Health Bill

The issue raised here is interesting and important. It is true that quite a few people smoke herbal cigarettes because they think that they are doing some good. This is one of the problems when we have this catch-all legislation. The law of unintended consequences begins to happen. We have heard that there is no evidence that smoking herbal cigarettes adversely affects anyone who inhales that smoke, yet we are going to stop people who smoke herbal cigarettes from smoking in an enclosed public place simply and solely because some people think that tobacco smoke is harmful to those who inhale other people’s smoke. Again, we ought to be careful about what we are doing. Some people who are very anti-tobacco smoke cannabis. Some Members of the other place have smoked cannabis in their lives, but they are well against people who want to smoke tobacco. I have always thought and believed that cannabis was more dangerous than tobacco smoke, and yet there are some people who object to smoking tobacco but are quite relaxed about smoking cannabis. So we have some difficulties in that respect. There are further difficulties because there are claims for the therapeutic benefits of tobacco smoke. Dr James LeFanu, writing in the Sunday Telegraph on 5 March, instanced some of the correspondence he has received. It is very interesting. He states:"““The well-worn quip about how easy it is to give up smoking—‘I’ve done it lots of times’—provides, I now realise, the most compelling evidence for its health benefits. To explain: further to my comments last week, a dozen readers have confirmed the therapeutic effects of smoking, particularly in preventing aphthous ulcers of the mouth, and the inflammatory bowel disorder ulcerative colitis. They know this to be no mere coincidence because of the close cause and effect relationship between their ‘smoking status’ and their symptoms.""““Thus, a gentleman from Yorkshire describes how, soon after quitting 20 years ago, he developed the abdominal pain and bloody diarrhoea of colitis. The stress of it all sent him back to smoking ‘and two days after my first pack it disappeared completely’””." So he believes very much in smoking."““He carried on smoking for another 17 years before packing it in again, when his symptoms promptly returned. Now, thanks to his family doctor’s advice, he has resumed smoking and the colitis has gone away””." So even tobacco, apparently, has therapeutic benefits.