TIMES ONLINE: Twenty of Britain’s most senior doctors call today for a ban on smoking in cars as part of a sweeping expansion of laws to protect children against the effects of inhaling smoke.
Writing in a letter to The Times, the doctors argue for more anti-smoking legislation to address the serious health problems caused by passive smoking.
The signatories, including 13 presidents of medical royal colleges, urge the Government to bring in laws prohibiting all smoking in vehicles and in public places visited by young people such as parks and playgrounds.
The letter recommends a comprehensive strategy to cut adult smoking and children’s smoke exposure outside and inside the home. About two million children are exposed to cigarette smoke at home, with a child twice as likely to take up the habit if a close family member smokes.
The doctors say that the national strategy must include tobacco price rises, media campaigns, more effective health warnings and better provision of smoking cessation services. Read on and comment >>> Sam Lister, Health Editor | Wednesday, March 24, 2010
TIMES ONLINE: Smoke-free legislation needs to be extended to include public places visited by children and young people, including cars
Sir, A new report launched today by the Royal College of Physicians, Passive Smoking and Children, confirms that passive smoking is a leading cause of death and disease in children. About two million children are currently exposed to cigarette smoke at home, and many more outside the home. In addition to the serious health risks of passive smoking, however, the report also points out the additional health risk to children posed by family smoking, which makes children about twice as likely to become smokers themselves.
These health hazards to children can be avoided entirely by acting to reduce the number of adults who smoke, particularly parents and care-givers, and to reduce still further the exposure of children to smoke and smoking, both in and outside the home. This will require a comprehensive strategy including tobacco price rises, mass media campaigns, more effective health warnings, prohibition of point of sale display, generic packaging and better provision of smoking cessation services.
Smoke-free legislation also needs to be extended much more widely, to include public places visited by children and young people, and including prohibition of all smoking in cars and other vehicles. The Chief Medical Officer, in his foreword to the report, says that we must keep up the momentum to continue to reduce the harm of tobacco use in our communities, and create a truly smoke-free future. As doctors, we agree, and call on governments to take the necessary actions to protect our children’s future. Read on and comment >>> | Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Excellent readers' comments:
@ Toby Donovan, "There is something deeply sinister in this inexorable extension of state powers. I left the country years ago and I'm glad I did - the UK is becoming the pettiest, creepiest sort of police state."
Yes, a sinister and creepy police state. I wish I had decided to retire to France when, after many years living in sane third world countries, I returned instead to the UK. I'm too old to leave again now. I made a bad mistake coming home to a country where a sinister, authoritarian regime employs officious jobsworths with no public mandate, to cast about constantly for ways of imposing their faddish obsessions upon the rest of us.
I smoke. But I am a gentleman, and I have never smoked and do not smoke close to children. This is called commonsense, and good manners, that condition of socialisation which is rare indeed in Britain, but ought not to be legislated upon us. I never gave these doctors ("leading doctors"? Are the rest just second-rate?) any mandate to abrogate my right to exercise good manners and common sense, but these sort of people and the Regime which backs them, seek constantly to deprive me of my right to exercise a gentleman's attributes of my own volition, for they would legislate away all choice and in so doing, place me at the same level as the most stupidly antisocial yob with several ASBOs to his name. – Robert Dewar [Source: Times Online] | Wednesday, March 24, 2010
TRIBUNE DE GENÈVE: GRANDE-BRETAGNE | Un organisme consultatif de médecins recommande d’interdire de fumer dans les voitures, soulignant les risques que pose le tabagisme passif chez les enfants.
Le Royal College of Physicians (RCP), un organisme représentant plus de 20.000 médecins et qui conseille le gouvernement, souligne que le tabagisme passif entraîne chaque année 300.000 consultations médicales d’enfants, pour un coût de plus de 23 millions de livres (26 millions d’euros).
Le rapport, intitulé "Le tabagisme passif et les enfants", estime que le phénomène provoque chaque année chez les enfants "plus de 20.000 infections pulmonaires", 120.000 maladies auriculaires et deux cents cas de méningite.
Quarante bébés décèdent chaque année de la mort subite du nourrisson en raison du tabagisme passif, ajoutent les médecins. >>> AFP | Mercredi 24 Mars 2010
