WITH smoking already banned on buses, trains and in Blackburn shopping centre and market it should not be any real surprise that bus shelters are next in line.

Food-serving premises also aim to be smoke-free by 2008 as part of a drive to ensure that children and adults are not subjected to passive smoking by being in an enclosed space.

Some smokers seem to see such moves as the infringement of a basic freedom - their right to smoke in public and allow cigarette fumes to pollute the clothing and hair of others.

But it is much more than that.

Even the tobacco industry has all but given up attempting to argue the unarguable - that smoking somehow does not damage your health.

And Blackburn with Darwen Council is serious in believing that this latest ban will help towards its aim of reducing heart disease and strokes by 40 per cent.

The problem is exactly how they will go about enforcing such a ban and the fear that it will become yet another way of raising revenue like speed cameras and parking charges.

The idea of wardens pouncing to impose instant fines on people trying to get to work is absurd.

What is needed is a change in public attitudes not punitive measures by officious bureaucrats.