Ban lifted in mental health units, Western Australia

Following reports that patients have resorted to dangerous measures in order to smoke, including exchanging sex for cigarettes, Mental Health Minister Helen Morton has announced her intention to lift the ban in mental health facilities. There are reports that treatment attempts are impeded by the ban, which is widely felt to be cruel to patients, and the move is supported by a staff union known as United Voice.

Dissent came unsurprisingly from the Australian Council on Smoking and Health, whose spokesman said:

the council's call was "misguided, retrograde and exaggerated". He said the smoking ban, introduced on all public hospital sites in 2008, was "being very well implemented and there will always be one or two exceptions". [first link above]

One or two? Well, who knows? I suspect the problem was a little more serious than that, in order to convince an Australian government minister  that a smoking ban has gone too far.

Hair-raising stories about desperate measures can be found on this side of the globe too: the Isle of Man prison banned smoking recently and this is the result: unfortunately the authorities there have less empathy than they have managed to show in Australia

Investment ethics

Kent County Council's recent investments in tobacco have upset Action on Smoking and Health. They have also upset an outfit called 'Fairpensions', an organisation campaigning for ethical investment that seeks to challenge the presumption that the primary responsibility of pension fund managers is to maximise financial returns.

Action on Smoking and Health and Fairpensions have issued a joint statement suggesting that a more thorough understanding of fiduciary duty would take into account ethical considerations affecting investment choices such as working conditions, overall cost to society. Fairpensions have also produced a discussion paper on the issue entitled Protecting our best interests: rediscovering fiduciary duty. A counter-argument can be found here.

What's rather funny about this is Martin Dockrell's contribution ...

“For public sector pensions the question of ethical investment is very fraught. We would argue put aside the issues of child labour, of killing half your customers, they’re selling an addictive and lethal product – put all that aside, it just doesn’t make long-term investment sense to wrap up your portfolio with a sector that is in terminal decline.”

It's not surprising seeing Dockrell issuing ethical guidance to pension fund buyers, but he also asserts his superior wisdom in assessing the long-term financial viability of tobacco funds. Not quite his line of expertise, you might think. He adds, "In 20 years the tobacco industry will be down the pan."


Had the habit of smoking been allowed to decline naturally Dockrell's insights into the future of tobacco might be more reliable. Tobacco control over the last several years, however, has been aggressive: not content with keeping the lid on illegal supplies and keeping tobacco out of the hands of children, it has severely restricted the social opportunities available to smokers and sought to discourage them by all available means. Its reach is global.

Tobacco control seeks to destroy the tobacco industry in the naive hope that this will somehow improve the human condition. It seems to forget that millions of people through history have resorted to drugs of all kinds to help them cope with extreme adversity, or to mask it. Getting rid of tobacco companies would not change this. It would remove a legal supplier of a mild drug, but wouldn't deal with the underlying demand for drugs, or improve the general human condition. Denied tobacco, people will turn to smoking other, perhaps even more dangerous concoctions, as found since the Isle of Man prison regime banned smoking:

Inspectors found that inmates were boiling up nicotine patches, soaking fruit peel or other substances in it and then rolling cigarettes from the resulting ‘tobacco’ in pages from dictionaries and Bibles held together with toothpaste.

This kind of thing takes us back in history to a time when unregulated and illegal suppliers were preferred to legal suppliers and standards of safety. Some people just can't seem to accept that demand for drugs and narcotics is a given.

Dockrell tells us that the tobacco industry will be down the pan in twenty years because that is the outcome his movement is looking to achieve. But who can say if the industry will go down quietly? He would be well advised to leave off commenting about future tobacco share values – he is far from being a disinterested party and there are people out there more qualified to read the signs objectively.

Passive smoke 'danger' exposes Scottish Government to legal action

A prisoner has effectively called the bluff of the Scottish Government by suing it for passive smoke exposure – paving the way for many more cases against the government if the prisoner wins.

Reading through the worst claims about secondary smoke, one can see why a prisoner (still exposed to secondary smoke because of exemptions built into the 2005 law) might be worried. The fact that not a single fatality has been identified should offer some reassurance, but a prisoner who lives in dread of smoking-related conditions (which all affect vital body organs) might still seek compensation – why not? (Madame Labate's case might give a reason why not – see most recent link above).

Which way will the Scottish courts fall on this one? Admit no harm, or expose the Scottish public to a bill for compensation?

Will this be a push towards banning smoking in prisons – effectively removing the smoking ban exemption in prisons (as ASH Scotland aims to do)?

Will this be a political decision or one based on the evidence?

New Zealand prison ban begins

Spare a thought for prisoners in New Zealand who face a smoking ban from 1 July (already active as they are 12 hours ahead).  Some trouble is expected including disturbances and the possible smoking of tea leaves and nicotine patches.

I find it very hard to see a need for this. Actually impossible.

Where smoking ban increases immediate risks to personnel

More light blogging. This one concerns the approaching smoking ban in New Zealand prisons, due on 1 July. More than one opinion piece has suggested that prisons are poorly staffed for managing tense situations. Changing the law to prevent prisoners from smoking, while protecting prison guards from whatever ailments smoking might give them, is likely, according to the union (which officially supports the principle of a smoke-free workplace), to make their work increasingly difficult especially in the first 24 hours of incarceration, the period when most prisoners are at risk from self-harm. Officers frequently find supervising prisoners during this period traumatic. Another association has asked for riot police to be on standby.

Is it really worth it?