Stop Smoking News: Anti-smoking supporter’s new proposal
Anti-smoking supporter’s new proposal
A campaigner whose plan to ban smoking outside public buildings and transport stops was rejected has taken a new tact – banning smoking in key city spots.
George Wood, chairman of Auckland Council’s community safety forum, put forward a proposal that would stop smokers congregating outside city buildings and near public transport areas.
The idea failed to gain majority support at the forum’s meeting on Thursday night because councillors said smoke-free areas in the city cannot be enforced unless money is spent on creating a new bylaw.
Wood refuses to let that decision extinguish his idea and now plans to push for smoking bans in downtown Auckland in plazas like Britomart, Aotea Square and Albert and Myers parks.
“The issue is not dead. Ok, we didn’t get it backed, but we’ll continue working on it and refining it,” he says.
He’s pushing for the support of Sandra Coney, chairman of the council’s parks, recreation and heritage forum as most Auckland parks have become smoke-free.
Wood also believes creating a stigma around smoking in public will be enough to prevent people from lighting up.
“Public pressure is strong enough for people to stop smoking in open areas. The stigma alone is enough to stop them from doing it,” he says.
Wood ruled out fining smokers as a means of enforcement, saying it would be “taking it a step too far”.
He wants smoking in public banned because it causes mess and it is “harmful to other people”.
“People step outside for a cigarette and they don’t seem to care about others and what harm they’re doing by passive smoking.”
Expectant mothers who quit smoking help baby
Stockholm – Expectant mothers who stop smoking around the time of getting pregnant can eliminate the heightened risk of low birthweight, premature birth and associated brain damage from tobacco, according to British research.
A team led by Professor Nick Macklon, from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Southampton, UK, studied data from some 50,000 pregnancies registered at the Southampton University Medical Centre between 2002 to 2010.
It found that babies from women who stopped smoking either immediately before or shortly after conceiving had a significantly higher birthweight than those from mothers who had continued to smoke.
Macklon said that babies in this group had also reached the same gestational age and head circumference as those born to mothers who had never smoked. The study, he said, gave mothers-to-be hard evidence that stopping smoking no later than in the early phase of pregnancy was beneficial for their baby.
Macklon said that low birthweight was ‘the most common negative outcome’ of smoking during pregnancy. Pointing to long-term effects, too, he warned expectant mothers who continued to smoke because they believed that a smaller baby meant an easier birth.
‘Smoking during pregnancy is not just bad for the mother and baby,’ Macklon said, ‘but for the adult it will grow into.’
The findings were reported at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) in Stockholm.
Stop smoking and drinking
The RF Ministry of transport has developed a draft bill aiming to forbid drinking and smoking at stations, on trains, airplanes and ships.
The bill suggests forbidding selling beer and any other alcohol at railway stations and stops. Smoking is to be forbidden in city public transport, on commuter and long-distance trains, in airplanes in case the flight lasts less than three hours, at railway stations and stops.
Smoking on commuter trains, in places not designated for smoking at railway stations, stops and on local and long-distance trains, on board sea-going and inland vessels and airplanes in case the flight lasts less than three hours will be punished by either a warning or a fine of 2,000 rubles.
In Europe, it will cost you 2,000 euro to smoke at a railway station. But then, they have sockets for e-cigarettes everywhere.