I HAVE been waiting for some weeks now for one of your reporters writing an article on the ridiculous posters about smoking which have appeared on the pillars in the Market Hall.

As you do not seem to have seen them, they are as follows:

'The management would prefer people not to smoke in the Market Hall, but members of the public may do so if they wish'. I find it hard to believe that someone has actually been paid to come up with this. It is quite amazing that a person in authority really believes that a smoker would read this and not smoke.

When I was in Canada on holiday, every shopping mall was smoke-free. In Bristol, the two new shopping centres are smoke-free. I am sure that, across the country, there are many more.

I have not noticed a drop in customers using the Market Place since this became a smoke-free area. The same goes for the malls in Canada and Bristol. The addicts to nicotine can have their fix before entering and on leaving. The Market Hall has many food stalls and cafes. After all the latest news on the dangers of smoking and passive smoking, I feel quite angry that it is almost impossible to eat and drink there, without someone coming on to the next table, holding their cigarette inches from my meal, and causing my hair and clothes to smell.

I have never felt 'Road Rage', but am becoming perilously close to 'Smoke Rage' and would love to pour my spoiled meat over the head of the ignorant person smoking next to me.

The smokers would probably be screaming 'Civil Rights' to me. I maintain that there is no greater civil right than not being forced to breathe the poisons in the smoke of what is nothing less than a drug addict.

There is plenty of street space in the town centre where these addicts can smoke themselves into a ball of cancer if they so desire. I am sure all non-smokers would be happy if this was the only place in the town centre where they could partake of their addiction.

I am not publishing my name, as I would be a target for all the people who depend on the drug nicotine.

I saw a health advert in a paper once which was very good. It was as follows:-

'Before you spoke to your children about drugs, did you have your fix of nicotine?'

Please have another referendum about smoking in the Market Hall.

Thank you.

Fag Ash Lil.

(name and address supplied)

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.