Archive for August 19th, 2009

Passive smoking is beneficial

August 19th, 2009

I am not inordinately fond of bankers at the moment.

Quite frankly, if the species became extinct I doubt that I would turn a hair.

However, I find myself, for once on the side of a banker who wants to change jobs.

Former Bank of Ireland chairman Richard Burrows is to accept the chairmanship of British American Tobacco.

What brought this to my attention was a piece in the Irish Times – Ash Ireland criticises Burrows move.

Who the fuck do ASH think they are?  Do they honestly think they have the right to comment on who works where?

As a group, ASH are nothing short of a crowd of bigots who epitomise the very worst of the Nanny State.  They have their self imposed charter to save us all from ourselves.  To them, smokers are the epitome of evil itself and it is their mission in life to eradicate smoking by any means.  Because of this self appointed charter, they now feel they have a right to comment on where we work?

Dr Angie Brown is the Himmler of the ASH Reich.

“Mr Burrows will be well aware that millions of people die from the effects of smoking around the world each year and many of these cigarettes are developed and manufactured by BAT,” she said.

That is very true, as facts go.  Would Brown have the same reservations if he were to announce that he was to work for the alcohol industry?  How about the automotive industry?  Power?  I very much doubt it, yet all of those have their associated fatalities.  She, and her cronies in ASH are of the opinion that tobacco is the only evil in this world.

She goes on to say

“This is an industry which aggressively markets an addictive killer product – and still endeavours to maintain that passive smoke is harmless – despite it being graded as a class one carcinogen by the WHO [World Health Organisation]”.

Here we are into typical ASH territory of lies and deceit.

“An addictive killer product” – How emotive can one get.  It implies that tobacco is up there with arsenic, crack cocaine.

It is the next line that is classic ASH material.  She is asserting that something is true by implication.  The WHO have never classified passive smoking as a class one carcinogen to my knowledge.

Here is a little snippet of information for ASH* -

The World Health Organisation commissioned International Agency for Research on Cancer to do a study on the effects of passive smoking.

By March 1998 the study had been completed and written up but remained unreleased, creating speculation that the results did not support the WHO’s view of secondhand smoke as a genuine health hazard. This suspicion was heightened when the Sunday Telegraph found a summary of the results buried in an internal WHO report. On March 8 1998 the newspaper published an article revealed that the researchers had found no statistically significant elevation in risk for those exposed to secondhand smoke as adults and found a statistically significant reduction in risk for those exposed in childhood. Entitled “Passive smoking doesn’t cause cancer – official”, the article not only reported the lack of association but, referring to the data on childhood exposure, reported that passive smoking “might even have a protective effect”.

ASH, for decades have relied on lies and deceit to further their aims.

Now are they trying to dabble in the field of bullying tactics?

I don’t mind people having opinions, but when when they start using tactics straight from the pages of the Third Reich then my blood starts to boil.

I would suggest to Ms Brown that she should chill out [to use a modern idiom], have a pint and a nice relaxing cigarette.

* Extract from “Velvet Glove, Iron Fist” A history of Ant-Smoking by Christopher Snowdon