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ASH Daily News

24 November 2003

HEADLINES

Harm reduction and nicotine regulation
Smoke free pub about profits
MPs angry at commons cut backs

FULL TEXT

Harm reduction and nicotine regulation

Walton Sumner writes in to The Lancet on the subject of nicotine regulation and how it may help public health by allowing harm reduction strategies to be developed: Tobacco products enjoy growing worldwide popularity, despite the staggering health toll attributed to them. As Nigel Gray and Peter Boyle discuss in their Commentary (Sept 13, p 845), the most effective response to this pandemic may be a policy of harm reduction. They encourage "clean addictive recreational nicotine delivery", and cite a decade-old call for an accommodating policy. Regarding the potential harms of clean addictive nicotine, they conclude: "Any risks linked with such a product are dwarfed by the magnitude of the tobacco problem.

Full text of letter:
http://pdf.thelancet.com/pdfdownload?uid=llan.362.9397.correspondence.27796.1&x=x.pdf
Source: The Lancet, 22 November 2003



Smoke free pub about profits

The Telegraph reports from The Cambridge Blue, a pub that has been smoke free for the last four years. Run by a former Cambridge rower, Chris Lloyd and his America wife, Debbie, the couple insists that having one of the country's first smoke free pubs is not so much to do with being a 'zealot' but more to do with being a capitalist. There are two other pubs within 100 yards that encourage smoking, yet every night it is the Cambridge Blue that is heaving with customers.

Full article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/wine/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fwine%2F2003%2F11%2F22%2Fedpint22.xml&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=81657



MPs angry at commons cut backs

House of Commons authorities have provoked anger among MPs with plans to curb late-night drinking and dining.

Bars will close early and menus will shed luxury dishes to reduce the £6million a year of taxpayers cash used to subsidise the 13 restaurants and eight bars in the Palace of Westminster.

Worst hit by the moves, which follow last year's vote by MPs to end most working days at 7pm, will be the Members' Smoking Room, favoured by Tory knights of the shires and known as the "toffs' bar". The changes will take effect this week.

Source: The Evening Standard, 24 November 2003


The Financial Times reports that first it was their subsidised food and drink that was curbed. Now MPs fear that it is their sacred right to smoke throughout the palace of Westminster that is under threat.

Speaker Michael Martin has allowed a company to install a trial unit in a Commons corridor to permit "smoke free interaction between smokers and non-smokers."

The idea is that smokers stand inside the unit, rather like a bus shelter with a built in ashtray that sucks the fumes out, and chat to their colleagues outside. But many fear it is the thin edge of the web.

The joke is that the new Tory leader Michael Howard is behind the decision: the unit was installed outside his office, leaving plotters no smoke-filled hiding place.

Source: The Financial Times, 24 November 2003

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