Hypocrites!

It's Lung Cancer Awareness Month in Ireland.

Yesterday the Irish Cancer Society called for a 'better understanding of the needs of lung cancer patients, after a study revealed 20 per cent of people had less sympathy for those with lung cancer compared to other forms of cancer.'

Commenting on the findings the ICS added:

“No one should ever feel blamed for having cancer. Sadly, though, these new statistics would suggest that lung cancer patients are treated differently by the public, compared to people with other types of cancer.

“Any sense of shame can hold someone back from seeking medical help, so it’s hugely important that we change our attitudes towards lung cancer.”

What hypocrites!

As John Mallon, spokesman for Forest Ireland, put it yesterday:

"For years politicians and public health bodies have sought to make smokers social outcasts so it's no surprise that some people have less sympathy for people with lung cancer.

"Smoking bans, plain packaging and punitive taxation are all designed to denormalise smoking and shame the consumer with the additional result that some smokers are reluctant to seek medical help.

"If the Irish Cancer Society really wants to help lung cancer patients and their families they need to cut down the anti-smoking rhetoric and stop stigmatising a perfectly legitimate habit."

John was quoted by both the Irish Times and the Irish Daily Mail but it staggers me that no-one else is prepared to make this point.

The hypocrisy of tobacco control campaigners is nothing new, of course. Take ASH and all those groups that lobby governments to increase tobacco duty to punitive levels while shedding crocodile tears for hard up smokers pushed closer to poverty by their habit.

Note too how anti-smoking activists love to play the addiction card, suggesting smokers are helpless victims of Big Tobacco yet happy to punish consumers whose 'addiction' makes it harder for them to quit.

That said I'm slightly heartened by the fact that only one-in-five people had less sympathy for those with lung cancer compared to other cancers.

After all, it suggests that four-in-five don't have less sympathy, and that's generally my experience.

Truth is, most people are far more tolerant of smokers than the tobacco control industry would have us believe.

Attitudes to smoking have changed but, by and large, it's not the general public that's trying to shame smokers to quit their 'dirty' habit.

The driving force is a relatively small group of zealots whose holier-than-thou approach to health is increasingly devoid of compassion or common humanity (hospital smoking bans being a case in point).

I don't doubt that the Irish Cancer Society does a lot of good work. I can't help thinking however that when calling for 'global action to reduce stigma around lung cancer' they should consider who the instigators of that stigma are.

Intolerance breeds contempt and unless the tobacco control industry understands the consequences of its crusade to denormalise smoking and discriminate against smokers, the stigma around lung cancer – not to mention smoking and smokers – will only get worse.

If the Irish Cancer Society can't see that they're deluding themselves and others.