Public smoking ban on agenda

NICK THORPE and RACHEL ELLIS

SMOKERS were last night facing an increasingly restricted future as the
Government seized on evidence that passive smoking poses major health risks
to consider measures including a ban on smoking in public places.

A number of separate surveys published yesterday linked passive smoking
with chronic illhealth, while employment experts predicted that no
smoking policies will spread throughout industry to counter fears of future
legal action.

As the British Medical Association renewed its call for a public ban, the
public health minister, Tessa Jowell, promised to look at new measures to
reduced smoking levels both for the benefit of smokers and nonsmokers.

The Health and Safety Executive, meanwhile, said it would be looking at its
guidelines to companies in the light of the reports, including those in the
British Medical Journal which showed nonsmokers exposed to passive smoking
have a 23 per cent greater risk of developing heart disease and 26 per cent
greater risk of lung cancer. The dose required to cause harm was found to
be much lower than previously thought, undermining the idea that damage was
proportional to the amount smoked.

"These important scientific papers can be added to the mountain of evidence
gathered down the years on the illeffects of smoking, not just for the
smoker but for those who breathe the smoke too," said Ms Jowell yesterday.

"These are shocking figures bearing in mind that passive smokers are people
who choose not to smoke. They mean that hundreds of people are dying before
their time from lung cancer and thousands from avoidable heart diseases.

"We are pressing ahead with plans for a tobacco advertising ban, and a
white paper on tobacco control later this year will spell out how we intend
to reduce smoking levels for the health benefit of all smokers and
nonsmokers alike."

There was little doubt last night that a complete ban on smoking in offices
and public places would be one of the proposals under consideration for the
white paper.

Employment law specialists said nonsmokers had increasing rights which
were leading to claims for constructive dismissal and compensation.

"The rights of nonsmokers are on the increase. People who don't smoke can
expect to work in smokefree environments," said Mary Stacey, an employment
rights specialist at Thompson's solicitors. "It is not correct to say that
the rights of smokers are equal to the rights of nonsmokers. Today's
reports add weight to the dangerous side effects of passive smoking."

An employment law specialist claimed bar staff might have to sign waivers,
or take medical checks, in the light of yesterday's new evidence.

Shona Newmark, an employment law partner at the legal giant Baker &
McKenzie, said pubs should cover themselves by warning new staff of the
dangers of breathing in smoke from customers' cigarettes. "To an extent, it
does go with the territory, smoke and bar work. But they could get them to
sign forms saying they understand the health risk."

She added that to minimise the risk of a claim, workers with lung problems,
or even a family history of smokingrelated illness, should only be offered
jobs in kitchens or cellars.

The findings from four studies three British and one in the United States
found that inhaling a neighbour's smoke was said to increase
substantially the risk of lung cancer, heart disease, and, in children,
asthma and serious chest complaints.

Two papers from the same London team published in the British Medical
Journal revealed that passive smoking raised a nonsmoker's risk of lung
cancer by 26 per cent and of heart disease by 23 per cent.

A third study from St George's Hospital, London, in the British Thoracic
Society journal Thorax said babies had a 72 per cent increased risk of
acute chest diseases if their mother smoked. The raised risk if either
parent smoked was 57 per cent.

In the United States, a report from the Environmental Protection Agency of
California linked passive smoking to cot death, illness and death from
heart disease, nasal cancer, and asthma in children.

The BMJ papers were both produced by researchers led by Dr Malcolm Law and
Professor Nicholas Wald at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine,
St Bartholomew's Hospital, and the Royal London School of Medicine and
Dentistry.

Antismoking lobby group Ash (Scotland) supported a fresh look at public
health policy, needed to "make a real stand particularly against the
tobacco industry".

But Marjorie Nicholson, director of the Freedom Association for the Right
to Enjoy Tobacco (FOREST) yesterday accused the Government of actively
promoting discrimination.

"The Government seems to be clutching at anything that justifies going down
the antismoking path. It's a general promotion of smokeism."

She said that the BMJ study linking passive smoking and heart disease was
flawed because it was confined to a group aged 65 and did not spell out
what other risk factors were accounted for.