Plain-speaking health minister John Reid has kicked up a storm in Britain by saying that smoking is one of the few pleasures left in life for the poor.
The remark came as the feisty Scot was addressing a debate in south London about conditions on some of the country’s most deprived “sink” public housing estates.
It coincided with growing signs that health-conscious Britain may join the trend set by Ireland and some U.S. cities by banning smoking in public places.
Reid said he did not think the worst problem on the run-down estates was smoking, but that it had become an obsession of the learned middle class.
“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,” Reid said.
He also took a swipe at the incessant professional lobbying against smoking.
“Be very careful, that you do not patronize people because sometimes -- as my mother used to say -- people from those lower socio-economic backgrounds have very few pleasures and one of them is smoking.”
A spokesman for the anti-smoking group Ash said that to talk about smoking as a pleasure middle-class people wanted to deny others was foolish.
“Smoking in the UK kills about 115,000 people a year. A disproportionate number of those are in social classes D and E, where smoking rates are almost twice what they are in A and B,” he said.
He added that Ireland’s Health Minister Micheal Martin, a prime mover behind the Irish ban on smoking in the work place and enclosed public places three months ago, could look back on an achievement which will save thousands of lives.
“It would be nice to think that our health secretary had a similar ambition, but unfortunately what he said suggests that maybe he doesn’t,” the spokesman said.
Reid’s “bravery” praised
However, smokers’ lobby groups praised Reid for his “bravery” in the current anti-smoking climate.
“I think it is very refreshing that a politician is prepared to say the unsayable,” said Simon Clark, director of Forest (Freedom of the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco).
It was important that politicians appreciated smoking was a pleasure for people of all classes, he added.
Britain’s Labor government is considering a ban on smoking in public places but may leave legislation to local authorities.
The Department of Health said on Wednesday its public health consultation was continuing and that no decision had been made on a smoking ban.
A spokesman for Reid said he made the comments in response to a question about whether sales of packets of just 10 cigarettes should be banned, because they are favored by people with lower incomes.
