PHILIP DALY,
Madam, - The Minister for Health and Children is to be congratulated for his public health position on tobacco and his courage in taking on the vested interests in the tobacco sector. Quite rightly he does not let the tobacco industry be part of his response to our tobacco problem.
Unfortunately this is in marked contrast to the approach to alcohol where the drinks industry are involved in the development of policy.This is one public-private partnership that the children of this country could do without. - Yours, etc.
Dr JOSEPH BARRY, Senior Lecturer in Public Health, Trinity College, Dublin 2
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Madam, - Kathy Sheridan, while making a valid and almost irreffutable point throughout her informative piece on smokings terminal decline, gets a little one dimensional in arguing that, "Big Tobacco's products kill - often to enormous cost to the nanny state's health service"(January 30th).
True enough to an extent, but there's a flip-side to that coin. What about the substantial revenue generated by the exchequer through the exploitative taxation rates imposed on this addictive substance? Society doesn't seem to mind spending the money that it makes from "Big Tobacco's" products and the misery they cause.
If and when an outright ban on smoking in the work place and inevitably any enclosed public area, is to be put into place. I propose that all earnings made from the sale of nicotine products be spent exclusively on, (a) the relentless education of the young to the serious dangers of smoking and (b) the treatment of only those with smoking (passive or otherwise) related illnesses, be they rich or poor.
If the smoker is to go it alone, why should anyone else benefit from the "slow-acting" and "heart-breakingly silent" destruction suffered by the smoker? Instead of propping up our infrastructure and services, this "blood money" should in turn be used to help eradicate widespread tobacco consumption. - Yours, etc.,
PHILIP DALY, Coolock, Dublin 17.
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Madam, - How easily the Minister of Health, Mícheál Martin TD, not to mention Kathy Sheridan, is taken in by statistics, in this case the newly published figures about passive smoking.
By enacting an absolute smoking ban in all pubs and restaurants, he will kill pub life (and many pubs) and sterilise restaurant atmosphere. He will thereby extinguish a sociability and conviviality that is a way of life for smokers and many non-smokers alike - and indirectly part of the Ireland tourist destination offer.
Those figures. If the incidence of lung cancer among people not exposed to cigarette smoke is, say, 2 per cent, then an increase of 20-30 per cent due to passive smoking brings the incidence up to only 2.4 - 2.6 per cent. Whether this is of technical statistical significance is less important than whether it has any clinical significance at all in a multifactorial environment.
It goes without saying that people should not be exposed involuntarily to dense smoke over a long period; nor should it be beyond the wit of 21st Century man and woman to sort out efficient ventilation. The problem is that smokers themselves are far too passive, perhaps feeling defensive. The Minister's new bill is draconian and ignorant of people.Smoking gives an immense number of people immense pleasure, usually in the full knowledge that they are shortening their lives.
An í Éire an Eoraip nó Meiriceá? Must we for ever slavishly follow the US? But let us not forget our kin in the 33rd County: where will smoking Bostonians go to escape their puritanical Smokepolizei? Why, gay Paris of course. - Yours, etc.
HARRY DAVIES, Radharc na Rún, An Spidéalm, Co na Gaillimhe