My Dear People,
One of the regularly claimed major achievements of this mindful little State of ours adrift on the extreme western edge of Yourope is the early pioneering move (courtesy of Cork's own Meehawl) of introducing a blanket ban on "smoking in the workplace" from which it's said many other "enlightened" governments around the world took their cue and followed suit soon thereafter. Given the potential major impact of such on our long standing (or sitting) cultural habit of joining a few scoops with a joint or two (tobacco only of course) in our local bars/pubs I soon got to wonderin' why a total ban had been imposed rather than some improvement of choice for the constantly officially lauded "consumer". It seems the whole shebang was firmly based on the "beyond all doubt" deleterious effects on the health of the nation imposed by the "filthy habit" of smoking - both of the direct self inflicted type and the appalling indirect hazard of "second hand smoke". And this in turn led me down the meandering road of checking out d'evidence for these very definite assertions.
Well surprise surprise, me auld sticky detectiveness eventuallee threw up a rather different picture (stubborn is as stubborn does). Seems the responsible Minister at the time (the bould Meehawl arís) was asserting that up to 3,000 bodies a year were prematurely populating the bone orchard because of their smoking (preventable deaths he called 'em) and his Department of Health (what a strange title for a body concerned more with illness) was suggesting a figure closer to 6,000 while the lobby group ASH was enthusiastically engaged in pushing it up to 7,000 for "direct smoking". It's true that all these claims were laced with the phrase "it is estimated" and so the question of exactly who was doing the guessing and based on what data seemed an obvious one. Lo and behold it appeared that ASH had relied on the Department (even though it managed to produce a higher figure) and the Department in turn creditted a 1999 'developed world' research paper by one Richard Peto, an American epidemiologist, in which he took the US mortality rates for any condition (rightly or wrongly) associated with smoking and based on the smoking population assumed that a high % of those who died must have smoked. Taking that figure as a % of the total American population, he then applied this proportionately to all the other countries, including Ireland. Every condition included was multi-factoral and he had to make a lot of presumptions because apparently there was no doctors' register of who was a smoker and who wasn't. In the circumstances he could just as easily have concluded that nobody ever died from smoking. Some scientific factual information that wha?
It was also a bit of an eye opener to find that our Health Agencies used these same dodgy figures in the same sentences dealing with the effects of second hand smoke on bar workers and non smokers, thereby leading people to believe that smokers were killing 3,000/6,000/7,000 innocents through their being forced to share the same air space as those selfish murderous phuckin' puffers. Talk about asking the fox to mind the chicken coup!
Incidently to the best of my knowledge there is not one single death anywhere in the world recorded as due to "second hand smoking".
Now tobacco smoking may well contribute to many cancers but apparently so also does food, alcohol, environment, lifestyle and social status. Nonetheless it does not seem unreasonable to acknowledge that such smoking is (at least potentially) damaging to human health. However, alcohol too is a strong poison and yet we haven't banned its social use here (despite the undoubted deleterious consequences arising from its widespread abuse) - that was tried before in Americay with spectacular lack of success. In truth our human behaviour is neither logical nor machine like and reality has a somewhat stubborn way of imposing itself on our world regardless.
It seems in Ireland as well, there's no official comprehensive register that lists whether a patient is a smoker or not. Doctors do furnish this information to the National Cancer Registry which keeps numbers on type of cancer, stage of development, detection and treatment. However, it appears that smoking alone cannot be stated as the cause of say lung cancer because even in the case of heavy smokers there are other factors to be considered. Assertions of definite proportionate causes are probably unprovable. Take for example the instance of a heavy man who takes no exercise, drinks like a fish, eats junk food and smokes and then dies of a heart attack. What killed him? The only thing you can say for certain is that the heart attack killed him. You can then maybe speculate as to what caused the heart attack but it is just that, speculation. If you had a bias against alcohol you could say he drank himself to death, if you were biased against the couch potato lifestyle you could say lack of activity did for him in the end, etc.
Only about 20% of the studies carried out into the effects of second hand smoke have made a case that it is harmful to human health. The majority 80% list the impact of this passive smoking as insignificant or harmless. Indeed the major World Health Organisation study (one of the largest carried out) surprisingly found the effects were insignificant. The basis of all these studies was the statistical science of epidemiology which is an effective method for detecting diseases caused by one factor only, but cancers, heart disease, etc. have many factors combined in their causes. The bottom line here is - given the real extent of our knowledge to date and in the absence of definite proof, there is no basis for a total ban on smoking in the workplace on grounds of the danger to health of passive smoking.
What is the alternative? Well if say 75% of the population find tobacco smoke to be disgusting, vile, etc. then perhaps 75% of the public venues should be smoke free. Surely to have the right to a smoke free environment recognised absolutely while at the same time have the right to smoke socially completely taken away is hardly either fair or democratic (assuming we don't view democracy simply as a dictatorship of the majority)? This in turn raises the question of whether we have a right to clean air. At this point in time we and many other countries have made pollution a commodity to be bought and sold. Industrial countries and enterprises with economic might can and do buy the right to pollute our atmosphere, ground, air supply and water. In effect this is an acknowledgement that pollution is part of the real world on our blue planet. And whether we acknowldge it in person or no It is also a value statement that you can pollute anything you want if you can afford it. Reality rules again and governments will not / cannot guarantee clean air.
While we do not appear to have any practical right to smoke free air, in a civil democratic society some public respect should indeed be afforded to the viewpoint of those who dislike smoking anywhere in their vicinity e.g. if 75% of the popualtion fit into this cohort then smoking could reasonably be restricted to reflect the common opinion.
People should be able to go out for an evening with friends and not be subjected to the smoke of others. But, and here's the rub, since the introduction of the blanket smoking ban many others have nowhere to go without being put outside to smoke. What is needed (and what I think all reasonable people could support) is a modification of the ban so that say one in four pubs or whatever in any area permitted smoking. Then we would all have a choice.
With a nod to that cliched phrase beloved of the football world - at the end of the day - and despite the fog, the clear overiding issue here is the right to choose (in truth a fundamental part of freedom) how we behave provided we do no harm within reason, and regardless of the current "certainties" exercising choice can have surprising long term results -
Madame Jeanne Calment was a remarkable lady
Who lived very well right up to her demise
At the great auld age of 122 years
The oldest human on record so to speak.
So what you say what does that prove
Well for a start she was not at all
Your typical non indulgent teetotaller
Nor did she avoid foie gras or Provencal stew.
And as for the don't mention it dreaded weed
Enthusiastic daily partaking was her wont
And in spite of today's received "wisdom"
Divil the bit of harm it seems to have done her.
Of course it helped that she was French
Which particular tribe history has largely spared
The baleful influence of the masochistic Puritan way
To punish those with a superior capacity for happiness.
She and it seems many of the century brigade
Have somehow twigged that truth in good health
Lies in moderate indulgence in hedonistic pleasures
Rather than in the mean spirited lifestyle of misery makers.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
April 2011.