The OcTABber Resistance

For this I will direct you straight to blogger Pat Nurse who has launched this campaign: a reply to 'Stoptober', the government's stop smoking campaign for next month. More soon.

No tobacco-related deaths in Scotland, says FOI

H/tips to Bill Gibson for making the FOI request, and Pat Nurse for reporting it.

The question, how many tobacco-related deaths and deaths attributable to passive smoking have been recorded in Scotland.

The answer: none. Or to use (Head of Tobacco Control Division) Mary Cuthbert's words:

  "We hold no information about actual deaths due to passive smoking. It is not possible to give precise figures on deaths resulting from tobacco use." 

I'll give you an interesting correlation. Tobacco is the only industry that has a global health authority demanding that it should be kept out of talks on health: all governments are under unrelenting pressure to keep the industry away from policy affecting its product. It is also the one commonly held responsible for all ailments affecting central organs and functions of the human body – the heart, the lungs and the respiratory system are destroyed by 'tobacco-related diseases'. Legislation has been brought in throughout the world to protect bystanders from the effects of tobacco smoke. And yet the government cannot say with any certainty how many people it kills, or how many people are killed by exposure to secondary smoke.

Not so critical of Stacey Solomon

It's worth pointing out that some press stories on Stacey Solomon on her issue of smoking while pregnant don't condemn her and indeed regard public censure of her as abusive.

This is from a writer who appears to believe Jill Pell's quite incredible conclusions about the smoking ban and premature births. Yet she feels like the witch hunt is tasteless:

The anti-smoking lobby, which has attacked her with such venom, certainly has the stats to back up its claim for moral legitimacy. But I balk at the mass condemnation of the one-time nation's sweetheart. 

It has the whiff of the witch hunt. There are glints of glee in the eyeballs of those rushing to crucify this otherwise likable and soft-natured woman. [...]

That a good mum should be rounded on and metaphorically spat at by those who imagine that not smoking makes them angels of propriety is so painfully ironic it's almost funny. 

As for the publicity-seeking vultures behind Celebrity Mum of the Year stripping her of her previous title, that's the biggest joke of all. 

With this year's short list featuring Natasha Giggs and the still to give birth, Peaches Geldof, Stacey can rest assured that being a decent mum has sod all to do with that prize.

Hooray for this writer from the Belfast Telegraph for acknowledging that good motherhood is a not defined by being risk averse, and for condemning this needless public outcry.


Hat tip to Pat Nurse who undertook some hefty radio work on the story this week.

Lincoln protest, 2 July

See here for coverage.

Pat Nurse, a smoker herself who organised the event, says that public thought about smoking is “moving away from the issue of health and towards the issue of public bullying of smokers, denormalisation, dehumanisation, stigmatisation of smokers.”

Comments are still coming in. Well done to all concerned.