Page 3160 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 20 September 1994
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interesting issues is when you actually try to find scientific evidence. Certainly, we have attempted to do that at length. We simply will not legislate because the Government says so; or the AMA believe that we should ban tobacco; end of deal. They certainly believe that the approach to limiting the places people can smoke is an appropriate way to go; but only as a means to an end, only to get rid of tobacco totally out of the community.
To go down the track that we are going down here would indicate that we have scientific proof to show that environmental tobacco smoke, under the conditions that we have spoken about in the committee, is somehow dangerous. We know that probably the best known scientific data in this area is from the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States, which did, I admit, 30 epidemiological studies that looked at the link between environmental tobacco smoke and lung cancer. They looked at it, as Mr Moore said earlier, in terms of non-smoking women, predominantly, living with smokers. Of the 30 studies, only six showed any statistically significant link. That significant link was that women living with a smoker in six out of the 30 cases had a 1.19 times greater risk of tobacco related illness. I am not underestimating that in the least - I think that is a real risk - but the fact is that what we are talking about here is something totally different. We are talking about environmental tobacco smoke, not in a situation where you are likely to be part of that environment for potentially 24 hours a day or for at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for years and years. We are talking about it in a situation where you come and go, where you might be part of it for a couple of hours a day at the most, but potentially for a couple of hours a week. That is what we have in front of us.
We have asked and asked again for the Government to come forward with epidemiological studies to show that there really is a risk here, rather than just the sorts of weasel words we hear regularly from the Government on this issue. In fact, even when you look at the American studies that have been quoted in regard to restaurants, I think the words that I really liked most were in the only bit of American literature I could find, which said that the epidemiological evidence suggested that there may be a 50 per cent increase in cancer risk among food services workers that may be in part attributable to tobacco smoke exposure in the workplace. Quite seriously, nobody worth anything in the scientific community would accept that in the way that the Government seems to accept it. It might be the case; but, before we legislate in an area like this, particularly to ban something, we would need some evidence in front of this Assembly to do so.
So, what the committee did - and these amendments have attempted to do - was go down a track which does take into account that environmental tobacco smoke may be a real health risk.
Mr Berry: The medical profession will be laughing at you.
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