National no smoking day

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THREE men ignoring the moral high ground on National No Smoking Day yesterday during a security alert at Waterloo Station. Elsewhere in London, Virginia Bottomley, the Secretary of State for Health, was manning a phoneline to counsel those hoping to kick the habit. She announced pounds 1m extra government funding for the Health Education Authority Smoking and Pregnancy Programme. But she said she was refusing to bow to demands to ban tobacco advertising, preferring to see an increased tax on cigarettes. Campaigners say that 2 million people tried to give up last year. But yesterday, pipe- smoking peers lit up in defiance at a special lunch, and a group of Conservative MPs tabled a Commons motion deploring the 'sweeping nanny-state persecution of smoking minorities'.