Tobacco document - Stamp out habit once and for all

The killing of almost 3,000 people in the attacks of Sept 11, 2001, in the US has had the most profound reverberations around the world ever since. Far more, indeed, than the 5,200 people dying in this country of diseases caused by smoking tobacco.

Most people were probably lured into smoking by irresponsible advertising that glamorised the habit without regard to the detrimental impact on people’s health. The last policy document on tobacco control was published in 2000.

Health Minister James Reilly yesterday published a document outlining 60 recommendations designed to ensure Ireland is “tobacco-free” by 2025. The proposals are realistic enough to try to cut the rate of smoking to less than 5%, rather than aim at its total elimination.

The plan is designed to encourage further measures to protect children from the harms of tobacco, to help smokers to quit, and to promote a healthy attitude towards tobacco through education. Senator John Crown, a professor of oncology, has already introduced legislation to ban smoking in cars carrying children.

This country actually played a leading role in trying to tackle the overall problem, not only with the ban on smoking in the workplace, introduced in 2004, but even earlier with restrictions on advertising introduced in 1978. Since then, cigarette companies have had to carry a government health warning on all packages.

Despite these initiatives, however, tobacco companies have intensified their advertising by different means. Although it took 30 years before a full ban on the advertising of tobacco was introduced here in July of 2009, Ireland was actually the first country in the EU to implement a complete advertising ban.

With each development, however, Mr Reilly warns that the tobacco companies “will continue to develop new methodologies of trying to make their product attractive to children and we will continue to bring in new laws to cut them off each time”. This has become a deadly game.

Mr Reilly wishes to persuade people to quit smoking by making tobacco almost prohibitively expensive. He has advocated that the price of cigarettes should be raised in the next budget and in every other budget for the remainder of the life of the current Government. He also suggests that all tobacco products should be sold in plain packaging.

Boys tend to be more interested in sports and smoking conflicts with the image of being fit. But since the 1990s more young women have been taking up smoking because they are being exposed to pernicious marketing techniques. Tobacco companies have flooded the internet with videos of sexy teenagers smoking.

They have exploited the fears of young women by subliminal suggestions that smoking is a means of keeping their weight down. Many young women have been led to believe that smoking curbs their appetite. Tobacco companies play on this by branding particular cigarettes as “slim”, thereby encouraging women to smoke a cigarette, rather than eat a snack.

Society should ensure that smoking is never again depicted as “cool”. Everybody should realise that it is harmful, expensive, and stupid.