A doctor writes

Dr Phil Button writes: I am a senior doctor and have worked at the North Hampshire Hospital Trust for 15 years. I am very happy there and believe our hospital to be one of the best in the country. Our management staff are of the highest calibre and I have nothing but praise for their efforts.

That said, how preposterous to stop staff, patients and perhaps distressed relatives of patients smoking anywhere on site. This is an inhumane and cynical proposal brought about by pressure from a huge league of prominent anti-smoking groups. These organisations have pedalled propaganda on a par with the Nazi antismoking movement before the Second World War. They have saturated the media with untruths and scaremongering at great expense to the taxpayer, the money coming directly out of the Health Service purse.

The whole basis for the ban is the notion that environmental tobacco smoke causes harm to non-smokers. This is against the evidence available at present but nevertheless scandalously repeated by reputable bodies such as the NHS, the BMA and the British Heart Foundation. These bodies extrapolate fictional numbers of barworkers who might be expected to die if there was a link of the size quoted, scaring the living daylights out of the public. There is no such proven link.

So smoking is bad for your health. What isn't? What's next? Stopping doctors drinking, banning cars? The hope is that the hospital is promoting a better image by stopping people smoking outside the main entrance. I disagree. The hospital is mindlessly jumping on a bandwagon and in so doing trampling over decent people's misfortune at times of enormous stress. Why can't the Trust be innovative and accept that smoking is legal, it does no harm to non-smokers and nearly a third of the country do it? Why marginalize and demonise a large minority of the human population? Why not show a little compassion?

It's time in my opinion for smokers to stand up and be counted and stop tolerating this attempt at alienation. Smokers don't harm anyone and add to the colour and individuality of our country. Smoking has tradition and history behind it and the United Kingdom should remain the bastion of tolerance and freedom it has always been. Let's leap off the anti-smoking bandwagon, now!

Protecting workers in pubs

Molly Finch writes: This is the last ditch argument used by the anti-smoking lobby at the suggestion of offering choice to pub customers, ie smoking or non-smoking pubs. Has anybody actually asked the workers in the pubs if they want protecting? I've worked in pubs and I would guess that 90% of bar staff are smokers and hate the idea of a ban. What on earth is wrong with a clear statement to the effect that this is a smoking environment, and if you choose to come here/work here you do so in full knowledge of the risks to your health?

Closing the health inequality gap

Molly Finch writes: A lot of pubs, when surveyed, said they would rather stop serving food than ban smoking. The answer, from the anti-smoking lobby, was that these are obviously pubs in poor areas and it is the government's duty to help these poor people for their own good in order to close the health inequality gap. Apart from the repulsive, bossy, do-gooding attitude here, where are they getting this information that most smokers are poor and deprived? Creative people are renowned for their smoking. My one-time art editor stuck a notice on his door 'This is a smoking room. Fuck off'.

Smoker-friendly cities

GM writes: I've just returned from a trip to Vienna, which is one of the most smoker-friendly places I've seen for many years. At a time when people are starting to talk about 'smoker-friendly holiday destinations', this seems ideal. The airport has frequent, strategically-placed 'smokers' corners', unlike UK airports where the first sign you see on arrival is 'no smoking', then 'no smoking until after baggage check'.

By contrast, Vienna recognises people's needs and provides smoking areas where they are required. Bars and cafes within the airport are also mostly smoking-permitted. In town, all the bars and restaurants allow smoking and indeed most of the people there seem to smoke. The 'Tabac' shops are numerous and cigarettes are far cheaper than in Britain (no surprise there).

Smoking is allowed in shopping malls and on the platforms in overground stations (though not on board the trains). The underground stations are non-smoking, but smoking is permitted until a short distance before the barrier, where large stubbing-out trays are provided (which means one can finish a cigarette without having to stand outside in the rain).

The bars and restaurants - and indeed everywhere else - are kept clean and the atmosphere is not full of smoke. Everyone seems calm, relaxed and happy with the arrangement. Why can't it work that way in England?

Smoking is a foul habit

WS writes: I think your defence of smoking is totally crazy. Smoking is a foul habit that smokers have been inflicting on others for hundreds of years, with no concern for the non smokers right not to have to breath in the acrid smell of burning leaves, paper and chemicals designed to keep 'fags' alight. If you really want to kill yourselves early please do so in the privacy of your own home and only marry/live with other smokers.

Please stop bleating like a lot of spoilt childern about such stupid concepts as 'health fascists' and other juvenile terms. This is mostly about people not wanting to be told what to do, not about smoking as such, which is a very unsocial habit that spoils peoples meals and other entertainment. Bring in a ban in all public places and work places tomorrow I say!!!!

Fascism and hysteria

Dr Stephen Hall writes: I am an Englishman who retired to rural Ireland five years ago, partly to get away from the nannyism of big government under New Labour. It was a surprise to me that the Irish observed the smoking ban. A colder winter than we had would have shown a different result and there are counties that are more courageous than the bloated east of the country. Ironically, Dublin and the sprawl towns of the east have air pollution and congestion on a Los Angeles scale and all 'smoke' without realising it.

The health argument prior to the Irish ban was specious but the opposition lacked any politician clever enough to stop the bill passing into law and the reign of Bertie Aherne was strengthened in a cheap way a couple of years before Ireland ceases to be a receiving EU state and has to start paying back.

The heroic struggle of proper Irish patriots against oppression was about freedom and every Irish schoolkid is taught that but the 'live and let live' characteristic of the Irish has been undermined by political correctness so smoking was an easy thin end of the wedge. No one noticed that this lovely land was being defaced by rich developers building estates of 'breezeblock haciendas' with tax breaks and probably the infamous brown paper envelopes in Dublin.

The superstructure of complacency in being the first non-smoking state conceals the hull of corruption, neither have tobacco sales fallen in Eire. Clamping down on excessive drinking here would make more sense but that would be too obvious.

More generally, the argument that bar staff must be protected from passive smoking is so weak that only a humourless society would 'buy it'. I was a special education headmaster and worked in prisons too. My choice, and I accepted the risk of assault because I was good at the work and it paid well. Surely a person working in a bar knows that toxic substances are involved in the recreational choices of customers, or are we to believe that bar staff are unusually dim?

Logically it follows that a person chooses a job in full awareness of risks and that blows away the tired argument of protecting workers or are bar staff such an endangered species that we must cosset them? The pompous always use the facile but it becomes sinister beyond a certain point and the first proposal for a total smoking ban was issued by one A. Hitler in a dictat to an elite army unit. It failed.

Are rich societies so bored with no real challenges to face that they have to persecute something, a group, a race, a species or whatever? Anyone who has faced war, adversity or illness has no time for such complacent oppression when so much is rotten beneath the high table would be shocked by this creeping and creepy intolerance and scapegoating.

Think back to Nazi Germany and consider how the Jews were chosen as an easy target so that small men with evil ambitions could obtain mass support and 'legitimate' votes. That same seed of I AM RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG is alive and well in rich countries (Ireland's wealth is subsidised) but the thin end has been bashed in under the hinged door.

Will the populous wake up? I doubt it because the choice of some to smoke and do other legal things is squashed by what some psychologists are now calling "choice stress" and the poor victims of this obscene syndrome take pills for it. Take a pill and drive the SUV hither and yon with the smoke of 100 Capstan Full Strength every time the engine is started!

Mad world? I am now old enough to compromise between the freedom the WW2 generation gave us and the misrule of the hypocrites by ignoring the latter unless old artillery is needed. FOREST, count me in.

Smoking in pubs

Bryn Holloway writes: Concerning the Government's latest proposals re smoking in public places. I am retired, smoke a pipe, and I live alone. My social life consists of a lunchtime trip to my local pub where I meet up with old friends, enjoy a pipe or two, some civilised conversation and (occasionally) meet new friends. I am the only one in my generation who smokes. Nobody objects, so why do politicians in their remote ivory towers in Westminster want to disrupt the even tenor of the lives of those of us in my position? Incidentally, do we old lunchtime drinkers and talkers qualify as binge drinkers?

Question: how to moisten tobacco?

Brian writes: I am in need of a little bit of advice. I roll my own these days, being the only way I can afford to keep smoking, but the tobacco is getting very dry. What can I use to moisten it? I have tried a small piece of potato skin but maybe I used too much, it was then too wet. Any ideas/suggestions very much appreciated.

Second class citizens

Graeme Dunford writes: I’m not overweight. I regularly play football and squash. I run and cycle. I try to eat sensibly. I’m a moderate smoker. If I’m to believe the witchhunt that is the Government’s anti-smoking campaign I’ll be dead soon, riddled with cancer or heart disease, and I’ll have taken half of the population with me thanks to passive smoking.

Smokers have been harangued for making innocent people breathe their smoke for the last few years and now we’re being portrayed as selfish for popping outside for a fag and leaving our children parentless as a consequence. If the point of this campaign is to alienate smokers and turn them into second-class citizens it is working very well indeed.

If this kind of sectarianism was aimed towards any other group of people who’s lifestyle endangers their health (for example the obese) there would be massive public and media condemnation. Has anybody else noticed that the smoker in the latest 'advert' is ugly with a smug look on his face whereas the non smokers are all attractive people?

I’m waiting for the day when I have to wear a yellow sew-on cigarette on my clothing so that everyone can tell how much of an evil, selfish person I am.

Non-smoking performers have rights too

Joseph Aquilina writes: I am a singer performing around the UK. Most venues are smoking. I used to be a smoker and due to my singing I gave up. I noticed after quitting, my vocal range and flexibility improved. People pay to watch me perform; smokers and non-smokers come and watch me perform. Towards the end of the performances I have found that my voice deteriorates due to the smoke that is in the air. After the performances, I can barely speak. This however is not due to bad technique as I have had professional vocal training and do vocal exercises for up to two hours three or four times a week.

I know that people have a choice, and I have chosen to be a singer. Singing is more natural to the body than smoking and brings enjoyment to smokers and non-smokers. I think that out of respect for me and other performers like me, smokers should re-think this issue. A ban in live music venues I would welcome, as I am sure a lot of other performers would too. I know that this would affect your enjoyment of the evening. However it affects me giving you the best I can for your money.

I know that smokers have rights, but I as a performer have rights too. As much as the ban maddens you, smokers madden me when I perform. Maybe I should ask the audience not to smoke? But how many would put out their cigarette?