Supplementary memorandum by Imperial Tobacco
Limited (SP 11A)
At the Health Committee evidence session on
Smoking in Public Places on 20 October, I undertook to provide
the Committee with evidence from the International Agency for
Research into Cancer (IARC) which I raised in my testimony with
regard to the health impacts of environmental tobacco smoke on
children. The paper by Paolo Boffetta and other authors concludes
with the statement that "Our results indicate no association
between childhood exposure to ETS and lung cancer risk".
I also enclose another piece of evidence that I referred to in
my testimony, published in the British Medical Journal by James
E Enstrom and Geoffrey C Kabat, in which the authors concluded
that ". . . the association between exposure to ETS and coronary
heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than
generally believed."
This paper caused controversy when it was published
in 2003, leading the editor of the BMJ, Richard Smith, to comment:
— "Of course the study we published
has flaws—all papers do—but it also has considerable
strengths: long follow-up, large sample size, and more complete
follow up than many such studies. . . . I found it disturbing
that so many people and organisations referred to flaws in the
study without specifying what they were. Indeed, this debate was
much more remarkable for its passion than its precision.
— We must be interested in whether
passive smoking kills, and the question has not been definitively
answered. It's a hard question, and our methods are inadequate."
Both pieces of information are enclosed[1]
for the benefit of the Committee.
I would also like to take this opportunity to
remove any confusion that may have arisen between the testimony
I gave in relation to the marketing of cigarettes in bars and
pubs and that of my colleague Barry Jenner from Gallaher Group.
Mr Jenner correctly stated that the law enforces prohibitions
on marketing of cigarettes in the UK and, as you would expect,
I can obviously confirm that Imperial Tobacco complies with the
law in this regard as it does in every other regard.
October 2005
1 Not printed. Back
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