Today another outburst from the Department of Health will be felt in Scotland, when a Department of Health campaign to ban smoking in cars is carried into Scotland, thanks to the Scottish branch of the BMA.
The claim is that exposure to passive smoking is 23 (or 27) times greater in cars than in 'a smoky bar'. Given a choice between protecting children in cars and adults in bars, in the face of those figures, I would argue that the authorities made the wrong choice. As they never fail to point out, children have far less choice about entering cars than adults have about being anywhere. So why wait four (or five) years after banning smoking in bars before telling us that exposure in cars is over 20 times more dangerous?
That's apart from the crazy idea that you can draw any meaningful comparison between 'a smoky car' and 'a smoky bar'. On the unscientific nature of the comparison, Chris Snowdon has more.
Note radio interviews this morning: Patsy Nurse on BBC Radio Lincoln at 7.30 and 8.10 a.m., Dave Atherton on BBC Radio WM, 9.30 a.m. and Chris Snowdon on BBC Sussex (radio?) at 9.40 a.m.
Also Dave Atherton on BBC Radio Stoke, 10.20 a.m.
12 comments:
See link for Simon Clark's interviews here: http://taking-liberties.squarespace.com/blog/2011/11/15/bma-wants-smoking-ban-to-include-private-vehicles.html
Belinda, you are always on the ball. Thanks for all these links.
Next moves: stop smoking in your own home? Tobacco on prescription only? Forced injections to alter the neurotransmitters of those labelled as 'refuse-to-quit'?
This is insanity! Why the hell doesn't someone do actual scientific research in this and release all the data and conclusions?
lt ain't difficult to do, you're only measuring the amount of smoke in a vehicle under various conditions.
lt's fine Chris poo-pooing these stats that BMA are using but wouldn't it be better to release an actual scientific study that shows the BMA are talking crap?
l'm at a loss as to why it hasn't been done.
Looks to me like tobacco controls on a last ditch effort,somethings up I have that feeling and its big!
harley
They didn't even care that the study was fake and I felt more air time was given over to smoke free.
Stitched up again.
interesting that the presenter has just been presented with the idea that the law might not be enforceable. 'Interesting,' he said. Surely enforceability should be more than an afterthought especially with the country in economic crisis.
Well done, Pat.
How many lives have been lost because folks (smokers and non-smokers alike) now cannot get hold of their GP (a BMA member) between six o clock on a Friday night and 8 o clock on a MOnday morning?
In case anyone missed the announcement carefully hidden behind the BMA's spectacular.
Cigarette safety standards tightened across EU
17 November 2011
"New cigarette safety standards have come into force in an attempt to cut the number of people killed in house fires.
They mean that every cigarette sold in the EU must meet a reduced ignition propensity (RIP) requirement.
Cigarette paper must have special bands at intervals down its length so that, once lit, a cigarette will go out if it is not actively smoked."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15754934
Rose
They've retracted the 23x and adjusted it to 11x.....
http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/
WHERE ARE THE PRESS RELEASES FROM
F2C AND F2C SCOTLAND TO COUNTER THESE CLAIMS?
GET YOURSELVES ORGANISED.
Prior to the smoking ban, just how smoky were your pubs?
Aren't there laws mandating ventilation and fresh air exchanges?
Gary K.
Garry this is something that gets up my effing nose err as it were. Now I have heard that a smoker would never notice how smoky a pub was but I beg to differ. I hate all this reference to pre ban pubs being havens of death due to an over amount of tobacco smoke. Every pub I frequented, and there were many, had some sort of extraction system, unless the antis are talking about Victorian times, and I never saw a pub that had a 'fug' of smoke that was akin to the smog of the fifties and sixties or before then.
The anti alcohol crew are determined to use the tobacco control, and the smoky pub analogy, to also see off the great British pub then...alcohol prohibition is not many years away.
I can see the timeline clearly in my head but I do hope I have f***** off this mortal earth, it's shite!
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