A BRITISH PRO-SMOKERS lobby group has launched a new group to represent the interests of smokers in Ireland.

Forest (the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco) has launched Forest Éireann, which in its own words “aspires to be the voice and friend of the smoker in Ireland.”

While the group says it acknowledges the health risks associated with smoking – which is a contributing cause to heart disease, Ireland’s most prominent cause of death – it does not accept what it terms the “intolerant, bully-boy tactics” of those behind “draconian smoking bans, record levels of tobacco taxation, and the introduction of some of the most extreme anti-smoking laws anywhere in the world.”

In an email sent to bloggers this morning, Forest Éireann spokesman John Mallon, a father of two from Cork, said he believed “in the citizen’s right to oppose those things that seek to marginalise them” and said that rates of smoking had increased since the introduction of the smoking ban in 2004, while pubs were still closing due to its effects.

“Tobacco control affects everybody, smoker and non-smoker alike, because it creates a less tolerant society,” he said. “If like-minded people don’t fight it now a host of other restrictions will surely follow.

“”Our aim is not to overturn smoking bans because we respect the wishes of non-smokers who prefer a smoke free environment. But we would like to see the law amended so that licensees can provide a separate smoking room indoors if there is sufficient demand.

“We also want the regulations on outdoor smoking shelters relaxed so that people can smoke outside in much greater comfort, and we want politicians in Ireland to stop using tobacco taxation as a form of social engineering.”

The Health Service Executive operates an official Give Up Smoking website.