Given the fact that the lethal effects of tobacco smoking have been known for decades, it is almost beyond belief that it has taken, and is still taking, even more decades for governments world-wide to put any kind of effective measures in place to prevent people taking up the addictive habit. Attempts to wean the addicted smoker off tobacco have had limited success in some countries but have generally been disappointing compared to the continuing high death toll from tobacco-related illnesses. It has been clear for a very long time that the most logical point at which to intervene is some time before the individual thinks of starting to smoke, yet efforts to provide such intervention have been half-hearted and inconsistent and lacking in effective follow-up provisions.
With the death toll from smoking-related illnesses in this small State rising inexorably towards 10,000 a year and an increase in smoking evident in recent years, particularly among young women, the decision by the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, to introduce more stringent legislation to control the advertising and distribution of tobacco products must be welcomed. His hope to reduce the number of smokers from 31 percent to 20 percent of the population over the next 10 years may prove over-optimistic, but the intent is to be commended. The increased controls over advertising and sales which he has proposed are long overdue, but they will need to be supplemented by far more educational programmes on the real risks of smoking.
What the Minister needs most emphatically to ensure as he brings his proposals through the Oireachtas is that adequate mechanisms are in place to enforce his new legislation. On the very day that he announced his proposals to register all shops which sell tobacco, there was a report from the Western Health Board that 98 percent of tobacconists surveyed in Co Roscommon and 61 percent of those in Mayo and one third of those in Galway were selling tobacco to children under 14 years of age. This lawlessness was not being combated by many prosecutions, and there is no reason to believe that the situation is any better in other regions of the State. But the main thrust of the Minister's proposals - to make cigarettes invisible and unavailable to young people - remains sound. Cigarettes are definitely not for children, as those children would agree when they reach middle age irretrievably addicted to tobacco.