Smoking bans can kill pub workers
Smoking bans can kill pub workers
From Mr Michael J. McFadden.
Sir, Matthew Engel ("How our pubs have run out of puff", Outside Edge, January 2/3) did a beautiful job of describing what the smoking ban has done to pubs and the bizarre consequences of such bans, but he overlooked one of the most important consequences: the devastating effect on the lives and health of the thousands of workers who have lost their jobs on the holy altar of the anti-smokers.
Have some workers possibly been spared an extra chance in a thousand of getting lung cancer 40 years down the road? I actually don't believe so from my own research, but even if it were true, what is the trade-off? A loss of 50 or so pubs per week in the UK and Ireland translates into a five-year loss of roughly 100,000 jobs if we assume the average pub employs 10 people. The general impact on the economy of these people being forced to go on the dole or work at menial jobs has severe health consequences in and of itself.
A British Medical Journal study several years ago examined income inequality and its effect on mortality. It estimated that a 1 per cent difference in income translated into 21 deaths per 100,000 per year. If we assume that the estimated 100,000 workers who lose their jobs over five years had their income cut by 50 per cent, that would be over 1,000 extra deaths per year caused by the smoking bans. That's 1,000 per year, right now, as opposed to 100 claimed/theorised to happen 40 years from now without a ban. Sure, it is all statistics, and with some juggling things might not seem quite so dire, but it is clear that no amount of juggling could ever eliminate such a massive disparity.
The smoking bans in the UK and Ireland are killing people, not saving them. Those bans need to be reversed and the people who promoted them and the politicians who voted them in, knowing the consequences, need to be held responsible.
Michael J. McFadden,
Philadelphia, PA, US
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://www.ft.com
From Mr Michael J. McFadden.
Sir, Matthew Engel ("How our pubs have run out of puff", Outside Edge, January 2/3) did a beautiful job of describing what the smoking ban has done to pubs and the bizarre consequences of such bans, but he overlooked one of the most important consequences: the devastating effect on the lives and health of the thousands of workers who have lost their jobs on the holy altar of the anti-smokers.
Have some workers possibly been spared an extra chance in a thousand of getting lung cancer 40 years down the road? I actually don't believe so from my own research, but even if it were true, what is the trade-off? A loss of 50 or so pubs per week in the UK and Ireland translates into a five-year loss of roughly 100,000 jobs if we assume the average pub employs 10 people. The general impact on the economy of these people being forced to go on the dole or work at menial jobs has severe health consequences in and of itself.
A British Medical Journal study several years ago examined income inequality and its effect on mortality. It estimated that a 1 per cent difference in income translated into 21 deaths per 100,000 per year. If we assume that the estimated 100,000 workers who lose their jobs over five years had their income cut by 50 per cent, that would be over 1,000 extra deaths per year caused by the smoking bans. That's 1,000 per year, right now, as opposed to 100 claimed/theorised to happen 40 years from now without a ban. Sure, it is all statistics, and with some juggling things might not seem quite so dire, but it is clear that no amount of juggling could ever eliminate such a massive disparity.
The smoking bans in the UK and Ireland are killing people, not saving them. Those bans need to be reversed and the people who promoted them and the politicians who voted them in, knowing the consequences, need to be held responsible.
Michael J. McFadden,
Philadelphia, PA, US
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://www.ft.com
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