Neil Rafferty, Scottish spokesman for the pro smoking lobby Forest has been critisising the Scottish smoking ban (comming into force in 4 hours time)
"The ban will do nothing to improve the health of the nation, but it will give a warm glow to those who enjoy telling others what to do. The anti-smoking fanatics will use the ban to victimise and stigmatise smokers even further. " Says Raffert.
I have to declare an interest at this point. I smoked for many years and gave up two years ago. Now, first of all I would like to say that even when I smoked 60 a day I thought Forest was the most dishonest, stupid and corrupting intitution. I was once told by a fourteen year old that they smoked because Forest, who know what they are on about, said it was alright really.
The ban on smoking in public places has one flaw, however. It is years too late. If it had come in 20 years ago, I would have probably given up then. That would have been 18 years less of nicoteen in my body. A drug, Mr. Rafferty would might like to know, that is considerably more poisoness than Heroin.
Of course, on Forests own site they do things like portray major health scares as "The phantom menace." They promote a book by Jo Jackson, a musician who has "researched smoking issues in depth over the last three years and has become increasingly sceptical about the overblown hysteria whipped up by recent anti-smoking propaganda".
And his qualifications for such meaningful reserach? Oh yeah, he is a musician - very authoritive that. Personally I will rather take the words of doctors I have worked with over the years and their enourmous catalogues of smoking related deaths. They don't need any research, they don't need lobbies such as Forest distorting facts. They have seen it for themselves in the blood and guts of the dying.
But then unlike Forest, doctors are not funded directly by the tobacco companies - a group who have sistematically lied about the dangers of smoking for decades.
Give it up, Forest, most of us, even those who smoke, wised up to you years ago.
Personally, I would like to see the end of the sale of tobacco. My health would have been way better without it. And of course Forest would cough and splutter into nothngness.
Rat
Read about the Scottish ban: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sco...
