Madam, - Full marks to Dr Muiris Houston for broadening the debate on the smoking ban (Medical Matters, September 8th).
I hope his comments do not come too late to influence the rampant regulators running our country.
Debate on the ban should focus on psychiatric hospitals, hospices, homes for the elderly and prisons where tobacco smoking is of great importance to residents and patients, many of whom have little else in life beyond the packet of smokes. To suddenly render all these places smoke-free zones is fundamentally unjust and, as Dr Houston says, "cruel".
He cites research showing that 70 per cent of people with psychiatric problems smoke. I suspect a similar percentage of prisoners smoke. Are we to deny a smoke to the most vulnerable people in society - the old, the sick, the depressed, those in care - as well as those who just find it impossible to kick the habit?
Of late, dissenting voices on this and other issues are becoming victims of a brash intolerance in our society dressed up as concern for the common good.
Let's have compromise and a bit of old-fashioned common sense before the purveyors of intolerant American political correctness shut us all up. - Yours, etc.,
CHARLES FLANAGAN, Stradbally Road, Portlaoise, Co Laois.