Letter

Put that in your pipe and smoke it

Dear healthmatters — David Seedhouse makes some interesting points about Labour’s plan to ban tobacco advertising (Is this a bad advert for new Labour?, issue 29).

He argues that if it is tobacco we object to, rather than advertising, we should ban the former but not the latter. Fair enough.

But meanwhile, back in the real world, people are still developing chronic disabling conditions as a direct result of their tobacco use, children are being recruited to a lifetime’s addiction to nicotine, and the health service (i.e. you and me) is expending large sums on dealing with the consequences of this expression of ‘freedom of choice’.

And most smokers say they would quit if they could. Where’s the freedom in that?

It’s not good enough to say that we wouldn’t ban salt adverts so we won’t ban tobacco. Salt isn’t being sold to us by powerful commercial interests intent on turning us into addicts.

The scale of the tobacco epidemic — not just in Britain, but now in the Third World — means that we must vigorously oppose the global commercial interests of the tobacco industry, who spread illness and disability wherever they go. And if that means banning advertising — and it works — then I say ban it.

Sure, some individual freedom may be lost, but the freedom from so much chronic disease and disability we gain as a result will have been worth it. The ‘freedom of the individual’ is illusory when all the power lies with big business.