by Sharon Norris
This Thursday the Parliamentary Health Committee meets to take evidence both in support of and against the Government's proposed ban on smoking in public places.
There is likely to be more interest than usual in this week's proceedings, first of all since former Tory leadership contender and keen cigar smoker Ken Clarke will be a key witness, in his role as Deputy Chairman of British American Tobacco, and also since the meeting takes place the same day as the Conservatives hold the second round of voting in the leadership contest. However, one further reason why the meeting is of particular interest is that it comes in the wake of new research showing that a similar ban on smoking in Ireland, introduced in March 2004, has had extremely positive results.
Last month Professor Luke Clancy and Dr Patrick Goodman from Trinity College Dublin presented their research findings to a meeting of European Respiratory Society in Copenhagen. These showed that since the ban was introduced there has been a marked improvement in both air quality in pubs, and in the lung function of bar workers and patrons alike. The researchers also found that the incidence of symptoms such as shortness of breath, coughs and runny eyes had decreased by up to 40 per cent. Earlier this year MSPs voted to introduce a ban on smoking in public places in Scotland from March next year.
...since the [Irish] ban was introduced there has been a marked improvement in both air quality in pubs, and in the lung function of bar workers and patrons alike
Overall there has been a marked decline in the number of smokers since the 1970s. However, there is still considerable concern over the prevalence of smoking among children and young people. Among the 16 - 19 age group, women are more likely to smoke than men (29 per cent of women, compared with 22 per cent of men), and figures from 2002 also showed that 10 per cent of secondary school pupils aged 11 - 15 in England were regular smokers, and that girls were much more likely to smoke than boys.
While a recent ESRC-funded longitudinal research project on smoking among young people led by Dr Mark Conner from the School of Psychology at Leeds University showed that at age 11-12 girls and boys were equally likely to smoke, two years later the girls in the study were twice as likely to smoke as the boys (16 per cent of girls compared to 8 per cent of boys). This pattern was repeated at age 15 - 16, where 31 per cent of girls and 16 per cent of boys were regular smokers. The research team found that the most commons factors influencing whether boys and girls in this age group became smokers were if they were female, and if they had smoked when they were younger. Pupils who had not smoked at the age of 13-14 were much more likely to have become smokers by the age of 15-16 if they had a positive attitude to smoking, if they lived with smokers, if they had more friends who smoked than did not, and once again if they were female, though it was not clear as to why gender should have such a big effect.
Another recent ESRC-funded research project, on smoking and socio-economic factors, found that the more cigarettes people smoked per day at a young age, the more likely they were still to be smoking later in life. Overall this study, led by Professor Chris Power from the Institute of Child Health at University College London, found that nicotine dependence was set early on and that childhood smoking and childhood social deprivation each made it more likely that an adult would become a smoker.