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Smokers are the 'silent victims of an epidemic'

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Published Date: 14 May 2009
SMOKING kills six times more Scots than accidents, murders, suicides, falls and poisoning combined, campaigners claim.
Anti-smoking group Ash Scotland called the thousands of smokers dying in Scotland every year "silent victims".

Chief executive Sheila Duffy said: "If someone is killed in a road accident, murdered, takes their own life or dies as a result of poisoning, it's newsworthy .

"The 13,500 Scots who die from tobacco-related illnesses every year are the silent victims of a major health epidemic. One in four Scottish deaths are estimated to be smoking-related."

Speaking at the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland's Annual Conference in Ayr today, Ms Duffy was

due to accuse tobacco firms of "fighting tooth and nail" to stop politicians legislating against advertising which gets young Scots hooked on cigarettes, adding: "We know the overwhelming majority of existing smokers became addicted in their teens."

There is a long battle ahead between wealthy tobacco firms and health organisations with few resources, she was to say.







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  • Last Updated: 13 May 2009 9:23 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
  • Related Topics: Tobacco
 
1

english charlie,

14/05/2009 07:52:46
A member of the House of Lords was asked how many people have died from smoking. He said that he couldn't give a figure as when somebody, who smokes dies from a 'smoking relating' illness, it is ASSUMED that he/she died because of smoking.
2

DaveA,

Forfarshire 14/05/2009 07:55:28
Ms Duffy of fake charity ASH has some front. "Wealthy tobacco companies" when out of a turnover £700,000 only £16,242 came from private donations, the rest coming from wealthy pharmaceutical companies and central govenment in 2007/8. In 2007 about 55,000 Scots died, so while Ms Duffy is playing God perhaps she can explain what the majority 42,000 died of.
3

english charlie,

14/05/2009 10:14:22
The full report on ASH Scotland web site includes this statement: “It is organisations like ours that will continue to argue against the misinformation and the scaremongering'. Does anybody believe that ASH do not give misinformation and scaremongering?
4

soapy1,

14/05/2009 10:49:48
Does anyone else think it strange that a charity that claims the battle against smoking has been won and that there is no further debate on the subject should continue to push their agenda? does ASH not understand that the advertising of tobacco products is illegal yet they remind our children that they are there every time they go into print! They are blatently advertising tobacco every time they object to it to keep themselves in government money and we the public pay for it. How many life support systems, Nurses andd doctors could this waste of money pay for? If you want to save lives put the money there.

I understand the offices for ASH (scotland) are on Princes Street Edinburgh, i aminformed it is one of the most expensive areas in Edinburgh, do they need high class facilities like that when other charities make do in less fashionable parts of town? wht does that say about ASH (Scotland)?

It gives the impression that they are in it for the money, that they are wiling to terrorise sections of society to get it. How much longer will tolerate this? it is not just politicans who are on the take but some charities too, who among you cares enough to put and end to it?
5

BeeGee,

14/05/2009 10:50:33
Sheila

I hope that you will also address the concerns surrounding Champix and Zyban, both prescription drugs used in Smoking Cessation, both drugs banned by the Federal Aviation Authority in the USA and must not be used by Pilots or Air Traffic Controllers as they are known to induce suicides.

There uis also clear indications of financial links between global anti smoking organisations and the Pharma industry.

So Sheila... come clean for once in your life
6

Alternative (High-Octane) Fuel Head,

Edinburgh 14/05/2009 10:56:36
Yet more rabid ranting from the Association Similar to Hitler.

How can they get away with telling such blatant lies? Why does it get printed in the papers? We should be ignoring them.

They LIED when they said the brain-dead smoking ban would save 3,000 lives a year in Scotland. It hasn't saved one.

They are lying when they say that 13,500 people die each year because of "smoking-related diseases". Has it not occurred to them that it is possible to contract these diseases from sources other than tobacco smoke? If you fall out of a tree, you can break your leg. That doesn't mean that every time someone breaks their leg, it is related to falling out of a tree, does it?

Likewise, smoking can give you lung cancer. It doesn't mean that every instance of lung cancer is related to smoking.

I am fed up to the back teeth with Duffy and those in her stupid organisation being given credibility. They are NOT credible, any more than Screaming Lord Sutch was credible. The difference being that at least Screaming Lord Sutch believed in freedom of choice.
7

Alternative (High-Octane) Fuel Head,

Edinburgh 14/05/2009 11:01:11
"I understand the offices for ASH (scotland) are on Princes Street Edinburgh..."

Are they now? Right! I'm going there this lunch time and am going to stand in their lobby with my pipe lit and blow smoke up their stairs.

#5:

Quite correct. If you look at the advice given to people who want to quit smoking, it invariably involves the use of drugs of some kind. Somehow, willpower is only given a passing nod but willpower is actually one of the main factors in giving up. That is of course, if you really WANT to give up something you enjoy.
8

Alternative (High-Octane) Fuel Head,

Edinburgh 14/05/2009 11:09:13
I'm more inclined to believe that ANTI-smokers are the victims of an epidemic.... An epidemic that slowly destroys their brains... giving them delusions that the most insane rubbish is true... affecting their eyes so that they loose their peripheral vision (like they would if they wore blinkers)... causing them to repeat time and time again, the same old phrases... causing one of their shoulders to become very heavy and painful, as though there was a large chip of stone placed upon it... and above all souring their thinking so that all normal tolerance dissappears and they become twisted, evil bigots whose only mission is to attempt to crush people who do things that doesn't fit in with their sanctimonious views on life.
9

Clif E,

london 14/05/2009 12:16:47
I have yet to see one death certificate saying a person have died from second hand smoke, so this just sounds like more lies and phony figures, to promote robotic dictatorship, i'm glad i am not Scotish, it sounds like hitlers back garden.
10

Yurk,

14/05/2009 12:47:21
Alternative (High-Octane) Fuel Head, the man for whom one post just isn't enough to contain all that incandescent rant.

But anyway. If you are actually interested in finding out these things about 'smoking-related deaths' - most of it seems to come (not sure about the ASH Scotland figure)from Peto et al's methodology. http://www.ctsu.ox.ac.uk/~tobacco/

Obviously, not all deaths from cancer etc are smoking associated, but this methodology works out how much you could expect to be attributable to smoking (that is, they are unlikely within a certain degree of statistical precision to have happened in the absence of smoking).

If you disagree, maybe you should get in touch with Clinical Trial Service Unit & Epidemiological Studies Unit and Oxford Uni and discuss your theorem.

Or you could just whine about it on the internet, because that's like, really effective, innit.
11

english charlie,

14/05/2009 12:51:16
The Legal interpretation of 'Epidemiological studies' is that it can only go to prove that an agent could have caused, but not that it did cause, an effect in any particular case'.
12

Yurk,

14/05/2009 13:05:59
Then I suggest bring your formidable team of pinstriped lawyers to bear on Peto and his colleagues then for committing such fraud.

Have fun with that.
13

english charlie,

14/05/2009 13:46:25
No need. It's only the gullible that believe the rubbish.
14

Yurk,

14/05/2009 14:28:53
Translation: "I cba with reading/am incapable of understanding the mathematical and scientific principles of epidemiology, so I'll use my one glib quote and say its the rest of the world that is wrong and foolish."

Fight da powah bro.
15

english charlie,

14/05/2009 14:42:12
Yurk. If you think that epidemilogy is an exact science then you should seek help.
16

Rollo Tommasi,

14/05/2009 15:15:03
Yurk - Don't worry about Charlie. He's quite happy to use epidemiological evidence himself when it suits him.

He recently said that over 30,000 people in the UK die each year from air pollution - a figure which can only have been produced using epidemiological evidence!
17

soapy1,

Rainworth 14/05/2009 16:11:16
As a point of law second hand smoke does not kill, Causation can only be by Natural causes, murder misadventure or suicide. This is why the statement second hand smoke kills is untrue, that it may be a contributing factor is a matter of opinion not fact.
18

english charlie,

14/05/2009 16:25:23
Yurk. Don't worry about Rollo. According to Rollo's research, I should have got lung cancer and died years ago. All his research is based on assumptions.
19

Alternative (High-Octane) Fuel Head,

Edinburgh 14/05/2009 17:19:56
I don't believe in epidemiology. It's against my religion.

Epidemiology is like the modern application of health and safety principles --- Sit there and think hard until you come up with a possible way that one event could influence another, no matter how small the chances of that happening. Then add some fantasy, assume everyone was born yesterday and declare that the consequences of the event in question WILL DEFINATELY give rise to the second in a highly amplified and lethal way. Then follow it up with a propaganda campaign.

I prefer to work on real life scenarios.

Fact: No-one has died from "passive smoking"
Fact: There are plenty of other ways of catching "smoking related diseases" than from tobacco smoke.
Fact: There are far more harmful types of smoke than tobacco smoke (bonfire, log fire in pub, stubble burning, diesel exhausts etc)
Fact: Millions of people smoke without ever contracting "smoking related diseases". Only a minority do contract them, and they are generally the heaviest users of tobacco.
Fact: Almost all anti-smokers are quite happy to attend a fireworks night, sit in the pub with a roaring log fire or walk along a congested city street. In doing one of these things once, they probably breath in far more harmful substances than they would if they spent all day in a smoky bar.

All this rubbish about smoking is total horse manure. It's about time it stopped.
20

111thstreet,

14/05/2009 18:12:41
Mr 19.

No, it's about applying a model of a disease to a population so we can well, know stuff, instead of having to take your word for it. Given that lung cancer, for instance, is relatively rare in non-smokers, it's a fairly clear matter (though with some tricky math) to calculate the extra mortality burden for active smokers. Hence you can arrive at an estimated number of 'deaths'. Passive smoking I wouldn't know anything about.

Alternatively, you can use your "LA LA LA I AM MR. REAL WORLD COMMON SENSE THINKER I SHALL IGNORE THE SCIENCE I DON'T LIKE AND HERE ARE MY 'FACTS'" to argue with people instead.

Because it's obviously served you so well already, what with all the watertight arguments you rack up here, I'm quite astounded that the Scotsman hasn't snapped you up for public health correspondent.
21

english charlie,

14/05/2009 19:10:53
If smoking causes cancer, why don't all smokers get cancer?
22

soapy1,

14/05/2009 20:41:24
111thstreet you do understand that your comment is equally valid to your argument don't you?

You do understand that if one module of the model is wrong the whole model is wrong and that if the model is wrong then the epidemiology is wrong too?

Given that the lawful number of deaths due to smoking or second hand smoking is 0 then epidemiologically that number can only be 0.

If you work on a scientifc basis and use their opinion then the resultant number is also opinion not fact, on these grounds the numbers are suspect, there is doubt and doubtful figures are not a sound basis for legislation. I would add that as more and more scientists believe that Epidemiology is flawed and even brings science into disrepute those grounds are even more shaky.
23

David from New Mills,

Fug free Pleasantville, U.K. 14/05/2009 21:42:22
#8, petrol bonce.
Perhaps if p.b. were to replace his term "Anti-smokers" with that of "pro-smokers", then re-read his posting, he might have cause for reflection. Well, perhaps not.
24

111thstreet,

14/05/2009 22:36:43
21. Fallacy. Causation does not strictly mean that the effect must follow the cause in every instance. We do not live in a binary world, as is patently obvious.

22. For my sins having worked with some practitioners of the 'black art of epidemiology' in disease control, I wouldn't agree with your conclusions. It has its limitations, and results need to be considered within them, but it's still an extremely useful approach. In some cases, it's the only approach (where its impossible or unethical to find out stuff any other way).

This 'as more and more scientists believe that Epidemiology is flawed ...' is over-egged. Most critics as 14 said either a) don't understand it, or b) stand to lose most from some of its findings such as the petrochemical industry and, surprise surprise, the tobacco industry so try to undermine it any which way they can.

Treat it with caution, but don't be duped into recycling the same old tobacco industry line from the 1960s please.
25

Groan,

14/05/2009 23:02:39
"If smoking causes cancer, why don't all smokers get cancer?"

this is the most unintentionally hilarious thing i've read this week. really, falling-off-your-chair awesome. you sir, deserve an award.
26

soapy1,

15/05/2009 00:09:45
We can agree it definately has its limitations I am sure you apprieciate that my view is that of a layman and like most laymen do undersatnd the the nuts and bolts of epidemiology just as I would not expect laymen inmy field to understand fully the intricacies of how and why an airplane works, you know it does.

Also as a layman I do not understand the jargon that goes with science, itis easy for laymen to get the the wrong idea especially when unscrupolous groups use it for their own ends, we have no way of knowing when that occours, so we can either accept without question or completely disbelieve without actually knowing what it is! we the laymen have absolutely no guarentee that what we are being told is true especially when conflicting opinions are held, this layman will not accept data on those terms and cannot accept legislation on the back of uncertain or contested information.
27

english charlie,

15/05/2009 08:32:47
What really worries me is second hand alcohol. One measure of alcohol contain over 2,000 carcinogens more than one cigarette. Carcinogens is the cause of lung cancer. If somebody stands close to a drinker they are in danger of breathing in the carcinogens from the fumes of the alcohol and may contract all those drinking related illnesses.
28

David from New Mills,

Fug free Pleasantville, U.K. 19/05/2009 12:45:19
#27, chas.w.
Chas. giving up the Hoegaarden, then?

 

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