Tobacco companies target children

MORE than 50 Irish children need to start smoking every day of the year if the tobacco industry is to maintain the size of its customer base in Ireland, an international expert has warned.

Every year in Ireland the tobacco industry loses more than 8,000 of its customers due to quitting and a further 5,700 due to smoking-produced death. Several thousand smokers also die of other causes.

“For every smoker who dies or quits, the industry needs a ‘replacement smoker’ — a child who will become addicted and replenish the base of long-term smokers,” said Prof Ken Warner.

While the tobacco industry could not be held responsible for all of the young people who started to smoke it did mean that the industry had a huge incentive to see children starting and remaining as smokers, he said.

“And evidence — particularly that discovered as a result of lawsuits in the US — indicates that the industry has long been aware of that, and long tried to create replacement smokers,” he pointed out.

Prof Warner, who is due to address a conference on young people and smoking organised by the Office of Tobacco Control in Dublin today, said teens were being lured to buy tobacco by in-shop advertising, television shows and films.

One study found that almost a third of teens who saw more than 150 scenes of smoking in films in cinemas, on video or on television had tried smoking, compared with 4% who had seen less than 50 scenes.

He also pointed out that between 1988 and 1997, 85% of the top 25 box office Hollywood films dramatised the use of tobacco.

Over the same period, a third of films rated for adolescents and one in five children’s films, rated General (G) or Parental Guidance (PG), showed cigarette brand logos.

From tomorrow packs of 10 cigarettes, a magnet for underage smokers, cannot be sold in shops. The ban is being introduced by the Department of Health in a bid to discourage teens from starting to smoke.

Office of Tobacco Control (OTC) research shows that more than half of smokers started to smoke at or about the age of 15 and about one in four 15-to-18-year-olds are smoking.

Prof Warner said he was disturbed to see lots of young people smoking on a recent visit to Dublin.

“Those I saw smoking even included a few children, who couldn’t have been more than 12 or 13 years old,” he said.

While the smoke-free workplace regulations protected non-smokers, Ireland still had not protected non-smokers entirely, especially children.

“A quarter of Irish adults continue to smoke and the next generation of the Irish — your children — continue to serve as replacement smokers for an industry that knows no shame, but only greed,” he said.

The Irish Cancer Society’s health promotion manager for tobacco control, Norma Cronin, blamed the Government for the rise in smoking in young adults. In the last Budget the price of a packet of 20 cigarettes was increased by just 50 cent — the ICS had called for a €2 increase.