Now council tenants face ban on smoking in their own homes
SMOKERS are facing a ban on lighting up at home in a proposal for all tenants of public housing.
Top health official Professor John Middleton is urging local authorities and housing associations to make all new homes smoke-free to protect the health of children and help reduce cot deaths.
Under his proposals, tenants would be required to sign an agreement promising not to smoke in their homes before being given the keys.
Professor Middleton, president of the Faculty of Public Health, said: “Housing associations and councils are looking at smoke-free housing. Where children are involved I think there is a real case for it.
“You wouldn’t evict a load of tenants for smoking but where you have got new premises... you could have smoke-free agreements from the start.” In the US, all public housing groups have been ordered to impose smoking bans by August next year.
The move prohibits anyone from smoking within 25ft of social housing, including within gardens and communal outdoor areas.
It is designed to help smokers quit and raise tobacco taxes and has led to the number of smokers falling by around 10 million during the administration of President Barack Obama.
Twenty per cent of adults smoked in 2007 compared to around 15 per cent now.
In England and Wales, adults in cars have been banned from lighting up with under-18s inside since 2015 to help eliminate passive smoking.
Cancer Research UK claims children are the most vulnerable to the effects of passive smoking at home, even when the windows are left open.
Every year, second-hand smoke is linked to 165,000 new cases of children diagnosed with a disease.
Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, said yesterday that tenants were “frustrated” by the failure of councils and social landlords to take action against smokers and that is putting children on their estates at risk. One woman contacted the charity to complain that she could never invite her granddaughter to visit because her neighbours’ drifting smoke could aggravate the girl’s cystic fibrosis.
But Simon Clark, director of campaign group Forest, said the proposals “discriminate against people who can’t afford their own homes”.
He branded them a “gross intrusion of private space” and claimed they would be impossible to enforce.
He added: “It would create a snoopers’ charter, encouraging neighbours to spy and report on one another.
“There’s a huge amount of hypocrisy here. Tobacco is a legal product and smokers generate £10billion in taxation alone.”
The Faculty of Public Health sets professional standards for medical specialists. It was established as a registered charity in 1972 following a Royal Commission on Medical Education.