No new evidence? New petition launched

Four years ago the European Commission published an indoor air quality standard entitled:

Ventilation for non-residential buildings - Performance

requirements for ventilation and room-conditioning systems

The document refers to smoking several times. One example:

The level of air quality required, and the method of classification applied shall be specified. Whether smoking is allowed or not is an important input. The necessary air flow rates to achieve the specified requirements shall be calculated. If nothing is declared, the rates of outdoor air per person for Indoor Air Quality category IDA 2 can be used as a default.

The European Commission, the details of whose forthcoming (and rather savage) revised tobacco directive have been leaked to the press, have published evidence that tobacco smoke can be dealt with in the same way as any other toxin. In essence this is (1) establishing a safe air quality standard; (2) advising how to remove the toxins in cases where the air quality standard is breached.

Somehow in spite of having published this guidance on air quality, the European Commission has adopted an authoritarian stance recommending smoking bans in all indoor workplaces everywhere in Europe, as if there were no other solution available to a mild toxicity problem.

PE 01451, Review of smoking ban

The smoking ban in Scotland is based on this extreme position, and the new petition PE 01451 asks the Scottish Parliament to request the Scottish Government to take seriously the existence of a European standard that should enable smoking rooms to operate.

A FOI request established that the Scottish Government had no record of this standard as of last summer, even though it was published in 2008. It is therefore new evidence, which the Parliament did not have access to when the legislation went through in 2005. All they had (or all they paid attention to) was the mantras 'there is no safe level of secondary smoke' and 'ventilation doesn't work'.

Plain packaging to be rammed through Australian senate following limited debate

Not my words.

British Heart Foundation gleefully informs us that the Bill has been passed and that plain packaging is on the way. Why isn't the British Government following this example?

The EU has already been warned that legal action will follow any attempt to bring the legislation into Europe.

Success for tobacco companies is not unprecedented. This link tells of a Cincinnati court blocking a requirement to add graphic images to cigarette packs because the judge felt that tobacco companies had a high chance of success in challenging the requirement.

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?

Europe launches 'Ex-smokers are unstoppable', 3 year campaign

(and in case you think that is grotesque, try this)

The three-year anti-smoking campaign involves an interactive programme called iCoach, an application designed to encourage smokers to keep on trying to stop smoking. EU officers will be encouraged to lead by example and register with iCoach before it is let loose on the public. It has been published in all the European languages (you can see why the campaign is expected to cost 16 million euros).

As well as putting pressure on officers to sign up to this hideously expensive campaign in order to set an example to lesser mortals who don't work for it, EU Health Commissioner John Dalli also looks forward to extending legislation restricting the use of smokeless tobacco products. So not only will they resort to bullying EU employees, they will also seek to ban e-cigarettes and similar products and push for further restrictions on the marketing and selling of tobacco.

The more I read the less I understand how the smoking cessation racket has been sold on the public. Courtesy of Rick S's comment yesterday, have a look at this on the views of Robert West from 2007. Robert West is a professional anti-tobacco activist, as the article makes clear. Interviewed at the very start of the English smoking ban, he says this:

The experience of the smoking ban in Ireland and elsewhere suggests that the ban itself will have limited impact on the government target of 21 per cent smoking prevalence by 2010. Around 25 per cent of people in England admit to smoking cigarettes. To cut this figure by one per cent, every single smoker in the country would have to try to stop, and at least half of them would have to use effective treatments to help them do it.

“The government is looking for a miracle, basically. But the point is not whether we will reach arbitrary targets but the fact that for every one per cent of smokers we see about 3,000 unnecessary deaths per year. Everything we can do to bring down the figure means a lot of suffering prevented.”

Even a professional anti-smoker believes that the success rate in smoking cessation is very low. People like West truly believe that only by all smokers attempting to stop smoking at the same time can a drop of 1 per cent in the smoking rate be achieved, and that this will somehow save 3,000 lives a year. The last sentence seems to be mere window dressing. If that's what it takes to bring smoking rates down, they clearly can't be coming down very much, and all the efforts going into smoking cessation programmes are doing little besides boosting pharmaceutical takings, and propping up the careers of professional anti-smoking activists like Robert West.