Well the MPs have got it wrong on ID cards and terror “glorification”, but they got it right at least on the smoking ban – yahoo – I’ll soon (well “summer 2007” – why SHOULD it take so long) be able to go into a pub without making myself ill with second-hand smoke.
And what is interesting is the lack of fuss; despite Blair’s timidity, everyone knew this had to be the decision, and England is only just catching up with the rest of the UK.
Health officials proclaimed the vote a historic victory, to be compared with the 1948 NHS Act or the clean air legislation which ended city smog in the 50s. … That should cut the 85,000 smoking related deaths a year, pro-ban MPs believe. Scotland and Northern Ireland have already enacted public bans and the Welsh assembly has agreed in principle.
A judge has also been seeing sense, in refusing to direct that the NHS supply a drug as yet unproven for the proposed use – early-stage breast cancer. The word that keeps popping into my head on this is “thalidomide”. The approvals process is there for a reason, having been slowly and painstakingly assembled over decades to avoid disasters. Yet the problem is now that as soon as a drug starts to look promising, patients are going to demand it – hey, if it were me I might be doing the same thing, but the fact is checks do have to be maintained, to ensure the benefits do indeed outweigh the risks.
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