From Free Life, Issue 17, January 1993
ISSN: 0260 5112

First spoke Mr Roy Castle, an elderly entertainer said to have

contracted lung cancer solely through inhaling the cigarette smoke of others. In a tone brave yet cheerful, he explained how much smoke there had been in the working men's clubs where he used to play his trumpet. His wife joined in, speaking of her deep Christian principles, and how helpful she had found these during her ordeal.

A wave of loathing passed over me. Here was a man who had spent fifty years sucking and blowing a trumpet - scarcely a very "natural" use for his lungs. Added to this, he had in the past been rather fond of the bottle; and had probably led the stressful, irregular life common to persons of his class. Now, after all this bodily abuse, he was pointing at a few puffs of cigarette smoke as the certain cause of his lung cancer. How credulous can anyone be!

Nor was this a single or a last performance. Chemo-therapy had revived not only Mr Castle's health. Since news of his illness was released, he had been far more often on television than for many years past, singing, dancing and playing his trumpet - not to mention spreading his own variant of the health fascist gospel. For the first time I realised that medical progress might not be an entirely unmixed blessing.

I looked away and caught the end of some some particularly absurd claim about the horrors of passive smoking. "Rubbish" I cried in automatic response. Mr Kilroy Silk ran eagerly towards me with his microphone. I could see myself and the glitter of my snuff box on the monitor opposite. Blowing my nose, I began a brief demolition of the claim.

I was interrupted by a man sitting in front of me. This was Mr John Moore-Gillon, a consultant lung specialist at St Bartholamew's Hospital in London. He asked if I denied every such claim - for example, that a disproportionate number of children admitted to hospital with breathing problems had parents who smoked.

I should have asked if he was proposing to ban smoking in the home. That would have given me a warm glow of spite as I watched him try to bluster his way out. Instead, I airily announced that most research in this area was based on observation of samples too small for valid results to be obtained.

This was a fatuous reply, and I deserved the next question: "How large was this particular sample?" Of course, I had no idea. Therefore, I changed the subject and began talking about "smoker's face", a condition discovered from looking at 122 people.

No use. "Where did you read about this research?" I was asked in a steely tone. Again, I had no idea. My source was a newspaper report, but which one and when published had gone out of my head. "In the British Medical Journal" I said firmly, adding that it was the issue for January 1989.

Still no use. My date was corrected to December 1988. Also, I was told that the article was intended, like much else in Christmas issues of that journal, as a joke. I could have snapped back that these were not joking matters. But, now crushed, I took no further part in the discussion, beyond dropping snuff all over Mr Moore-Gillon's collar and bald head.

A few days later, however, I went and found a copy of the article in question. Its full citation is: Douglas Model MRCP, "Smoker's Face: An Underrated Clinical Sign?", British Medical Journal, vol. 291 (21-28 December 1985), pp. 1760-62. The introductory abstract reads as follows:

In a prospective survey of patients attending a general medical outpatient clinic roughly half the current cigarette smokers who had smoked for 10 years or more were identified, using defined criteria, by their facial features alone. These facial features, designated "smoker's face", were present in three (8%) of those who had smoked cigarettes for 10 years or more in the past and in none of the non-smokers. The association of smoker's face with current smoking that had continued for 10 years or more was significant (p<0.001) and remained after the patient's age, social class, exposure to sunlight, recent changes in weight, and estimated lifetime consumption of cigarettes were controlled for. Smoker's face may be a helpful indicator in antismoking campaigns.

Now, if this article is a joke, my sense of humour is defective. It looks to me like a perfectly serious effort to associate smoking with yet another unpleasant condition. All that distinguishes it from an effort that I might take seriously is the smallness of the sample. And this defect is far less damning than those contained in the Hirayama or Frogatt Reports that are still so confidently cited in support of the case for passive smoking.

Why then was the article dismissed as a joke? Why also was it misdated by three years? I have described the mental process that lay behind my own utterances that morning. Perhaps Mr Moore Gillon will use the letters page of this journal to describe his own.

If some of our politicians and policemen are to be believed, finding an illegal gun in Eastern Europe is no harder than picking up shells on a beach. Most of them, of course, are to be disbelieved on principle. At the moment, they are hunting round for any excuse to justify the maintenance of tight border controls in this country when every other member state of the European Community has abolished them.

One television reporter just returned from Prague, however, assures me that 9mm pistols can be bought in St Wenceslas Square for as little as $500.

I have no doubt that he was offered a pistol for this price. I also suspect that he made a serious bid to the same dealer for one of the statues on the Charles Bridge or for the Czech crown jewels. In fact, there are very few illegal weapons in Prague or Bratislava or any other Eastern city of which I have personal knowledge. This is not because the police forces there are so much more efficient than our own. It is simply because the governments are so much more enlightened.

Before the 1989 liberal revolution, Czechoslovakia was a gun controller's paradise. The only people licensed to possess handguns were the police and military. Civilian ownership was strictly forbidden. Hunters and sportsmen were allowed a limited access to rifles, but were unable to use them but in areas and on occasions provided by the State.

Today, a firearms certificate is nearly as easy to obtain as a passport. A citizen need only go to his local police station and ask for an application form. Applications are seldom refused - and then only if the applicant is known to have a criminal record or is drunk. The standard certificate allows possession of only one firearm at a time - but variations can be had almost on demand.

Prague has eight gun shops. Bratislava has three. A good 9mm pistol and 50 rounds of ammunition cost about 2,000 kcs (þ50). For those to whom this is a lot of money, there are full strength catapults and crossbows. Since the beginning of the new year, moreover, cans of tear gas have been legally available, and the law regulating the carrying and use of all weapons has been liberalised still further.

In consequence, while there is a flourishing black market in drugs, guns are hardly ever offered.

Do I need to say that, whatever lurid tales are brought back of the vice and degradation to be found in Florenc District, no part of Prague is more dangerous statistically than the safest areas of London?

Do I need also to say that if Prague is to be made still safer, the politicians there have only to stop listening to the drivel pouring out of Washington about the evils of the trade in recreational drugs?

While in Bratislava at Christmas, I spoke with Miroslav Kvapil, an official in the Slovak Ministry of the Interior. I asked him if the newly independent Slovak State had any plans to limit civilian access to firearms. He stared at me for a moment to see if he had understood my question, then answered:

Gun controls are the first encroachment of a State that wishes to enslave the people. Slovakia is and shall remain a democracy.

What a wonderful part of the world I have just left! How unlike our own nanny police state, where the cry goes up for the Parliamentary draftsmen to work double shift every time a schoolboy is seen playing with a lolly stick and rubber band.