Restrictions on smoking

Press, 24 May 1984, Page 16

Restrictions on smoking

Tobacco can be injurious to human health. Most people accept this to be the case and many have been persuaded to stop smoking as a result. The effects of cigarette smoking on the heart and lungs are well documented and it is said also to aggravate other human maladies. The marked reduction in the number of cigarette smokers in recent years is a tribute to the effectiveness of public education campaigns designed to alert the community to the risks that smokers run, and to the consequential costs that they ask the community to share. Survey results published in the latest issue of the “New Zealand Medical Journal” show that a significant reduction in the number of smokers occurred during the five years from 1976 to 1981. The rate of reduction since then is more likely to have accelerated than declined, although no figures are available. The survey has also identified two groups in the population where more work needs to be done; Maoris are disproportionately represented among people who smoke; young women are also overrepresented among smokers. More girls aged 15 to 19 smoke than do boys in the same age group, and the number of women smokers in the 20 to 24 age group increased during the five-year survey, against the trend in the total population. Bans are an undesirable mechanism to effect social change in an over-regulated society; on the statistical evidence available, bans are not necessary to reduce the incidence of smoking. Nevertheless, to propose another ban remains a favourite resort of enthusiasts who wish to accelerate change. The anti-

smoking lobby is not without such enthusiasts. Achieving a ban on smoking in public places and in workplaces is part of the policy of one group campaigning against smoking. The purpose of such a ban is said to be the protection of non-smokers; “passive smoking” is the fashionable phrase and a campaign against it led in San Francisco to the passage of a law obliging employers to ban smoking in the workplace if non-smokers insist. Smoking in enclosed public places might be undesirable, but the increased risk to non-smokers from tobacco smoke generated by other people is not as clearly demonstrable as the links between “active” smoking and heart disease or lung cancer. Whether classed as a health hazard or a nuisance, environmental tobacco smoke is less offensive to some people than vehicle exhaust emissions or noise pollution. Attempts to control the latter two do not work satisfactorily. The bans against smoking in some public places have brought benefits. Bans are not always an effective deterrent. Bans in some situations, such as in long-distance travel, can be a considerable hardship to smokers. Many people object now to puffing workmates. As a result, some smokers do not indulge in the habit in public places and many more than in earlier times seek permission to do so from those nearby. This is as it should be. Social attitudes are a far more potent weapon in this sort of campaign than State-imposed restrictions that further erode the rights of individuals to make their own decisions.