Letter

Fagged out

Dear healthmatters—I should like to endorse Cecilia Farren’s comments in your Spring 1991 issue. Our ultimate aim must be a comprehensive ban on all tobacco promotionm worded to prevent tobacco industry circumvention and subterfuge. However, the government have refused to countenance legislation even to limit tobacco promotion, its position being that the UK has a voluntary agreement on tobacco advertising (VATA) which is both adequate and adhered to.

As the person responsible for reporting 65% of the breaches acknowledged in the 1990 annual report of the monitoring committee (COMATAS) I feel I can call myself an expert on the workings of the VATA. I have, until recently, been assiduous in hunting down such breaches, in order to discredit it in the government’s eyes.

However, I have recently been persuaded by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) that by complaining to COMATAS, we are legitimising both them and VATA. COMATAS (half of whose members are from the tobacco industry) are hardly likely to give a common sense decision on the breaches. If the 70,000 breaches which Oxfrodshire ASH estimate occurred in the UK last year were acknowledged by COMATAS, then perhaps the government would more readily consider legislation.

If the tobacco industry responded by promising to be good, and there were no breaches of VATA, would we be satisfied? Of course not. Apart from those many tobacco promotions which are not covered by any agreement, even those advertisements which do comply in every way with all the agreements are totally unacceptable to those of us who agree with the World Health Organisation, the Royal College of Physicians, ASH, the British Medical Association and others tha all promotion of this addictive and lethal drug should be halted. I urge all your readers not only to write to the MPs and MEPs persuading them of the need for a ban on advertising, but also to recruit their colleagues. They could point out that in the five minutes they have taken to read this, tobacco has killed another victim.