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Action on Smoking and Health
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Tougher Laws Roll Back Passive Smoking Around the World [11/22-2]
Excerpts from: Kicking butts: Tougher laws start to roll back passive smoking
Health AFP [11/21/04]
1954, a landmark study by British scientist Richard Doll provided the first incontrovertible evidence that smoking causes lung cancer.
In the ensuing decades, governments began health campaigns against tobacco, requiring ever-tougher package warnings and enforcing restrictions on where and to whom it could be sold.
Half a century on from Doll's research comes another watershed year, this time with the right to smoke being called into question.
Laws against passive smoking have dramatically proliferated in 2004, shrinking the space where smokers can legally light up and casting them in the role of a huddled minority with an antisocial habit.
Since the start of 2004, a dozen countries have introduced, or announced plans to introduce, laws that will toughen the ban on smoking in public places so that it includes restaurants, clubs and bars.
More countries, states and cities are likely to follow suit next year, say experts.
"These laws follow on from the gradual introduction of restrictions on smoking in the workplace, which is the key first step.
California, in 1998, led the legal charge to eradicate tobacco smoke in the hospitality sector, but the vanguard has now been seized by Europe.
Ireland, on March 29, became the first country in the world to ban smoking not just in the eateries and pubs, but even company cars. It has been swiftly followed by Norway, while Sweden, Britain and Portugal have all unveiled plans for similar restrictions.
Sweden already has the lowest smoking rates of any country in the world -- less than a fifth of the adult population have the habit.
Auderalotez predicts that more US states and some African countries will be in line in 2005 to roll back the right to smoke.
In Asia, though, it's a different picture, for in many countries, smokers can puff with few hindrances. The legal picture remains rather as it was in Europe some 15-20 years ago and possibly longer in the United States.
According to World Bank figures, of the 1.1 billion smokers in the world, 43 percent are in the Asia-Pacific region.
The figure is headed by China, with 320 million smokers, the most of any nation. More than half of adult males smoke, and the prospect of any restriction of smoking in public places is extremely remote.
"Tobacco may eventually kill about 50 million of all the children and youth alive today in China," the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says.
India, which has 240 million tobacco users, outlawed smoking in public places in May, but this is rarely enforced, campaigners say. The big exception is the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, which has become the first country in the world to not only outlaw smoking in public places but also bar all tobacco sales, a move set to take effect from December 17. Evidence about the dangers of passive smoking came to notoriety in 1992.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) then estimated that each year tobacco smoke inhaled by non-smokers killed 3,000 Americans from lung cancer alone. Further studies have pointed the finger at smoke in pubs, workplaces and homes as a major source of heart disease, asthma, chronic bronchitis and prematurely aged skin, among other problems. Faced with this barrage of scientific proof, Big Tobacco has played the card of democracy and social tranquility, portraying smokers as members of the public who have rights too and pub-owners as the unfortunate victims of legal clamps.
"The majority of people, including non-smokers, do not want a ban, particularly in pubs, clubs and bars," the London-based Tobacco Manufacturers' Association complained last week in response to the proposed British ban. Nerida White, spokesperson for Philip Morris International, told AFP that governments should allow bars and restaurants to choose whether they want to be smoke-free or to allow smoking, perhaps with smoke-free areas.
Anti-smoking activists are enraged by such talk. They say only a regulatory approach -- restrictions on smoking areas, attacks on advertising, high taxes -- can erode smoking's most powerful allure, as a sociable, affordable and fashionable habit. On one thing, both sides agree: smoking in many countries will be around for a long time to come.
The battle over the right to light up should still be raging another half-century from now.
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