Smoking ban was not designed to persecute those engaged in a perfectly legal activity
We were told the object of the smoking ban was to protect workers from the so-called environmental tobacco smoke. It was not designed to persecute smokers for engaging in a perfectly legal activity. If smoking rates are rising, it is because people are choosing to smoke.
The real cost of a pack of 20 cigarettes - including growing and harvesting the tobacco, manufacturing and packing the product and distribution through the various outlets - is about 30 cent.
Yet smokers are charged over €6 - a figure more than 20 times the cost. Perhaps the Government should look at a significant price cut to bring cigarettes into line with other consumer products.
Both the Office for Tobacco Control and ASH claim that the less-well-off tend to smoke most.
Are you suggesting the less-well-off should be penalised for making a free choice? Is it not ironic that since we introduced a drastic ban, smoking numbers have risen. Neither has your leader writer factored in the millions of smuggled cigarettes or the hundreds of thousands of legally imported cigarettes each month, all of which are being purchased because of the high prices here.
Smoking rates were falling before the ‘health scare’ lobby set out to take away people’s freedom to choose. Your leader writer claims that “young people are buying cigarettes at some of the lowest prices anywhere in Europe” and “thanks in some measure to Government hypocrisy, cancer claims even more lives.” In fact, our prices are high by comparison with the rest of Europe.
And cancer is a multi-factoral disease, the cause of which remains unknown. From 1990-2000, while smoking rates were falling, cancers were on the increase.
Perhaps your leader writer might explain that puzzle.
John Mallon
5 Shamrock Grove
Mayfield
Cork
