There should be no return of smoking areas outside pubs and restaurants, respiratory physician and veteran anti-smoking campaigner Professor Luke Clancy has saidProf Clancy, who is director general of the Tobacco Free Research Institute, told Newstalk Breakfast that more people have died from smoking-related diseases than from Covid-19. He pointed out that the number of Covid deaths to date is approximately 4,000 while 7,000 people had died from smoking related diseases during the pandemic. “We should never go back to having smoking areas outside.”The point was that there was no safe level of smoking, indoors or outdoors, he said. “I assumed that when the pubs opened again, that they’d be so glad to open that there’d be no question of them allowing people to smoke in the outside areas. They have never agreed to anything that has curtailed smoking, even though their own members are dying of it.”Their comments were “nonsense” he said.

Source: The Irish Times June 10, 2021 10:07 UTC