They really messed it up, didn't they?

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.