Irish ban a model for world, says the ‘Insider’

JEFFREY WIGAND expected to arrive in Ireland to be met with shuttered pubs, empty restaurants and unemployment queues all the way to the airport.

He speaks with tongue in cheek, looking around as if expecting tumbleweed to drift by as he recalls the scare stories that a year ago this month had the nation fearing the workplace smoking ban would end civilisation as we knew it.

"Business has not gone to hell, the pubs are still open, the restaurants are still trading. The only thing that has been affected are cigarette sales," he says with satisfaction.

Dr Jeffrey Wigand doesn't scare easily. The American scientist's ordeal as the cigarette company employee who risked all and lost much to expose the unsavoury practices of the tobacco industry was chronicled in the 1999 movie, The Insider, with Russell Crowe in the title role.

Crowe has moved on but the true-life hero is still banging the same drum, working as a consultant to agencies such as the World Health Organisation and taking his anti-smoking message around the world.

He was in Ireland yesterday to further the work of his Smoke-Free Kids foundation, and to launch Clearing The Air, a book by public relations guru, Noel Gilmore, which chronicles the 12 months of lobbying, arguing, politicking and scaremongering leading up to the ban.

Wigand wrote the introduction to the book for Gilmore, who is donating the royalties to the Irish Cancer Society, and he doesn't hold back in praising Ireland, and especially former health minister Micheál Martin, for leading the way.

"The rest of the world watched with some degree of amazement that little Ireland took such a big bull by the horns, wrestled it to the ground and succeeded in doing what others tried to do for years," he says.

"There is now a model. People ask what's going on in Ireland and how did Ireland do it. This is the template of what to expect from the political machinery, from the opponents who attempt to thwart the effort."

Gilmore casts a critical eye on both sides in the smoke ban battle but concludes that the opposition, led by the Irish Hospitality Industry Alliance, did themselves no favours by exaggerating their claims and being too belligerent.

"They might have achieved some degree of compromise if there was not so much bitterness in their argument," he says. "They backed the minister [Micheál Martin] into a corner until he had no room for compromise."

As far as Wigand is concerned, there is still no room for compromise or complacency. He says tighter regulation is needed to force tobacco companies to divulge the ingredients in their products, restrict their promotion and carry bigger warnings on packets.

Some of these controls are provided for in Irish legislation but cannot be implemented as they are the subject of a protracted legal challenge by tobacco companies. But Wigand sees no reason to be disheartened.

"The tobacco companies will not give up the fight but it's a losing battle.

"There's a critical mass out there against them and the momentum is with that mass. Can you imagine Ireland going back on the smoking ban? There's no going back here or in the rest of the world."