Sir, - Richard Ashton's arguments (November 12th) will sound familiar to anyone who has studied the utterings of the tobacco industry in their endeavours to justify the manufacture and sale of a product which kills 3.5 million people every year.
I relate some irrefutable facts:
Smoking kills 7,000 people in Ireland every year.
Nicotine is a highly addictive product.
The vast majority of smokers "enjoy" cigarettes because the nicotine satisfies their addiction Most experienced addiction experts believe nicotine is more addictive than heroin.
Significant numbers of non-smokers die and suffer illness because of exposure to tobacco smoke.
Recent research shows a massive shift in tolerance, among both smokers and non-smokers, of smoking in public places in Ireland. They want rid of it! If cigarettes were developed as a product today they would not meet the criteria for a consumer product to be brought to the market and would be banned.
One final point: the banning of smoking in bars and restaurants in some parts of the US has been a tremendous success and after an initial adjustment period has not affected business.
However, discussions on the economic aspects of clear air laws misses the point. Passive smoke is the single biggest indoor air pollutant that the public is exposed to and it has been classified as a carcinogen. This is a health and safety issue, not an economic one. - Yours, etc.,
Dr Fenton Howell, Chairman, ASH Ireland, Dublin 4.