Passive Voices

‘WE all know that you can’t have a smoke without causing someone at the next table to catch fire, or suffer a slow lingering death.

Katy was keen to try what they were having at the next table

This is, after all, what is says in bald black-and-white print on the back of the typical cigarette packet. The Government says it is so, and since they are never ever wrong, this means it is true.

But now we learn of a 40-year study of 118,000 Californians, and its conclusion that breathing other people’s tobacco smoke has ”no impact” on deaths from lung cancer and heart disease.

The Mail does note that passive smoking has a ”small effect” on the level of respiratory disease, but it is not the serial killer that raises the risk of such illnesses in non-smokers by as much as 25 per cent.

Various husky voices line up to say how the study is flawed, and how habits have changed over the last four decades.

But the study’s appearance in the British Medical Journal will only add gravitas to its findings and produce a broad, if somewhat yellow-toothed smile, on the face of the big tobacco companies.

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Posted: 16th, May 2003 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink