Smokers: Not seen and not heard

Dick Puddlecote links to the website of the most recent UK National Smoking Cessation Conference. You can probably guess what the smoking cessation advice consisted of from a look at the conference's three sponsors...

But there was more to this shindig that promoting pharmaceutical nicotine products. There was turning the screw on smokers, for example, including this...

Smokefree play parks: Changing the cultural norm

Research and evidence show that parental and peer smoking are the biggest contributors to children initiating smoking [I thought it was 'glitzy' packs? - CJS]. Some studies show that children are twice as likely to start smoking before the age of 13 if one of their parents smokes. Smokefree Play Parks is just the first step in introducing outdoor smokefree environments where families can enjoy fresh air and reduce the exposure of negative role models to their children.

Smokefree South West is working with partners to introduce voluntary smoking bans in play parks.

Even within the twisted logic of tobacco control, this is a non-sequitur. Children of smokers are more likely to become smokers, but this cannot be solely, or even largely, attributed to them seeing their parents smoke (they both self-evidently come from the same socio-economic group, for example). Even if it was the result of them witnessing parental smoking, forcing parents to refrain from smoking in play parks is not going to make a jot of difference. But then, as they say, this is "just the first step".

More fundamentally, these state-funded* bigots believe that the very existence of smoking is intolerable and that smokers must be kept out of sight of respectable people whenever possible. This is the 'logical next step' after removing smoking from TV and the movies. It is an Orwellian as the phrase "voluntary ban".

Meanwhile, tobacco control is desperately trying to get around the fact that half a million people have signed the petition against plain packaging. Somebody has claimed that he witnessed one of the agency workers who collected the signatures for Hands Off Our Packs writing out fake names and addresses. Who was this concerned citizen? Step forward Andrew Black, head of tobacco control at the Department of Health. What a small world! Dick Puddlecote, Nannying Tyrants and Taking Liberties have more on that.



* This presentation was made by a representative of the Department of Health's über-sockpuppet Smokefree Southwest.

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