Passive smoking: fact and fiction
He says “it is now generally accepted there that second-hand smoking kills” - yet neither he nor any other advocate can name a single person in this country (or any other country, for that matter) whose death certificate states “Cause of death: Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS).”
Still, he goes on to state that “the NHS (National Health Service) argues that passive smoking causes anything up to 16,000 deaths in Britain.”
Can Mr Whelan name a few?
Passive smoking has never been shown to cause death and, indeed, of the 77 major studies on ETS since the 1980s, only four of them have shown a casual relationship between ETS and cancer. Seventy-three major studies have found either no relationship at all or an insignificant one.
Mr Whelan informs us of “the Irish experience where peer enforcement has been the main means of policing the ban, and where there has been almost complete compliance.” A €3,000 fine enforced by an army of smoke policemen has been the reason for compliance here - a bullying tactic that would not be applied to any other legal activity. Imagine a €3,000 fine for speeding (which is an illegal activity). Now that might sort out our roads carnage.
Then Mr Whelan treats us to the big, bad tobacco scare. He points out that “considerable financial resources were directed by the tobacco industry against Micheál Martin’s original proposals.”
The reality is that a prominent number of rabid anti-smokers were appointed (and financed) to bombard the public with expensive ads and articles in the media, all designed to scare non-smokers into persecuting smokers.
The truth is that the medical/scientific community still have not discovered what causes a cancer tumour to begin, yet they state boldly that “smoking causes cancer.”
Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t, but the two countries with most smokers - Japan and Hungary - have the lowest rates of lung cancer.
John Mallon
5 Shamrock Grove
Mayfield
Cork
