Doctors urge smoking ban in public places

But the doctors narrowly defeated a resolution calling for the legalisation of cannabis for medical use, and decisively rejected a more controversial motion for the drug to be decriminalised for recreational use.

Trials into medical uses of cannabinoids for some illnesses like multiple sclerosis are already under way and the doctors took their leaders' advice to await the results in October.

Supporters of the Scottish Regional Public Health Committee, who proposed decriminalisation, said that otherwise law-abiding people were being given criminal records and faced career ruin for something which - according to committee chairman Dr George Venters - had not been proved by the evidence to harm users or other people.

Dr Nigel Vetter, from South Glamorgan, who proposed the public smoking ban said: ''It is a profoundly anti-social habit. We have messed about for years trying to reduce the number of people who smoke and it is our children who are not listening to us.

''We need to get our children to listen to us and the way to do that is for them not to see people smoking in the street.''

Dr Vetter said #135m was spent on tobacco by under-age smokers last year, of which #105m went to the Government in the form of taxes. ''The Government is living off immoral earnings and it is time it was stopped. The sensible way forward is to ban smoking in public places.''

These were defined by the BMA as an ''enclosed place to which the public has access'' - for instance, cinemas, restaurants, bars, and shopping centres.

London GP Dr Chaand Nagpaul won overwhelming backing when he called for regulation of TV medical dramas to ensure they promote responsible use of the NHS and do not fuel ''excessive, misleading and consumerist expectations''.

Singling out the Peak Practice series he said: ''Up to 10 million viewers are paraded a world where the patient does not need to request a home visit, but the GP instead readily offers to pop in during those spare hours in the day, for that living room consultation over a fresh cuppa.

''The GP is holding the patient's hand as he goes into the operating theatre and is there to welcome him with a warm smile when he recovers from the anaesthetics.''

It was an impression of GPs that patients might want but was logistically unachievable, he said.

Meanwhile Scottish medical students received overwhelming support when they called for the abolition of university tuition fees. The conference also backed their demand for the restoration of equitable student grants and an increase in funding for higher education.

Janet Kerr, deputy chairman of the Scottish Medical Students Committee, said: ''We are very pleased that the BMA has thrown its weight behind us. Entry to medicine should be by merit, not by means.

''The profession has worked hard for many years to shed its stereotypes and widen the social spectrum from which doctors are drawn. We can treat patients better if we are able to identify with them. There are potentially very good doctors of the future out there and it is disadvantageous to them and to patients that they don't get as far as medical school because they lack the finances.

Miss Kerr, 22, from Lisburn in Northern Ireland and a fourth-year student at Aberdeen University, said she would probably owe #12,000 by the time she graduated. ''It has been shown that the debt that will be amassed as students does put people off going to university,'' she said.

The Cubie inquiry was announced last week to investigate student finances in Scotland - part of the partnership deal between Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Parliament.

Miss Kerr hoped that the parliament would lead the way for the UK by abolishing tuition fees. She said: ''The Scottish elections indicated that six out of ten people wanted fees abolished. The politicians who want them had the benefit of free education themselves.''