Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-71 today because this issue is very close to my heart.
We all know about the harmful effects of smoking. The correlation between smoking and various forms of cancer affecting the lungs, the throat, the mouth, the larynx, the digestive tract, the stomach and the colon has been more than scientifically proven. The increased risk of heart disease among smokers is also a well known fact.
Today, however, I would like to examine this issue from another point of view, namely the effect of second hand smoke on the health of non-smokers, particularly on the health of children. But first of all, I would like to talk briefly about the history of smoking.
In his book entitled Le tabagisme , Professor Bertrand Dautzenberg tells us that in ancient times, the Greeks and the Romans smoked the pipe, or rolled leaves sometimes, but they did not smoke tobacco because it did not exist. They smoked pear tree leaves, eucalyptus leaves and other plants.
In America, tobacco smoking goes back more than 3,000 years, both in South America and in the Mississippi Valley. Pipes dating back to 1,000 B.C. have been found in South America. The natives called that plant "petum". The name tobacco comes either from
the island of Tobago in the Lesser Antilles where it was cultivated or from the name the natives gave their pipes.
Tobacco, as used by the Incas and the Aztecs during important religious ceremonies, also had the virtue of appeasing hunger and overcoming fatigue. It was also used as a medicinal plant either by itself or in conjunction with coca leaves or other plants.
At this stage, it is important to clarify the terminology because smoking produces three types of smoke. The best known is called mainstream smoke, and it is the smoke that is inhaled by the smoker when he or she draws on the cigarette. Then there is sidestream smoke, which is released into the environment when the smoker is not drawing on the cigarette. Finally, there is second hand smoke, which is exhaled by the smoker.
We have to ask ourselves the following question: which of these different types of smoke, mainstream, sidestream or second hand, is the most harmful? The answer is this: the most toxic type of smoke is the sidestream smoke that is released into the environment, because it undergoes an aging process before it is inhaled. What does the aging of smoke mean? It means that while the cigarette is burning in an ashtray, for example, certain substances such as carbon monoxide decompose and these altered substances are found in greater quantities in side stream smoke than in mainstream smoke.
And what are the effects of these substances on our health and our children's health?
Taking carbon monoxide as an example, everyone knows it decreases the amount of oxygen going to peripheral tissues, but how many people know that benzene is related to the development of acute lymphoblastic leukemia?
Moreover, how many people know that the concentration of nicotine is two to three times greater in sidestream smoke than it is in mainstream smoke? One often wonders how much one can smoke daily without harming other family members, especially children. This is hard to say, because there are different definitions of harm, and many factors involved.
It is easily understood that the smaller the room nonsmokers have to share with smokers, the greater the risk to them. The most dangerous places are on the job and in a car. Yes, a car. One of the first studies in this area, if not the absolute first, dates back to 1981 in Japan, when Professor T. Hiramata proved unequivocally the harmful effects of cigarette smoke on nonsmokers.
Why a study in Japan? First of all, because the Japanese live in very close quarters, more often than not a single room, and at the time of the study a poorly ventilated one. Second, because only 15 per cent of Japanese women smoke, one-fifth of the figure for men: 75 per cent. The study findings demonstrated that lung cancer among nonsmoking women was proportionate to the husband's smoking habit. Women whose husbands smoked were twice as likely to have cancer as women whose husbands did not.
The focus of these studies was lung cancer, but it is most interesting to note that the same study also showed an increased incidence of breast cancer and leukemia in these same couples. All studies agree on this; 330 Canadians died in 1996 from lung cancer caused by someone else's smoking.
I will close on my favourite topic: children. We all have young children or young grandchildren. Here are the facts: cigarette smoke is directly linked to all forms of respiratory disease, from pneumonia, to bronchitis, bronchiolitis, asthma and ear infections. How so? The child inhales nitrous oxides, which increases the sensitivity of its lungs. Children's contact with second hand smoke can have major and serious consequences for the quality of life of our young people in the short, medium and long term.
In fact, children of pre-school age are the most at risk. They are often sick and are much sicker than children were 25 years ago. The phenomenal increase in asthma, for instance, is very disturbing. When children have ear infections, daycare is often blamed, but it has now been proved that the smoke from parents' cigarettes is as much to blame, if not more so, than daycare, with consequences such as future learning disabilities, operations, and so forth.
In concluding, I would like to say that the purpose of my speech today is not only to support this bill unreservedly but also to try and make the Canadian public aware, through my humble contribution, of the very real and harmful effects of second hand smoke and especially of the beneficial impact of a healthy environment.