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Passive smoking risk to kids exposed

Chancellor Alistair Darling has been urged to double the price of 20 cigarettes to £10 in Wednesday's Budget.

The demand by the Royal College of Physicians comes as it was revealed that a third of children treated for chest conditions at a top hospital were made ill by their parents' habit.

Dr Steve Ryan, Medical Director of Liverpool's Alder Hey Hospital said they treated 2,000 children as a result of smoking related diseases and their bronchitis, asthma and ear infections could be avoided if their parents stopped smoking.

Professor John Britton, chair of the RCP's tobacco advisory group, said, "Raising the price is the simplest and most effective way to get people to quit. Labour has failed to put prices up enough and I would like to see cigarettes cost £10 a packet."

He added: "Cigarette smuggling kills more people than drug smuggling."

He also called on hospitals to do more to persuade parents to give up smoking once their kids have been admitted.

He said: "If parents have to do it they must do it not just out of the house but out of sight of their children."

The British Lung Foundation says 17,000 under-fives are treated every year for exposure to second hand smoke and ASH says half of all British kids are exposed to passive smoking in the home.

The Ulster Cancer Foundation says kids exposed to smoking are three times more likely to develop lung cancer later in life.

Amanda Sandford from ASH added, "If parents go outside to smoke they will probably smoke less as a result."

Smokers' rights group Forest said it feared the figures would be used by "extremists jumping on the smoking bandwagon"

Source: The People, 9th March 2008
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