Madam, - Health Correspondent Eithne Donnellan, in an article on the Slán survey (April 30th), writes that the smoking rate is highest among young women in the lowest social classes: 56 per cent of women in this category smoke, as against 28 per cent of women in the same age group in the highest social classes.
This extraordinary statistic has significant implications for the health of these women and for any children they may have. It also has serious implications for our health services given that smoking is linked with so many illnesses.
Given the prominence that cancer-related stories have had in the media recently, one would have imagined that this statistic would receive more attention from people concerned with both health matters and the condition of our health services.
Our political representatives, both local and national, should
ensure that this matter is addressed. - Yours, etc,
GEAROID Ó DUBHÁIN,
Mount Oval Village,
Rochestown,
Co Cork.
Madam, - I do not smoke, and I cannot abide the smell of smokers, but I recognise their right to smoke. Norma Cronin of the Irish Cancer Society (May 2nd) seems not to do so, calling for a punitive tax of €3 to be levied on all cigarettes, in the hope of forcing people to stop smoking.
Why? We all know that smoking causes cancer, and that it shortens lifespan, so why can intelligent adults not choose to smoke? A tax should be (and is) paid that covers the added cost to the health service, but beyond that the Government should not try to force people to change their ways, if their ways are detrimental only to themselves.
We are a free country and a free people, and Ms Cronin and her associates should not be calling on the Government to punish people who are partaking in a legal activity, in full knowledge of the consequences of that activity, once they have paid an extra amount into the state coffers to negate any costs to society of that activity. Education is the only acceptable way to change the habits of people who are not damaging anyone else.
A more suitable target for Ms Cronin might be obese people, who
impose a far higher than average cost on the health service, due to
their lifestyle, yet pay no extra tax to compensate society, unlike
people who partake of alcohol or cigarettes. - Yours, etc,
STEPHEN FITZPATRICK,
Foxrock,
Dublin 18.
Madam, - The information that both the incidence of smoking and of excess alcoholic consumption have increased, despite the best efforts of the nanny State, contained in your edition of April 30th, should come as no surprise.
As a non-smoker, the personal impact of the smoking ban has been to destroy the quality of my social life by making an uninterrupted conversation with my (mostly) smoking friends impossible unless I am willing to subject myself to the vagaries of a climate totally inimical to al fresco behaviour of all kinds.
And, as a responsible social drinker, the sustained terror campaign by assorted kill-joys which culminated in random (and probably unconstitutional) breathalysing has converted the innocent pleasure of sharing a social drink or two into such a major logistical operation that I feel obliged to justify it by drinking far more than previously (and to be honest, often much more than I really want) .
The lesson - which no doubt will pass unheeded as more and more
of our relatively innocent leisure activities are rendered either
illegal or intolerably complex - is that political correctness is
totally counter-productive . Vide the sage observation of the
Marquis de Sade, over 200 years ago, to the effect that anything he
enjoyed was either illegal, immoral or fattening. Plus ca change. -
Yours, etc,
ADRIAN J ENGLISH,
Kilcoman Court,
Glenageary,
Co Dublin.