Whilst I can put up with smoke - I won't let it drive me out of a restaurant for example - it does make me uncomfortable."Public attitudes against smoking are hardening. An opinion poll conducted last month among 1,200 adults found almost two-thirds favoured a smoking ban in restaurants and bars and nearly three-quarters supported a ban on smoking in the workplace.Last week, a survey of 500 young people aged 11-15, conducted for the Department of Health, found three-quarters favoured a ban on smoking in public places and wanted the legal age for buying cigarettes raised from 16 to 18. "As a family our social life is dictated by whether the environment is smoke-free or not. We very rarely go anywhere where there is a chance people will be smoking."David Cunningham, a 27-year-old marathon runner, keeps his asthma well controlled but has to avoid tobacco smoke "I always have to ask for non- smoking areas when I go out. "Our position is that people with asthma should have the freedom and independence to take control of their lives. With passive smoking that control is lost."Jane Tebbutt, a mother of three children with asthma, said they reached for their inhalers within 20 minutes of being smoked over to combat wheezing and tightness in the chest.
The toddler's father left the boy and an 18-month-old baby strapped in the back of the car while he went into a florist's on Friday. But when he returned to his car, at Chester-le-Street, Co Durham, he found his son trapped in the roof. The boy twice accidentally tripped the sunroof control switch - locking it against his neck and almost killing him. But his father, who is trained in first aid, released his son, gave him the kiss of life and heart massage and eventually brought him round. He was described as being in a "comfortable" condition yesterday at Durham's Dryburn Hospital.. SMOKING should be banned in all public places to protect the 17,000 children admitted each year to hospital because of the effects of other people's tobacco smoke, the National Asthma Campaign says today. Eight out of ten asthma sufferers are affected by passive smoking and in many the symptoms can be severe. In a new policy paper, the campaign says smoking should be banned not only in pubs and restaurants but anywhere where the public, especially children, may congregate including parks, open spaces and shopping centres as well as offices and buildings. Helen Donohoe, author of the paper "No Smoke Without Asthma", said some effects of smoking - as a cause of lung cancer, for example - were slow to show up, but the effects on asthma sufferers were immediate.
"Someone with asthma breathing in cigarette smoke is likely, minutes later, to have an asthma attack or breathing difficulties," she said.Many smokers were unaware of the impact their habit had. A TRIP for a Valentine's day gift almost ended in tragedy when a three-year-old boy was nearly choked to death by a car sunroof. He said he had spoken to Sir Peter Bonfield, chief executive of BT, who had said: "No, we are certainly not going to pull out." The reason why the company was not going to pull out, Mr Mandelson said, was because BT was not "a company of the old school, of the old Britain, unconfident and unambitious" - but rather a "company of the future - confident and vibrant - like the new Britain".The question session produced so much criticism that Barry Sheerman, a Labour supporter of the scheme, later protested to the Speaker about the lack of balance in the questions asked. The BBC is also working with the NMEC to create the Millennium Memory Bank of oral histories which will form one feature of the exhibition.Fears that BT was about to withdraw pounds 12m sponsorship were dismissed yesterday by Peter Mandelson, Minister without Portfolio, who told the Commons prospects for private sector investment in the pounds 750m project remained strong. Among critics, Dennis Skinner asked whether "Heseltine's Folly" had passed the point of no return at which the money could be spent instead on a millennium hospital..
