Smoke Free Australia: February 2011

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Choosing a Smoke-Free Hotel

Smoke-free hotels are becoming increasingly popular. Not just in Australia where more and more cities are banning smoking everywhere but in private houses, but even in most North Amercian cities and some European and Asian cities.

The fact is that smoke seeps into every part of a room and when hotels are sold out, non-smokers often find themselves in a smokey room. Given that some people have severe allergies to smoke and the decline (in percentage) of people requesting smoking rooms, combined with the headaches caused trying to allocate the smoking and non-smoking rooms and movements towards smoke-free public environments, it's no surprise to see hotels and resorts trending this way.

The best way to ensure the hotel your are booking is smoke free, we suggest that you phone the property within the cancellation period to ensure they are still completely smoke-free.

Want to book a smoke free hotel? Log on to www.metrohotels.com.au

Will you even be allowed to smoke in your own home?

''The thing the government really should be looking at now is suing the tobacco companies because they have caused such horrendous damage to the health of Australians and continue to do so, and it's the taxpayers who pay for it, let alone the smokers who pay for it with their lives,'' Professor Moodie told The Sunday Age.

In the US, President Barack Obama has asked the Supreme Court to allow the government to sue the tobacco industry for $US300 billion ($A338 billion). Similar lawsuits are under way in several Canadian provinces.

If Australia follows, it will enhance its reputation as a world leader in tobacco reform, having been one of the first to introduce mass media anti-smoking campaigns and health warnings on cigarette packets.

In Victoria, smoking is now banned in bars, restaurants, government schools, cars carrying children, covered train and tram stops, gambling outlets and most public buildings and workplaces.

From January next year, cigarettes will have to be kept either under the counter or behind a closed cabinet in all outlets except specialist tobacconists.

But Vic Zurek, head of Australian Smokers Rights, said aggressive health lobbying had left smokers feeling like ''second-class citizens'' who are being demonised for a legal habit.
He said some doctors were starting to refuse smokers' medical treatment despite his assertion that smokers essentially fund their own healthcare through high cigarette taxes.

''I agree with helping people to quit if they want to and to try and stop kids taking up the habit, but I don't agree, in a free country, in forcing people,'' Mr Zurek said.

''Working people don't have much in life, a beer and a cigarette are just a couple of small pleasures, and we can't even do that any more.''

Tough legislation, coupled with pioneering Quit campaigns, has helped reduce Australia's adult smoking rates from 34 per cent in 1980 to between 17 and 19 per cent today. The preventative health taskforce has set a target of 10 per cent by 2020.

But despite the gains, Quit executive director Fiona Sharkie said there was more to be done.
''Unfortunately we still have 750,000 adults smoking in Victoria and it's still killing 4000 Victorians a year,'' Ms Sharkie said.

Among reforms Quit will push for are laws that would mean cigarettes can be sold only through a limited number of outlets licensed by the state government. Quit is also studying developments in California where local authorities are increasingly mandating that developers build smoke-free properties.

''We get lots of calls from apartment dwellers saying, 'I hate the way the neighbours smoke and the smoke comes into my house when I've got the front door or the window open. What can I do about it?' Consumers are saying that they'd prefer to have a smoke-free building, so we will be looking at that,'' Ms Sharkie said.

A pilot scheme starting in September that will ban smoking in three busy Frankston shopping streets may also be expanded to other areas as Quit has joined with the Heart Foundation in a project to encourage Victoria's 79 local councils to go smoke-free.

A ban on smoking at beaches, campuses and beer gardens, the eradication of cigarette vending machines and a push to have nicotine patches available on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme are further measures in Quit's long-term strategy.

David Hill, director of the Cancer Council Victoria, said public health experts are now debating whether they have achieved all they can in getting smokers to kick the habit.

''Some people believe we're now left with a hardcore group who would still smoke if there was no promotion, no legal sales and the whole thing was banned,'' Professor Hill said.

''The question is when you've reached that point, then you might consider whether you continue the downward pressure.

''But when you look at the data you see it is by far the biggest avoidable cause of cancer death, so we simply can't afford to neglect it.''

Did you ever smoke in a non smoking hotel room?

Did you ever smoke in a hotel that had no smoking signs...

Many hotels now charge over $200 if you are caught smoking in designated Non-smoking rooms.,

Did you ever do it?
Did you get away with hanging out the window for a cig?
Did you get caught?

What happened?

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