Sunday 27 November 2011

Campaigner for choice in the news on car smoking ban

Local campaigner Bill Gibson hits the headlines in Dumfries-shire (again).

(click to enlarge)
This time he addresses the car smoking ban proposed by the BMA: he points out that air cleaning technology renders car smoking bans quite unnecessary. (Unfortunately the article omits a paragraph, which probably named the Brussels Declaration on Scientific Integrity.)

So far the debate in the Scottish Parliament has been limited, with one Oral Question to the Public Health Minister, Michael Matheson, who insists that there is 'no intention' to even have a public consultation on the issue in Scotland 'at this stage'. That won't please Sheila Duffy and her ilk and they will want to know why we don't protect children when we make such a point about protecting adults.

Scotland might very well come under pressure to pass a car ban. Northern Ireland is already making plans. The Guardian reports:  
... the BMA hopes that the devolved administrations in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, which are pursuing some innovative public health measures such as alcohol minimum pricing and presumed consent organ donation, might take their own action.
 The Prime Minister has expressed himself to be 'nervous' about a smoking ban in cars. After all, 
"We do not believe that legislation is the most effective way to encourage people to change their behaviour," a Department of Health spokesman said.
Eh?

The Welsh Assembly wants an educational approach for three years and then to apply a ban if people don't mend their ways during this time. I have to say their logic is provoking. As I've already said, passive smoke exposure is already so lethal that adults have to be protected from it, with savage penalties handed down to transgressors of the public smoking ban. But for exposing children (allegedly exposed eleven times more than in a bar) there is a three-year period of grace. 

Who understands these people?

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