Where there's smoke, there needn't be a burnt witch

SOMEONE I know has become the object of a witch hunt. Why? She smokes. Acknowledging that smoking is no longer acceptable in the school staff room, she collects her coffee and coat and smokes outside, usually alone. On several occasions some spiteful, anonymous colleague has sent her an insidious little parcel of cigarette ends via the internal mail.

Strong feelings about the smoking issue can bring out the nastiest side in people and unleash an almost fanatical urge to persecute and bully. I hope that today's national No Smoking Day is not handing them a convenient excuse.

Like 11 million other former smokers in the UK, I now dislike smoking intensely and am acutely sensitive to it. Although I wish passionately that every smoker could find the inclination and will to break the habit permanently - as the Health Education Authority anticipates that 50,000 will today - I'm a realist. And I try to be humane.

For smokers are also human beings, such as my mother and my sons, with needs and feelings. It is the smoking I abhor, not the smokers, and it's vital not to lose sight of the difference. Deliberately and spitefully to marginalise this minority, as some of the anti-smoking lobby seem hell-bent on doing, is preposterous.

Schools and hospitals have a particular problem. How can they compromise when 111,000 people die from smoking-related illnesses in Britain every year? We must seek indefatigably to deter the young and the sick from smoking in order to reverse the horrifying statistic that one British smoker dies prematurely every five minutes.

The perceived requirement is that everyone involved in schools and hospitals should lead the way in promoting and exemplifying a nicotine-free lifestyle. How can teachers credibly discuss the perils of smoking with their pupils if they go straight off for their own 'fix' immediately after the lesson? How can a nurse or doctor who smokes effectively counsel a bronchitic patient against tobacco?

But surely the unfortunate minority of medical professionals who remain tobacco addicts deserve to be treated with sympathy? Hounding them as if they were unclean, second-class citizens is hardly likely to help.

Birmingham City Council and the London Borough of Hackney have led the way in creating smoke-free schools. Fewer pupils now get hypocritical mixed messages of the 'do as I say but not as I do' type. And clearly it is essential that schools strive to counter smoking: an estimated pounds 100m a year is being spent on cigarettes by under-16s, and adult example is known to be the strongest incitement to adolescent smoking.

What, however, of the sad little group of hardened smokers on almost every school staff? Of course, they feel beleaguered. They often endure contemptuous treatment from colleagues who fail to understand the nature of addiction.

The trouble with smoking is that unlike other forms of behaviour about which one might be judgemental - heavy drinking, promiscuity, other forms of drug dependence - it instantly affects the environment and comfort of everyone in the vicinity, which is probably why it engenders such outrage.

Indeed, many smokers also feel so angry, hurt, frustrated and defensive that they are unable to discuss smoking rationally. And this gives the bullies further ammunition.

All this demands some exceptionally sensitive handling if we are to eliminate smoking from workplaces, schools and hospitals. As well as having management and legal implications, the issues are bound up with people's self-esteem and values and with how people relate to each other as human beings.

I would like to see employers, perhaps with grant support from the Health Education Authority and/or Anti-Smoking and Health taking greater pains to help smokers - as they would if they were gay, disabled or in any other minority group. Sympathy and kindness are more effective agents of change than bullying. And there should be no witch hunts. If No Smoking Day helps some smokers to give up, that is splendid. But let's not forget mutual respect as well.