Lung cancer victim pleads for fresh air

A non-smoker with lung cancer has called for a ban on smoking in all confined spaces, within his lifetime, to save him from dying in vain.

Aucklander David Simm told a parliamentary committee that his life-threatening condition "could have been averted if smoking had been banned in work places many years ago".

He urged MPs considering a proposal to toughen the smoke-free legislation with restrictions, such as separate smoking areas in bars, to go further and urgently pass laws banning smoking in all confined places.

"Every day this is delayed somebody else has died without knowing it is going to be fixed, and that to me is the pits.

"If you are a non-smoker and you get lung cancer and you know nothing is being done about it ... you are going to say they didn't do anything, and that is something I don't want to die thinking," Mr Simm told MPs.

He was convinced people underestimated the threat of passive smoking and that those even smelling smoke were at risk.

"If you are a non-smoker you can smell it coming out of places, you can smell it anywhere you like.

"If you go into a room you smell it and I know from my research since I became ill, that in fact the smell is only the sign ... the carcinogenic chemicals are still there for many, many hours."

Mr Simm said, aside from two puffs when at boarding school, he had never smoked and no one in his family had smoked.

He told MPs he was certain his disease was caused by passive smoking.

"My working environment for 30 years was the smoko room, which is known as the cafeteria these days, for most of that time with uncontrolled smoking and that was just the norm. We didn't know any better, I guess."

When the Smokefree Amendment Act came into force in 1990, workplaces were still slow to change and smokers ignored the law.

"It was only in the last year of work [1998] ... that in fact there was a room put in there with negative air pressure for smokers to go into.

"Smokers did what smokers do and they left the doors open. Even when it had a door closer on it they left it open.

"What you had was us accepting it because ... they were the noisy minority."

Mr Simm spoke of his horror at being diagnosed with cancer, being told that surgery was pointless, the pain of chemotherapy and the joy of defying the odds and still being alive.

"I am a very, very lucky person. I have survived three years since I was diagnosed and I consider every day quite something and I enjoy it considerably."

Mr Simm was one of a number of people who made submissions at the committee hearing yesterday.

Parliament is considering the Smokefree Environment (Enhanced Protection) Amendment Bill and a further series of changes proposed by the last Government in a supplementary order paper. If passed into law bars, restaurants and casinos would have to provide enclosed smoking rooms with separate ventilation systems or become entirely smoke-free.

The legislation would also:

* Prohibit smoking at schools and other education institutions except in designated smoking rooms that students cannot enter or see. Tertiary institutions are excluded from this.

* Make it an offence to supply tobacco to minors, with exemptions for family members.

* Require 18-year-olds to show ID to buy cigarettes.

* Ban self-service cigarette vending machines from public areas.

* Limit displays of tobacco products at points-of-sale.

* Allow judges to ban people or businesses, repeatedly caught selling cigarettes to minors, from selling tobacco.

* Allow pictorial and written health warnings on tobacco and herbal cigarette packets to warn consumers more about the health effects of smoking.

* Provide for more detailed disclosure - for instance, by way of inserts in packets - of what makes up tobacco.

- NZPA

Further reading
nzherald.co.nz/health