From Dave Lucas SIR. Much discussion takes place on the health aspects of cigarette smoking.

However, a more fundamental aspect is always overlooked.

Even if it were to be proved that passive smoking does not cause significant physical harm to the health of innocent bystanders, what price do we put on the sheer offence this ugly perversion causes to all decent people who have to endure it from others in pubs, clubs, streets and a host of other public places?

Even when we don't have to breathe acrid, poisoned air or have our fresh, clean clothes and hair tainted with the stench of stale kippers, the sight of someone deriving so-called pleasure out of dragging that unnatural effluent into their lungs is a disgusting and degrading spectacle that blights the recreation time we work so hard for.

Have any behavioural studies been made into the astounding disregard smokers show to those they offend?

Or have they questioned whether their conscience can be functioning normally if they can commit this act without a thought towards other people or the standards of decency and intelligence they are setting for themselves?

By its nature, smoking is an artificial, back door escape from having to face the stresses of adult life, from emotional accountability to one's adult responsibilities.

Those who practise it band together and give each other permission in the face of critics, making them still less accountable to any standards of human decency.

It is no surprise that in the UK alone, 17,000 children aged five and under are admitted to hospital each year after having involuntarily inhaled cigarette smoke into their delicate lung tissues.

Let's follow the advice of The Lancet Britain's premier medical journal and criminalise this mindless obscenity once and for all.

If there is a shortfall requiring our taxes being raised by a few quid a week, let's pay it with relish and gratitude.

For what we'll get in return, it'll be the greatest windfall the taxman will ever have given us!

DAVE LUCAS Cheam Road Sutton