[jaysay]

Well as an ex-smoker I'm now very anti smoking, but I think that it a persons own preference to smoke or not. Some times I think that the smoking bad in pubs and clubs was very harsh, it may have been better with a designated smoking room, with powerful extractor fans to ensure the smoke didn't drift into other parts of the establishment. However, foster parents smoking, that's another question. Children who are in foster care have obviously had quite a lot of trauma in their young lives already, and having to live in a home that is constantly smoke fill, even if they don't smoke themselves (older ones that is) is a very great health risk and may even encourage the younger ones to start smoking themselves. Some years ago, I did a project with with the help of the LCC education department, regarding childhood asthma, and we had a team going round to schools talking to children about the causes of asthma, I was really shocked to see just how many young children actually smoked. That was twenty near on years ago, I wonder, given the anti-smoke campaign, just how much this has effected school kids today