Madam, - Earlier this month, after a visit to free-and-easy Germany, I wrote to you about the persecution of tobacco smokers in Ireland, the US and a few other countries (April 12th).
This persecution consists in decreeing that in large workplaces, on trains, and in places of social resort (pubs, restaurants, cafés), tobacco smokers shall not smoke, nor even have a separate room, carriage or area provided for them. They must get out, out, out.
The proclaimed purpose of this policy is a healthier population - the reduction of disease and of premature death. I pointed out that no evidence has been produced that, in countries where such persecution occurs, disease and premature death decrease.
Obviously, I was talking about something quite different from the persecutors' habit of citing numbers - wildly varying numbers - of deaths which, they say, their policy will prevent or lives it will save. I am talking about citing annual health statistics which show that, after a period of implementing smoker persecution, disease and premature death do in fact decrease.
That would mean showing, in statistical terms, that Americans, after years of smoker persecution, are much healthier than Germans. Are they? Or, for a modest start, it might be shown that the Irish health statistics of the past year were an improvement on those of the year before the ban. Were they?
Alternatively, delving historically, it might also be shown that, since the arrival of tobacco from America five centuries ago, the health and premature death rate of Europeans have got progressively worse.
I said that, smoking my pipe patiently, I would wait for such evidence to be produced. I am writing now to record that it has not been. I thank the readers who commented on my letter, even if they were silent with regard to the evidence for which I asked. Silent, too, were the Office of Tobacco Control and the Health Promotion Unit, which bombard us with anti-smoker ads.
This widely noticed silence will have two results. On the one hand, most people will continue to believe that the persecutors are broadcasting a superstitious lie. In countries where civility provides smoking areas, the non-smokers - disbelieving that vicinity to smokers has fatal consequences - will continue to flock to those areas rather to their own, for the good reason that the craic is better where the smokers are. Craic is important for people's health.
On the other hand, many people, myself included, will be reinforced in their belief that governments wishing to promote public health could pursue much more effective policies than smoker persecution - and that failure to do so, while at the same time persecuting smokers, is both hypocritical and careless of the citizens' health. - Yours, etc.,
DESMOND FENNELL, Parson Court, Maynooth, Co Kildare.