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ASH Daily News

23 November 2005

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

HEADLINES

Enterprise pub group boss derides partial ban 'shambles'

French fries overtaking French elegance

Punitive attitude blames victims but excuses the most powerful

Cig butt bins required to prevent England turning into 'giant ashtray'

Canadian man shot over cigarette

FULL TEXT

Enterprise pub group boss derides partial ban 'shambles'

Although some papers attempt to manipulate the story to suggest that any smoking ban is unwanted and threatens the 'Great British Pub', a little scrutiny reveals the fact of the matter, which is that Enterprise Boss Ted Tuppen is fuming over the government's proposal to outlaw smoking only in pubs that serve food.

"The current legislation is illogical," Tuppen said today. "It protects bar staff and waiters working in food-led outlets, but offers no protection to staff in a smoking environment. Coupled to this there is a debate raging over what defines 'food' in a pub. It's impossible to see the current legislation working... I can't see it making a third reading in parliament," Tuppen told AFX News in a telephone interview this morning.

"We have to take great care of waiters but we have carte blanche to passively kill barmen and club stewards", he added, calling for a full smoking ban.

Source: Times, Independent, Telegraph, Daily Mail, III.com, Evening Standard, 23 November 2005
Article link: (T) http://tinyurl.com/dbroq (I) http://tinyurl.com/d86cu (III) http://tinyurl.com/8jz7h (ES) http://tinyurl.com/8gqvk


French fries steadily replacing French chic

'French women don't get fat' was a best-seller earlier this year. In it, author Mireille Guiliano claimed that traditional French attitudes to food could ensure a perfect figure, perpetuating the myth of the ubiquitous super-svelte, healthy French woman.

But now a nationwide survey has exploded this myth.

The reality is that fast food chains are common place across the towns and cities of France and family meals are being replaced by supermarket ready meals.

"Of course some French women get fat. I find it obscene, frightening, that France has one of the largest numbers of McDonalds outside of America', Miss Guiliano admits.

However, men are inflicting the worst on themselves, according to the survey:

Three-quarters are estimated to be smokers.

The study's authors found that one man in three smokes daily, one in two is carrying too much weight and one in 10 likes to knock back excessive liquor.

For women, one in five cracks open a pack of cigarettes per day, one in three is carrying too much weight, and one in 30 could be classed as alcoholic.

The best-educated among both men and women were the least at risk for smoking and obesity.

Source: Daily Mail, 23 November 2005
Related link: http://tinyurl.com/dvyyn


Punitive attitude blames victims but excuses the most powerful

Deborah Orr writes in the Independent :

'A poll by the private health company Bupa has found that a lot of people think those who smoke, drink or are obese should be charged for NHS treatment. It's easy to see where this groundswell of piously judgemental opinion comes from. Only the saintly among us has never felt the ghost of a sneer at the sight of a fat man scoffing a burger, or a grimace of repulsion at a smoker coughing her lungs up.

Such punitive attitudes are encouraged, often with the best of intentions, even by government - and charity-sponsored health campaigns that urge us to take responsibility for our own bodies. Often though, in seeking to make people repulsed by their own habits, they instead make those people all the more repulsive to most of the rest of us. Being the loser berated for smoking doesn't help you to stop. It makes you feel even more rubbish about yourself, and those around you even more impatient with your pathetic failures at control. This may be part of the reason why public health campaigns have such limited results.

The wish for penalties to be introduced into the NHS suggests that people are open to the idea of market mechanisms regulating public services, even though there is little or no logic in doing so.

What smoking, drinking and eating have in common is that they are addictive or compulsive behaviours and in order to tackle them the NHS has to start looking at its attitude to mental rather than physical illnesses.

The trouble with the mantra of market forces and individual responsibility is that it excuses the powerful, and blames the victim'.

Source: Independent, 23 November 2005


Cig butt bins required to prevent England turning into 'giant ashtray'

A ban on workplace smoking will turn England into "a giant ashtray" unless bins are provided outside restaurants and businesses for cigarette ends, an environmental group warned on Friday.

Keep Britain Tidy said that more smokers on the streets would lead to a growth in littering and claimed a total smoking ban in Ireland had caused problems outside pubs, restaurants and colleges.

"Boxes, butts and matches are our biggest litter problem and are found on around 90 percent of our streets" said Alan Woods, Chief Executive of Keep Britain Tidy.

"While we all understand the reasons for a ban, the health of our environment has got to be considered too and smokers need something to drop their dog ends in. If we don't provide this, then England will become a giant ashtray."

The group said that 61 percent of residents in Cork, Dublin, Galway and Waterford believed litter had increased since prohibition began. Meanwhile in England, where smoking is already outlawed in many workplaces, 35 percent of employees who had to go outside for a cigarette were not provided with a bin or ashtray. Even in specially designated areas, 13 percent of workers said their employers had provided no facilities for them.

Source: Reuters, 23 November 2005


Canadian man shot over cigarette

Police in Toronto are trying to identify a gunman believed to have shot and wounded a 22-year-old smoker because he said he didn't have a cigarette to spare.

As police describe it, the smoker was standing with an acquaintance on a street in northwest Toronto at about 11 p.m. on Friday, when he was approached by two men, one of whom asked for a cigarette.

When the smoker said he was smoking his last one, the two other men became upset.

One pulled a silver-coloured handgun and fired several shots, hitting the smoker in the arm and foot. The two men then fled.

The smoker was taken to hospital to have his wounds treated.

Source: CBC, 23 November 2005

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