Smokers’ rights light up

Press, 14 November 1984, Page 9

Smokers’ rights light up

KAREN HOGG

As anti-smoking groups have become more vocal, a counter pressure group. Forest, has risen from the ashes to defend the rights of smokers.

The Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco was set up in Britain five years ago to protect the freedom of choice of that nation’s 17 million smokers. Its director, Mr Stephen Eyres, who is visiting New Zealand, described it last evening as an “anti-busybodies” group. For more than a decade Britain’s anti-smoking “busybodies” had been unchallenged in their campaign, increasingly funded by taxpayers’ money, said Mr Eyres. He wished Forest did not have to exist, but wnere there were pressure groups, countervailing groups were needed to ensure a fair and balanced approach to the issue.

“Forest does not encourage people to smoke. It does not measure its success by the number of cigarettes sold or the number of smokers. Our criterion is that smokers are free to exercise their right to smoke.” Forest recognises that at times tobacco smoke can be unpleasant and annoying to non-smokers and its 30,000 subscribers have all endorsed a charter to exercise common sense, courtesy, and tolerance when smoking. Forest advocate smoking and non-smoking sections in public places and claims the refusal of 20 local authorities to ban smoking on public transport as its successes.

Mr Eyres joined Forest three years ago. He claims to be a non-smoker who enjoys the occasional afterdinner cigar, but said that the job was ideologically right for him. For many

years he had been involved in campaigns of one sort or another to defend the right of individuals to live their lives without Government intervention. He had had success fighting Britain’s trade union closed-shop laws and was looking for something new.

“I was sick and tired of the anti-smoking lobbies, made up of paternalistic, patronising puritans, having their arguments unchallenged,” he said. One of the most common anti-smoking arguments, the plight of the passive smoker, had been found to be "marginal” and “inadequate” by the World Health Organisation last year, but such findings received little publicity, he said. Forest is unique to Britain, but the purpose of Mr Eyre’s visit to this part of the world was to advise a group in Victoria, Australia, interested in setting up their

own counter pressure group. He arrived in New Zealand last week to . debate the issue of smoking versus nonsmoking in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch, and will leave for San Francisco on Friday where he

will study new legislation on smoking in the workplace. People in New Zealand seemed to be interested in the basic idea of Forest and Mr Eyres believed that there was a greater awareness of the rights of the individual in New Zealand than in Britain.

However, he said there were three main threats to the rights of smokers — discriminating taxes, smoking bans in public places, and health nagging. All three were present in New Zealand, he said.

The anti-smoking lobby was becoming more militant A motion was passed at a World Health Organisation conference last year to aim for a non-smoking society by the year 2000.

“The right to smoke will be under threat in the next 16 years,” Mr Eyres said.