COUNCIL chiefs have welcomed a sweeping array of proposals to reduce smoking in Greater Manchester - including banning youngsters under 18 from seeing films that show people smoking.
The leaders of the region's 10 councils (AGMA) met to consider using special powers to put `restrictive' ratings on films which could encourage smoking.
They backed the idea in principle - but asked for more information before pressing ahead.
It will then be up to each council, as a licensing authority, to decide how to implement the recommendations.
The proposal was part of a manifesto drawn up by Greater Manchester Health Commission.
Leaders had also been asked to sign up to cutting all council funding to theatres and sports grounds that allow smoking, and using planning legislation to force stores to move cigarettes away from check-outs.
AGMA leaders were asked in the report to `strongly endorse' a submission to government asking for:
No smoking in cars with children present
No smoking by drivers
No smoking at outside tables in restaurants
No smoking on TV.
The ideas were condemned by the pro-smoking lobby group Forest, as `nannyism of the worst kind'.
Some council leaders at the meeting thought aspects of the report went a step too far.
In its report, the commission said that smoking was the single biggest cause of premature death in Greater Manchester.
It is estimated that 5,000 people a year die from smoking-related illness across the region. A one per cent reduction in smoking would save 200 lives and the NHS £3 million.
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Councils wait on smoking plans
July 26, 2008
Showing comments 1 to 12 and replies | View All
Mike, Manchester (26/07/2008 at 09:06)
I suppose though that the current run of anti-smoking TV ads would also have to be pulled on the grounds that it shows people smoking.
God give me strength!!
Princess_Pam, Crumpsall (26/07/2008 at 10:18)
Is this to be banned from being shown? Or a company threatened in a fascist way, with having its funding cut.
Councils and governments must stop interfering in peoples lives just because they have no real policies, or just because they ache to meddle.
Censorship is never acceptable.
Iain Monks (26/07/2008 at 11:59)
Maybe something to do with it costing the NHS £1.7bn but putting £10bn into the government's coffers.
Laura Norder, Didsbury (26/07/2008 at 12:01)
Is this to be banned from being shown? Or a company threatened in a fascist way, with having its funding cut.
Councils and governments must stop interfering in peoples lives just because they have no real policies, or just because they ache to meddle.
Censorship is never acceptable."
- Princess_Pam, Crumpsall
I'm surprised - with all your years 'treading the boards', you've never encountered the many 'fake' cigarettes that are available... bgut there you go.
I think every smoker should be given, free of charge, 700 cigarettes a week... on the condition they must smoke them all themselves. In glass boxes, for the entertainment and enjoyment of the rest of us.
Five years, and they'd all be gone.
Have you got a light, boy?
the_moon_pixie, Didsbury (26/07/2008 at 12:16)
What is going on??? I always thought that we had the right to smoke or not smoke. How can anyone ban someone from smoking in an outdoor area??? Absolute madness. What the government probably realise is that if they outlaw smoking, then the taxation on cigarettes will have to be transferred somewhere else.
Fran M (Permissum Populus Constituo), Stockport (26/07/2008 at 15:15)
Government, local and national will continue to interfere in people's lives to a greater and greater extent unless we say, no more!
However that seems unlikely because there seems to be a general apathy about things that don't appear to affect us, but the constant erosion of liberties does affect us in the long run. We will awake one day and all our liberties will have disappeared. Martin Niemöller's poem should be a warning to us all.
These are very worrying times.
chrisragtop, Oldham (26/07/2008 at 15:49)
essentials like electricity, gas, clothing, transport, insurance etc the list could go on and on.
We now have a bunch of social terrorists that say it is ok for a 17 year old to join the army and fight with a gun, drive a motor vehicle, get married and have children, and then spout this rubbish about the 'deadly' effects of cigarettes. Cars are dangerous. Armies are dangerous. Some jobs which under 18's can do are dangerous. In the great scheme of things cigarette smoke is one of the least dangerous substances on the planet.
The hysterical actions of the anti smoking lobby are possibly one of the most dangerous things I have ever seen. It is that hysteria which turns normal intelligent human beings into bigots and bullies, and these nasty selfish people will gradually erode the personal freedom of everyone in the name of health or protection.
NoBanJan, Manchester (26/07/2008 at 19:32)
mulluski9, cambridgeshire (27/07/2008 at 01:40)
Stop the brainwashing and lies!
The danger to our children is the antis, the intolerance, and blatant scare-mongering. It is not the smokers they should fear.
Passive smoking doesn't cause cancer - official
By Victoria Macdonald, Health Correspondent
THE world's leading health organisation has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect.
The astounding results are set to throw wide open the debate on passive smoking health risks. The World Health Organisation, which commissioned the 12-centre, seven-country European study has failed to make the findings public, and has instead produced only a summary of the results in an internal report.
Despite repeated approaches, nobody at the WHO headquarters in Geneva would comment on the findings last week. At its International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, which coordinated the study, a spokesman would say only that the full report had been submitted to a science journal and no publication date had been set.
I believe the study below is the one the article refers too.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7398/1057
Enstrom/Kabat study
Also-
http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/
Air quality testing by Johns Hopkins University, the American Cancer Society, a Minnesota Environmental Health Department, and various researchers whose testing and report was peer reviewed and published in the esteemed British Medical Journal......prove that secondhand smoke is 2.6 - 25,000 times SAFER than occupational (OSHA) workplace regulations:
freedom2choose. info for tolerant non-smokers and smokers alike join our forums and become a member, Intolerance leads to hatred, that is not healthy for our children or Countries. Stop the brainwashing and misinformation
forces.org, stand up and be vocal
JohnnyB, Channel Isles (27/07/2008 at 03:02)
What troubles me is that this democracy has been systematically dismantled deceived (Labour renaged on their EEC menifesto pledge for a referendum) and lied to (Labour renaged also on the smoking manifesto pledge and as per the Iraq/WMD dossier acted on false scare stories) and the countries democratic systems have been replaced with unelected quangos who control policies that have not been approved of by the public and are unanswerable to the public.
No matter what Party Britain votes for the cronies on these quangos will not change and their policies will not change.
Who is on Greater Manchester Health Commission and how did they get there?
These jobsworths and their insidious policies need to be brought into the modern democratic world where their policies must be endorsed by the public.
PW - Dole for Labourites!, Manchester (27/07/2008 at 09:16)
However, I applaud the comments made below, and believe we should be fighting the ever-growing authoritarian State. As long as smokers do it in their own environments, why should I worry or be horrified?
Our freedoms are fast disappearing, and the majority of the gullible and passsive population are being brain-washed by a minority of people, who simply want to rule the world. We should stand up and tell them to get stuffed!
They haven't got into power by the gun and the jackboot (yet), and we are entirely free to remind them of that when we go to vote.
Mad Welsh Scotsman, Cadishead (28/07/2008 at 13:52)