http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/03/25/BMA-no-smoking-for-those-born-after-2000 by Breitbart London 25 Mar 2014, 5:39 AM PDT
The British Medical Association (BMA), the trade union representing all National Health Service (NHS) doctors, has said that the sale of cigarettes should be banned "to anyone born after the year 2000".
In a new policy position of the organisation which claims to lobby Parliament in its members' interest, the BMA has stated that "humanity has never developed anything more deadly than the cigarette".
Dr Crocker-Buqué, a "London research assistant in academic public health" reportedly told last week's BMA annual public health medicine conference that eight in 10 smokers started in their teenage years and that someone who started smoking at 15 was more than three times more likely to die from smoking-related cancer than someone who started in their 20s.
But the BMA's proposals have come under fire from campaigners who argue that smoking should be a choice. The Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking (FOREST) has said that the people get "a great dea of enjoyment" from smoking, and that it is "indisputable" that many smokers live "long and healthy lifestyles".
But the BMA's blunt ban was accompanied by further lobbying efforts at local level. The conference called on the BMA to mount a campaign for all local authority pension funds not to include investments relating to tobacco companies, which effectively amounts to a boycott and divestment campaign against British businesses.
Simon Clark of FOREST told Breitbart London: "The health risks of smoking are widely recognised. Likewise drinking too much or eating fatty foods and dairy products, but a lot of people get a great deal of enjoyment from smoking, eating and drinking and life would be boring if it was entirely risk free.
"Instead of restricting smoking to people born before the 21st century, an impossible task, there should be more research to find out why some smokers are more susceptible to illness than others, because it is indisputable that many live long and healthy lives.
"That would be far more productive because it would allow people to make a genuinely informed decision about the risk they are taking with their health."
The BMA has been critical of the British government's healthcare reform plans, and has complained that introducing more transparency to the lobbying industry in the UK "could... hamper its activities in an election year".
