9 FEBRUARY 2008, Page 25

Smoked out

Sir: In June 2006 the then public health minister, Caroline Flint, told the House of Lords economic affairs committee that ‘in relation to deaths from smoking and second-hand smoke, the most serious aspect is smoking in the home. Ninety-five per cent of deaths are related to smoking in the home’. If she was right, then banning smokers from pubs is not merely undemocratic (‘Still fuming about the ban’, Rod Liddle, 2 February) but irrational. Is it not better that nicotine-addicted adults blow their smoke into the faces of consenting friends and acquaintances in a pub, rather than into those of their kiddies — especially on winter nights, with the central heating going full blast and the windows shut tight?

Maritz Vandenberg

Roehampton