fight, fight, fight...

My mate Iain has always been an argumentative/ pedantic type but now he's picked the mother of all fights with the government's Chief Bulldog himself - John Reid. Go Iain, loving your work...


Reid wrong about comfort of smoking, research shows - smoking is not associated with better quality of life or increased pleasure.

Results from a study that investigated links between smoking and pleasure and quality of life showed no evidence to support a controversial comment by the former health secretary John Reid (now the home secretary) that for some people their only enjoyment was having a cigarette (Public Health 2007 Mar 2, doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2007.01.005). [*this bit is Iain's research*]

"We found no evidence to support a claim that smoking is associated with heightened levels of pleasure, either in low socioeconomic groups or in the general population. In fact, our results suggest the opposite: that smoking is associated with lower levels of pleasure and poorer overall quality of life. As a group, smokers have lower levels of pleasure and quality of life than those who have never smoked, with ex-smokers in between," say the authors. The report says that in June 2004 Dr Reid claimed that people in lower socioeconomic categories "have very few pleasures in life and one of them they regard as smoking."

He added, "What enjoyment does a 21 year old single mother of three living in a council sink estate get? The only enjoyment sometimes they have is to have a cigarette." His comments, say the authors, brought criticism from other political parties, the BMA, antismoking groups, and others. "The health secretary's assertion that smoking is a source of pleasure seems to contradict established epidemiological knowledge about the association between mental health and smoking," they say, "Despite this, no evidence based interrogation of his claims has been conducted."

In fact, the researchers say, until now no analyses of the association between smoking and measured pleasure or quality of life have been done. To see whether pleasure and better quality of life were associated with smoking, the team from Peninsula Medical School in Exeter and Cambridge University analysed data from a study of 9176 men and women aged 50 years or more who took part in the health survey for England."


technorati tag: smoking, john reid