Religious campaign criticised for attitude to smoking

A religious campaign in Australia has been criticised for playing down the effects of smoking with billboards outside churches saying: “Smoking won’t kill you in the next life. Sin will.”

“Better to be a smoker that goes to heaven than a person who doesn’t smoke and falls under the judgment of God,” the Reverend Andrew Bruce said in Sydney.

But Anne Jones, chief executive of the Action on Smoking and Health, said it spread the wrong message.

“I think it’s better to be alive and deal with the religious issues rather than be dead and not be able to deal with anything,” she said.