Consumers' Association on smoking

Smoking is not good for our health, and in some cases leads to death. In Malta, smoking kills a person every day. However, since the smoking lobby is strong and powerful, the best we can hope for at this stage is to discourage rather than ban smoking. Passive smoking too is known to be detrimental to health. Thus, smoking in restricted public places should be banned.

The argument that the smoking ban may be averted by installing air-purifying equipment is not valid. Bearing in mind that smoking is not an essential human activity, even if we were able to produce 100 per cent effective equipment, it does not make economic sense to first pollute the air in a specific area by allowing smoking and then purify it only for it to be re-polluted. This is a vicious circle and, without beating about the bush, downright stupid.

Traders who own outlets where they adopt this approach (i.e., installing air-purifying equipment) should in no way be subsidised because they would thereby be encouraging smokers to retain the filthy habit and, to add further insult to injury, they would be giving passive smokers a false sense of security.

Moreover, we would in fact be distorting the market because we would be giving an economic advantage to those who are willing to permit smoking by installing this equipment, which supposedly neutralises tobacco smoke. Thus, in the prevailing scenario, it would not be the polluter who pays for the damage but the ordinary consumer. Ironically, the polluter would become richer.

Let's face it, when all is said and done, tobacco is a drug. I would go as far as to say that, just like other drugs, tobacco should be prohibited. The fact that it kills is enough justification to ban it in exactly the same way as other drugs are banned. Hopefully, one day, this will happen.

Finally, as regular readers know, we have a list of "no smoking" restaurants which we feature in this column at regular intervals. It was last featured on April 11.

Last Wednesday I visited the Dolmen Resort Hotel, Qawra, to view their totally non-smoking Il-Menhir Restaurant. It is a family restaurant, serving buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner in a totally smoke-free environment with a magnificent view of St Paul's Islands (tel: 2355-2355 fax: 2355-5666; e-mail: info@dolmen. com.mt).

We now have seven totally non-smoking restaurants on our list. If there are any others, they are invited to write to me with a view to making the necessary arrangements for an inspection so that I can include them in our list.