Smoking industry eyes the young, conference hears

ALL profits from tobacco sales to children should be handed back to anti-smoking pressure groups, a major international conference heard yesterday.

And health experts called on the global tobacco industry to back up claims that children should not smoke by putting money into saving lives.

Professor Simon Chapman from the University of Sydney in Australia told the World Conference for Cancer Organisations (WCCO) in Dublin that the tobacco industry now believed it should be re-admitted to civil society because it had admitted its products kill.

Such efforts at normalisation should be resisted, the professor of public health urged.

Prof Chapman said the tobacco industry continued to tell consumers only as much as they wanted. It claimed its marketing and advertising was designed not to appeal to children and that it would work with retailers and others to reduce access to its products by children.

“The paradox, however, that is at the heart of the tobacco trade is that tobacco companies cannot encourage children to smoke, even in the knowledge that their very survival depends on recruiting new young smokers,” he said.

“What we know in recent years, thanks to 40 million pages of internal tobacco industry documents, which have been available following legal action in the US, is the industry has its eyes on young people,” he said.

“It salivates over the prospect of getting young people interested in smoking,” he said. From 1965- 2003 in Australia the tobacco industry recruited 1.9 million young smokers who smoked an estimated 263 packs per year - 9.7 billion packs across the 38 years.

Dr Yussaf Saloojee, strategic director of tobacco control with the International Union Against Cancer, said tobacco had created a global health emergency.

“It is the single largest known cause of cancer death. One person dies every 30 seconds due to cancer caused by smoking, yet more people are smoking than at any other time in human history,” he said.

Delegates also heard about the success of Ireland’s smoke free at work legislation, which was implemented earlier this year.

Norma Cronin of the Irish Cancer Society encouraged the audience to take Ireland’s success as an example in their own public health policy measures.