No Smoking please
Anbumani Ramdoss Health Minister’s initiative in this regard, however are frequently misdirected & his latest idea apeears to be more of the same. If individuals are caught smoking in their offices, he proposes that the smoker will pay a fine of rs 5000. Many a non-smoking boss might well be already fuming, at the posibility of having to pay up for the defiance of his staff.
Clearly, the drive against smoking needs practical, focused measures & not un-implementable grand-standing. Unless Mr. Ramadoss is planning to set up a massive anti-smoking force that will police all offices across the country, this one will be a non-starter. It makes more sense to ask employers to take disciplinary action on their own against those violaiting the smoking ban. Appropriate legislation to back up employers in this regard can also be considered.
In addition, employers should be asked to initiate educational programmes & consider methods to help their people kick the habit & in the interim, providing a demacrated smoking area for those still struggling with the weed, may ell be a legimated demand from smokers.
Countries world-wide, especially in the European Union are increasingly bans on smoking in all public places & France has even been reported have deployed 1,75,000 “cigarette police” to sniff out offenders & fine them.
What the government here should consider, however, is to further increase taxes not only on finished tobacco should no longer be seen as a source of revenue. Other measures should also be pursued simultaneously, including the statutory printing of graphic warnings & visuals on pack & educational & motivationals programmes. Those selling tobacco around the schools should be dealt with severely.
Even smokers are increasingly accepting the need for such measures & children & passive smokers will be the first to thank the goverment for it.
Submitted by visitor.
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- No Smoking please March 23, 2008
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Are Diesels More Dangerous than Cigarettes as a Cause of Lung Cancer?
Bear in mind, this report was made before the EPA forced the inclusion of Cigarette Smoke to the Carcinogenic tables.
Introduction
So far, most of the money given to the cancer industry has been spent looking for a cure for cancer. But it seems that cancer is a disease which has no cure. Traditionally, with solid tumours, cut it out has been the only real option - and it still is. Given that, wouldn’t it be better to concentrate more on preventing it?
Oxford’s cancer expert, Sir Richard Doll, writing in The American Journal of Public Health , said that increasing cancer mortality “can be accounted for in all industrialized countries by the spread of cigarette smoking.” Unfortunately, this statement tends to be believed, despite the evidence against it.
If smoking were a cause of any cancer, lung cancer is the most likely one. It was Sir Richard Doll who implicated smoking in a study published in 1964 - despite his own published data from that study which showed that people who inhaled cigarette smoke had less lung cancer than those who didn’t!
The real cause of lung cancer, according to another Oxford research scientist, Dr. Kitty Little, is diesel fumes. And the evidence here is much more persuasive. It includes the facts that:
· tobacco smoke contains no carcinogens, while diesel fumes contain four known carcinogens;
· that lung cancer is rare in rural areas, but common in towns;
· that cancers are more prevalent along the routes of motorways;
· that the incidence of lung cancer has doubled in non-smokers over past decades;
· and that there was less lung cancer when we, as a nation, smoked more.
Pointing out that there has been evidence for over 40 years that smoking does not cause lung cancer, Dr Little says:
“Since the effect of the anti-smoking campaign has been to prevent the genuine cause from being publicly acknowledged, there is a very real sense in which we could say that the main reason for those 30,000 deaths a year from lung cancer is the anti-smoking campaign itself”.