1. Scotsman report on backlash against tobacco display ban: I expected a retaliation from ASH Scotland on Monday morning. It's here! Sheila Duffy reiterates her faith that smoking is the worst thing that could possibly happen to any young person and we are bound to go to any ridiculous lengths to ensure youngsters never even get a sight of tobacco when out shopping (as if that were guaranteed to prevent youth smoking).
2. In A Lesson for Grampian, I pointed out that hospitals in Derby were reintroducing smoking shelters having attempted to go smoke free for a few years. This morning The Telegraph reports on Bournemouth hospitals taking the same action.
3. Finally in Banned from claiming that e-cigs are a stop-smoking aid, I tried to explain the absurdity of official attitudes to the e-cigarette. On the same theme, Tobacco Harm Reduction blog writes: Is parody dead when writing about tobacco harm reduction?
3 comments:
I attended the Holyrood Smoking Conference last year and the presentation by Sheila Duffy started with her comparing the display of cigarettes at the check out in a Shop to having Guns,Chainsaws and Knives on display.
It would seem that outlandish statements are Sheila Duffy's trademark in order to justify the £853,000 funding from the Scottish Government this year.
How very benevolent of the Bournemouth hospital to 'reintroduce' smoking outside in the grounds.
Considering that they did not have the legal power to enforce it in the first place.
I remember long, long ago - way before anti-smoking reached its dizzying heights of hysteria - that RoSPA, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, used to state quite specifically that they did not support either total bans or draconian punishments for offenders against smoking restrictions for precisely these reasons. It doesn't, surely, take Einstein to work out that the "Quick! Someone's coming!" not-quite-put-out, flung-under-the-bed cigarette end is likely to cause far more fires than even one left, lit but unattended, in an ashtray.
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