's response, reported by the BBC, was particularly interesting:
"This could be very damaging as it will be used by industry lobbyists to argue against laws to ban smoking in public places and workplaces."
In other words, ignore the study, the largest and most authoritative of its kind, because it could derail our authoritarian plan to impose a smoking ban on every workplace in the country which is based on the claim - never proven - that passive smoking is a serious health risk.
Today few people seem willing to fight the 'passive' smoking myth but that's exactly what we have to do because it will be very hard to win this battle on the sole argument that people have a right to behave exactly as they want in their own homes. (Clearly this isn't true on a host of issues.)
What I find frightening is the way younger generations have been indoctrinated to believe all the propaganda about passive smoking. This isn't scientific so it isn't the first argument I use when discussing smoking in the home, but I do like to point out that if the scare stories about passive smoking are anywhere near true then it's amazing that the generation of children most exposed to tobacco smoke (the baby boom generation of the Fifties and Sixties) is living longer than ever before in human history.
Imagine that. A generation of children – at least 50 per of whom must have been regularly exposed to tobacco smoke in the home for much of their childhood – has largely survived to tell the tale.
I accept there have been medical advances during that time but if regular exposure to tobacco smoke is as dangerous as we're led to believe all the medical advances in the world wouldn't have kept the overwhelming majority of that generation living long into their eighties and, increasingly, their nineties.
Btw, the Sunday Times sent Forest an email at 8.30 last night inviting us to comment "within 30 minutes".
Normally that wouldn't be a problem but I was driving home from Derbyshire at the time and didn't see the email until 10.30, by which time it was too late to reply.
We will however be fighting this all the way. I hope you will too.
Reader Comments (12)
Presented without comment.
"But this has been dismissed by Deborah Arnott, chief executive of the campaign group Action on Smoking and Health, which has been at the forefront of the fight against smoking.
"A ban in homes is not feasible or right. But what this does, and indeed the ban in public places did, was send an important message and as a result the numbers smoking in homes has fallen."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-26135266
Debs Arnott is a liar.
My home. My choice. They can get lost.
Simon,
Now is the time to bring forward all the reports that ash and seemingly governments are ignoring or deliberately not reporting that decry the results of the reports and supposedly claims ash and most of the medical authorities and the world health organisation are purporting to be the truth. There are enough of them. This just might make some of the supposed free press to make a comment or two about. It seems to me it is now time to adapt the procedure of repeating these reports time and time again in order to get the message across to these people in government that they are being coerced by fear into saying nothing about the rebuttals to the lies that ash and co keep repeating.
Good post. Thank you. Question - Who represents smokers in parliament? Anyone? No one?
1955 - they year I was born - the smoking prevalance was at 84% (their estimate, not mine). My generation was “innundated” by SHS, and we’re the healthiest generation ever. I have never, ever believed the propaganda, don’t now, and won’t ever. The smoking ban was never justified. Power to your elbow. And yes, I’m a vaper, but I would never forget my roots...
Doing a bit of Digging on Dr Sean Semple as he's in my neck of the woods, in Aberdeen, I found this link on his university profile page www.smokefreehomes.network a weebly site and quite shonky to be honest, but what's worring to me is they are looking to liase with housing authorities...you know to target those lower down than they on the socio economic ladder who do not have the means of owing their own house. "Not your house, Not your choice".
Council and housing association tenants, like prisoners and those confined in mental health facilitirs, are easy targets to bully into compliance.
Be assured, this will start with council tenants who will not dare challenge it or speak out for fear of ultimately losing their homes, having their kids taken from them, and ending up homeless.
How anyone can call that progressive is beyond me.
The attack on smoking in homes (as well s in private vehicles) is intended as a step toward prohibition. It is time to attack the false and exaggerated data that was used to create the second hand smoke myth. There is a wide body of literature showing there is no actual risk. Even a review of the actual data used to support the assertions shows the to be weak associations, influenced by bias and confounding data rather than the certainties presented in the headlines and press releases.
Simon
The Enstrom/Kabat report was published exactly one month before the WHO FCTC opened for signature on 16 June 2003 in Geneva, so of course there was panic and denial of it's results.
One month later signatories to the FCTC had to sign that they -
Recognized "that scientific evidence has unequivocally established that exposure to tobacco smoke causes death, disease and disability, and that there is a time lag between exposure to smoking and the other uses of tobacco products and the onset of tobacco-related diseases.”
So Enstrom and Kabat had to be discredited very quickly.
We were signed up by the EU on the very first day.
EU among first to sign Convention on Tobacco Control
Brussels, 16 June 2003
"Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne and the Greek Council Presidency are among the first to sign in Geneva today the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) on behalf of the European Union."
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-03-847_en.htm?locale=en
There was another very large 'study' organised by the WHO and intended to settle the 'passive smoking' issue for once and for all. Unlike other studies, this one specifically examined long term effects on children of smoking in the home.
Unfortunately for the WHO, even with the debased statistical methods used in all smoking propaganda, the results showed no evidence of harm whatsoever. Worse still, the only 'significant' result was that children who grew up in smoking homes were 23% LESS likely to get cancer in later life.
The study was called 'Boffetta et al 1998'.
So on the basis of anti-smoking methods, all parents should be forced to smoke at home around their children or face eviction. Non smokers should face sanctions.
It is also tme to expose the myth about Roy Castle's sad death. It was not caused by shs but bagbipe lung, something not known about then but now recognised as a huge risk to those, like Roy castle, who play wind instruments.
He is the only case ever named as allegedly having died from "passive" smoke but it simply is not true. Hard, I know, but it is tme truth came out.
As I understand it, Pat, Roy Castle also smoked cigars.
I find it absolutely mind blowing that despite there being no evidence supporting the SHS myth, the anti-tobacco mob continue to peddle the lie as if it were the truth.
How on earth do they get away with it?
The worldwide smoking bans are all predicated on the supposition that SHS is life threatening, and yet the studies show that there is no risk.
So again; how have they managed to get away with lying to everyone? Why haven't they been called out on it? It's unbelievable - a massive con that no-one seems to feel inclined to expose, even though the evidence is in the public domain.