Smokescreen

AS IF the tobacco industry in this country had not enough to answer for, it compounded its offences recently by addressing to the public a misleading message on the hazards of smoking and the need to restrict the promotion of cigarettes. The new deceit was "Let's be sensible about smoking", a full-page advertisement placed in the print me?ia on July 2.8, 1983 by the Tobacco Institute of Austraha Ltd. In Its specious arguments, its blatant untruths and its parading of the pathetically thin "scientific" support for the industry's position, this manifesto was worthy of those borough councillors who tried to stop Dr John Snow from removing the handle of the Broad Street pump. Any doubts concerning the association between cholera and contaminated drinking water have been swept down the drain of history. Doubts about the association between cigarette smoking and a modern plague of ill-health should have followed long ago. It is neither appropriate nor possible to repeat here the mass of epidemiological and biological evidence convicting cigarette smoking as a major cause of cancer of the lung and other organs, coronary artery disease, bronchitis, emphysema and other serious illnesses.We will merely draw attention yet again to the declaration of the World Health Organization that cigarette smoking remains the single most preventable cause of ill-health in the world. Regrettably, many Australians still do not understand that thousands of their fellow countrymen, including relatives and friends, are dying each year from a pursuit the Tobacco Institute presents as a harmless personal pastime. The New South Wales Cancer Council acted quickly to expose the Institute's advertisement as a "smokescreen" in another full page advertisement in The Sydney Morning Herald of August 6, 1983 (slightly amended version opposite). We believe we chose the right word. The protestations of the industry that it is seeking to protect the freedom, both of individuals to engage in an innocent and pleasurable activity and of manufacturers to promote this innocuous habit, are indeed.a smokescreen. In reality, cigarette manufacturers are seeking to protect and promote the sale of a product which, judged by the deaths it causes, is our most dangerous national product. The growing demand by medical ~ies and by many members of the public for a total ban on cigarette promotion and the success of the Quit For Life campaign in New South Wales were obviously the motivating force behind the Institute's advertisement. The Institute, of course, insists that cigarette advertising is not aimed at increasing total sales but merely at persuading smokers to change brands. The'item headlined "In defence of cigarette advertising" claims that advertising does not affect the consumption of cigarettes. In that case, one might ask, why bother? Why doesn't the industry save the $50 million or $60 million it now spends each year on promotion and simply let the product sel~ I.tsel~ In this highly monopolized industry, the real competition IS 245