Letter

Fagged out

Dear healthmatters—Cecelia Farren’s story on tobacco advertising (healthmatters issue 6) contains several misconceptions which cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.

Her assetion that tobacco advertising bans in Portugal and Finland have coincided with a drop in consumption is not borne out by the figures. Since 1978 — when tobacco advertising was banned in Finland — consumption has risen from 6.6bn cigarettes to 7.7bn in 1989.

Portugal has experienced an increase in consumption from 12bn cigarettes per year in 1979 to 14.2bn in 1989, exactly the reverse of the results of the 33 country ‘survey’ quoted by Ms Farren.

In the UK, where tobacco advertising is allowed under the terms of a Voluntary Agreement between government and industry, there has been a decline in consumption from a peak of 132bn in 1975, to about 98bn today.

I would suggest to Ms Farren, like so many of her allies in anti-smoking organisations, has fallen victim to the ‘ban it because it is there’ syndrome, where tobacco advertising is concerned.

Individuals are quite capable of making up their own minds on lifestyle choices, whether it be smoking, driving a car or eating certain foods, on the basis of the information available to them.

The last thing they want is Ms Farren and others telling them what they should do, particularly when — in Ms Farren’s article — the evidence on smoking consumption used to justify a ban is fundamentally flawed.