Tobacco companies are courting 50 Irish children a day according to a world expert on the tobacco industry.
On the eve of a ban on the sale of 10-packs of cigarettes aimed in particular at stopping teenagers from starting to smoke, Professor Ken Warner said the tobacco industry loses over 8,000 customers a year because of quitting and a further 5,700 who die from smoking-related illness.
Prof Warner, Dean of Public Health at the University of Michigan
"Therefore, for the industry to simply maintain the size of its customer base in Ireland, over 50 Irish kids have to start smoking every day of the year," said Prof Warner, who is Dean of Public Health, at the University of Michigan, and an expert on the tobacco industry.
He will give the keynote address at the Office of Tobacco Control's conference, in Dublin tomorrow.
He said the tobacco industry was using methods including point-of-sale display in shops and product placement in Hollywood films and television shows to recruit the next generation of smokers.
Research in the US had shown young people are particularly susceptible to such marketing practices.
One study demonstrated that 31 per cent of teens who saw more than 150 occurrences of smoking in in cinemas, on video or on television, had tried smoking compared to only 4 per cent among teens who had seen less than 50 occurrences.
Tomorrow's conference would be shown a letter from Sylvester Stallone agreeing to smoke a certain brand of cigarettes in no fewer than five films for a fee of €500,000, he said.
Norma Cronin of the Irish Cancer Society said young people were price sensitive so the ban on the sale of 10-packs from tomorrow would go some way to turning them off smoking but it needed to be coupled with education, control on point-of-sale advertising and further price controls.
Legislation has been passed in Ireland to ban point-of-sale advertising but the law has yet to be implemented.
The Health Service Executive has said there will be a period of grace for shops to get rid of stocks of 10-packs.
A person guilty of selling 10 packs or confectionery that resembles tobacco will be liable to a fine of between €3,000 and €125,000 or imprisonment for a term of up to two years, or both. The legislation is to be enforced by the HSE.
Prof Warner said point-of-sale advertising in shops was one of the industry's key methods for recruiting.
While praising Ireland's workplace smoking ban, he warned Ireland's smoking problem was not solved.