We have to stop the terrible toll taken by smoking
IF a prodduct was invented today which was fiercely addictive, got most customers hooked as children and killed two out of three lifelong users, there would rightly be outrage. The chances of making it onto the market would be miniscule.
And yet this is tobacco. The publication of Javed Khan’s independent review, Making Smoking Obsolete, has set bold ambitions to rid our society of the death, disease, addiction, invalidity, poverty and misery caused by smoking.
We accept too easily the scale of harm from smoking. We’ve lost our capacity to be shocked because we’re not right next to the person gasping their last breaths in a hospital bed.
We didn’t know until recently that smoking has killed 8m people in the UK since the early 1970s. In the North East, 113,000 people have been killed by tobacco since the year 2000.
So, the report is and needed to be bold and ambitious, with one policy catching the eye more than others – raising the age of sale for tobacco like the US and potentially New Zealand.
Let’s be clear – this is not about preventing adult smokers from buying cigarettes. It would ensure that children aged 15, 14 or 13 today are protected from the biggest, single threat to their health and wealth in their lives in getting hooked on smoking.
We hear far too many stories from good people in our region. I lost my own father aged 61 to smoking. He never got the chance to meet my son or daughter. Sue Mountain is another proud mum and grandma who lost her health, her job and her livelihood
to smoking, starting at the age of 11 and going on to suffer cancer three times. In Sue’s words, as a child or a teenager you never think you are going to end up addicted … or get cancer.
We will see raising the age of sale continue to be debated, and the best ways to deliver this. The main thing though is saying enough is enough and the harm has to stop here. It’s not good enough to let our young people become the lung cancer and COPD patients of the future, just so cigarette companies can make billions.
You sometimes hear smokers say they should just ban cigarettes, and this is not on the horizon. But delaying the age which people can buy them? Absolutely. It’s time to stop our people being exploited.
Raising the age of sale caught the headlines but there are some other vital recommendations too. Supporting smokers to quit needs proper funding – it is time that “Big Tobacco” pays a polluter pays fund and spares the smoker or the taxpayer.
We need more campaigns to educate young people and give smokers regular reminders and motivation to quit. We need to embrace vaping as effective and less harmful quitting aids. We need the NHS fully involved in prevention in our hospitals and GP surgeries to help smokers quit
It’s not good enough to let our young people become the lung cancer and COPD patients of the future, just so cigarette companies can make billions
before they end up seriously ill on our wards.
We also need to look seriously at a licence for shops to sell tobacco. Retailers need an alcohol licence – why not one too for an addictive product which kills two out of three customers? This would help local trading standards teams to tackle illegal tobacco and underage sales in local communities.
We will now hear loud shouts of outrage from the tobacco industry and front groups pretending to represent smokers. But the truth is that efforts to reduce smoking are hugely popular. Only 6% of people think the Government is doing too much on smoking.
The 15-year anniversary of smokefree law this month is a good reminder of how popular action to tackle smoking was then and still is. We talked to dozens of people – non-smokers, ex-smokers and current smokers and it was striking just how society is moving on from our tobacco addiction.
Whoever you vote for, whether you smoke or not, we all have a family story about losing someone to smoking and none of us want our own children to start. We urge the Government now to do the right thing and take action to protect more lives.
■ Ailsa Rutter is director of Fresh and Balance