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Have today's anti-smoking activists abandoned science in favour of prejudice? Rich White traces the history of tobacco bans - and the snobbery that went with them - back to Columbus

Tobacco smoking is currently seen by many as the scourge of society, an action of those wanting slowly to kill themselves. It is common perception that this idea is based solely on scientific evidence that has accumulated over the past sixty years.

Yet the truth is smoking has always attracted the wrath of puritans. In the past 'public health' measures were not enacted because of scientific evidence, but a sense of morality.

Alcohol was condemned and labelled a sinful activity because of moral sensitivity, and the same was true of tobacco. So the question is, is the attack on smoking today once again borne of ethical reasoning, or scientific rigour?

When Christopher Columbus reached Cuba in 1492 with Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, his two men experimented with smoking the tobacco pipe. Columbus himself not only refrained but spoke against it, referring to Rodrigo and Luis as sinking to the level of "savages" for smoking. When they packed tobacco on their boat and returned to Europe, there was an immediate divide between those who loved it and those who hated it, even inspiring King James I of England to write 'A Counter Blaste to Tobacco'.

In the 1600s parts of the world saw people actively punishing smokers. First-time 'offenders' in Russia were subjected to being whipped and having their noses slit before being sent to Siberia. If they were caught a second time, they were punished by death. Sultan Murad IV of Turkey castrated smokers, and eighteen a day were executed. In China, smokers were decapitated.

Such punishments did not spread to the UK or USA, but other restrictions existed. In 1900 Tennessee, North Dakota, Washington and Iowa banned the sale of cigarettes by law and by the following year forty-three American states were strongly opposed to smoking. In 1904 a woman in New York was sent to prison for smoking in the presence of her children, and a policeman arrested a woman smoking in her car, stating "You can't do that on Fifth Avenue." In 1907 businesses refused to employ smokers.

By 1917 the anti-smoking feelings were still strong and the primary focus was on using children to stop people smoking. Doctors would tell smokers they would suffer from blindness, tuberculosis or "tobacco heart".

Like today, insurance companies and surgeons would enquire if their customers or patients smoked. The August 1917 issue of magazine 'The Instructor' was labelled "the annual anti-tobacco issue" and featured cartoons to demonise smoking, as well as articles stating "One puff does not destroy the brain or heart; but it leaves a stain...until finally the brain loses its normality, and the victim is taken to the hospital for the insane or laid in a grave. One puff did not paralyse the young man in the wheel chair; but the many puffs that came as a result of the first puff did."

The anti-smoking campaign lasted until 1927, in America at least, but none of our science of today had been collected by then. Rather it was all based on a moral principle. Germany was producing its own anti-smoking campaign around that time, with the famous "The German woman does not smoke" posters, as well as public smoking bans.

The 1950s was the decade that saw the now-famous studies by Sir Richard Doll linking smoking to lung cancer, and there were other researchers at the time too, like Ernst Wynder, described as a fanatical anti-smoker. Focusing on smoking as a sole factor at a time when it had yet to be implicated in disease was perhaps a tip of the hat that the researchers wanted to find an association. In light of the findings, it was declared that 10% of smokers may contract lung cancer.

Things progressed again in the 1970s with what has become known as the Godber Blueprint. Sir George Godber was a WHO representative who spoke openly of the "elimination of cigarette smoking" with comments such as "Need there really be any difficulty about prohibiting smoking in more public places? The nicotine addicts would be petulant for a while, but why should we accord them any right to make the innocent suffer?"

Godber laid out a plan to achieve that goal, much of which has come into effect, such as the idea that "major health agencies [should] join forces to create and produce anti-smoking material for mass media". He also said the following should happen: elimination of smoking cigarettes; including quit-smoking assistance in health insurance; creating "a social environment in which smoking is unacceptable", raising tobacco prices enough to discourage sales; a ban on all forms of tobacco advertising; and creating committees of sophisticated politicians in every country to help pursue these goals. Almost twenty years before the EPA's report that second-hand smoke poses a threat to non-smokers, Godber was creating plans to convince people of that very thing.

With regards to second-hand smoke and the question of 'morality or science?', over 80% of the literature on secondhand smoke shows no risk or a preventive effect - with a preventive effect meaning a lower risk for lung cancer in adulthood. Only around 15% find an associated risk, and the average relative risk of those is only 1.17, which is categorised as statistically insignificant.

Of the more than 80%, much is supressed, the most famous probably being the study conducted by the WHO, the largest study performed on second-hand smoke and which was hidden by the organisation because its findings showed no ill-effect of secondhand smoke. When it finally hit the media the lack of harm was widely reported, with the Wall Street Journal stating, "...the science fell off the campaign wagon two weeks ago when the definitive study on passive smoking...reported no cancer risk at all. Don't bet that will change the crusaders' mind. The anti-smoking movement, after all, has slipped from a health crusade to a moral one. It is now obvious that antismoking activists have knowingly overstated the risks of secondhand smoke."

Enstrom and Kabat also conducted a large study, for thirty-nine years, into passive smoking. It was commissioned by the American Cancer Society and was funded by the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program. When the preliminary data arrived and showed no harm was posed from passive smoking, the funding was pulled. This led the researchers no choice but to accept funding from the tobacco industry-funded Center for Indoor Air Research, although the results remain unchanged from what was discovered when the TRPRP funded it. The study concluded that "The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality, although they do not rule out a small effect. The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed."

The 1989 Surgeon General's Report explains that 90% of secondary smoke is water and ordinary air with slightly elevated levels of carbon dioxide. Of the remaining 10%, 4% is carbon monoxide and 6% is the remaining chemicals that are apparently present in smoke. This means that the vast majority of secondary smoke is simple water and air, while the chemicals found in the remaining 6% are so small that they can be measured only in femtograms, picograms and nanograms. To put that into a relatable context, a single grain of salt weighs around 100 million picograms.

On top of that, the components begin to break down and dissipate almost immediately upon being released into the air, and so it is estimated that non-smokers inhale between 10,000 and 100,000 times less of the cigarette than smokers, which would mean that prior to the smoking ban, the average amount a non-smoker would inhale in an entire year would be just one cigarette. To give an example, going back to the Surgeon General's Report, the average cigarette emits 32 nanograms of arsenic, and a non-smoker would breathe around .032 nanograms of that. In the USA, 10,000 nanograms of arsenic is permitted per litre of water to fall within the 'safe' limits; to get that same level from secondary smoke would require sitting with a smoker for 300,000 hours - which would take 150 years if you sat with them for eight hours a day, five days a week for 50 weeks a year.

Recently there have been suggestions or enacting of outdoor bans, with Milton Keynes almost having one and New York establishing one, despite no evidence to suggest that they benefit the health of non-smokers. Indeed, anti-smokers today openly talk of keeping smokers out of sight and "denormalising smoking".

The difference today with the past is that there are now many vested interests with financial gains to be sought from the prohibition of tobacco, the similarity remains that much of the hysteria is based on a moral disagreement with the act.

The science is lacking on passive smoking, but bans are still in place. Studies showing 'undesirable' results are hidden. Those who do not agree with the literature are accused of being in the pocket of Big Tobacco.

With their scientific credibility thrown into disrepute, we are left wondering if those behind the numbers harbour nothing more than the prejudices of Columbus himself.