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ASH Daily News

3 November 2005

[View html version: http://www.globalink.org/nbuk]

HEADLINES

Non smoking bar staff on 'six fags a day'

French smoking bill falters on scant support

Smokers should pay more

Washington State considers outdoor smoking ban

Reverse gear for pro-smoking Clarkson

FULL TEXT

Non smoking bar staff on 'six fags a day'

The Sun today reports the findings of cotinine saliva tests on bar staff.

They discovered that non-smoking bar staff in smoking pubs have the same readings as regular smokers.

Research published in the BMJ has showed that such exposure increases the risk of lung cancer by 24 per cent and the BHF warns that it increases the risk of getting coronary heart disease by a third.

Holly Murray, 20, a non-smoking student at Leeds University, works part time in a bar. Her readings showed that she inhales the equivalent of six cigarettes a day.

The same test on a Dublin bar worker, Lorna Walls, showed that she had inhaled no secondhand smoke thanks to the comprehensive smoking ban in place there.

"The result is no surprise really, customers smoke outside so staff aren't exposed to the clouds of smoke we used to suffer," Lorna says.

Source: The Sun, 3 November 2005


French smoking bill falters on scant support

A proposal aimed at stamping out smoking in public places across France, including bars, restaurants and workplaces, has failed to win the support of ruling-party deputies.

The lack of backing from President Jacques Chirac's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) effectively killed the bill, which was presented by UMP deputy Yves Bur at a seminar on the need for tougher anti-smoking legislation.

A law against smoking in public places was opposed both by tobacconists and by the country's main catering federation.

So far, only Ireland, Italy, Norway and Malta in the EU have such a wide-ranging ban in place.

Source: International Herald Tribune, 3 November 2005
Article link: http://tinyurl.com/9fe92


Smokers should pay more

Smokers should quit or pay up according to online readers of the Wall Street Journal's Fiscally Fit column. Last week's column looked at the growing number of firms that are introducing health-insurance surcharges and other penalties to push employees into healthier lifestyles.

Most readers responding to the column singled out smokers as a group that should pay higher insurance premiums.

Source: Wall Street Journal, 3 November 2005
Related link: http://tinyurl.com/7oelf


Washington State considers outdoor smoking ban

Voters in Washington State will vote next week on whether to ban cigarettes and cigars from all public places - even cigar lounges - and create a 25ft no-smoking perimeter around public buildings in what would be the most comprehensive smoking law in the US.

Although polling has been less than definitive, the measure looks likely to pass and is being backed by a public health coalition. But it is being resisted by a loose group of smoking aficionados, and bar and restaurant owners who say it will be excessive and almost impossible to police effectively.

The county around Tacoma, 45 minutes south-west of Seattle, abandoned a similar ban last year because smokers simply migrated to the nearest Indian reservation, which has its own laws, taking their spending money with them.

A straw poll of residents in Seattle, which bans smoking in three-quarters of its bars and restaurants, suggested many people liked the idea of cracking down further on tobacco use but were uncomfortable with the severity of the measure.

Proponents of Initiative 901 are unapologetic, even about fears that they would drive cigar lounges out of business - or underground. Calls for exemptions, they argue, are the result of lobbying by tobacco interests.

Source: Independent, 3 November 2005
Article link: http://tinyurl.com/dv4s5


Reverse gear for pro-smoking Clarkson

A letter in today's Sun looks at Jeremy Clarkson's hypocrisy over the fallacious 'smoker's choice' argument:

'Pro-smoking Jeremy Clarkson has always advocated the "choice" of smokers. But his conscience has finally been pricked, fearful of not surviving to see his daughters get married.

Better late than never, but I wonder how many of those half million fags he's puffed have been inhaled into those little girls' lungs? Their choice? No choice.'

Danny Stein
Ilford, Essex

Source: The Sun, 3 November 2005

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