I~UZSTIOMS & ANMIMRS
TS 930
Smoking kills you, doesn't it? One million people
will die
prematurely
before ----e end of the cent-.=y from smoking. The
tobacco companies are
selling A-eath. Ard Ate
A. I know t~-e only certain figure is that by the
end of the century twelve
Million people will have died in the United
Y.Lngdom. All of them illj b441
b'VA li;7ea reasonably well, and most of them will
have enjoyed their lives.
But most of th~will have eaten too much and drunk
too much and been
A.~~ badgered at work or at home too much, and
hal.1 of them will have smoked.
But none of them will die by doing any one thing.
I a: thJ_m;-. v u are cver-
emphasis:Lng one thing, and forgetting the whole
area of pleasure.
I ! / !;"an -,-! "t +,36M.~ '" - ~- - flwwt<
2. Q. Smoking, according to the Royal College of
Physicians, is the s:-ngle =csz
preventazle cause of death.
A. That's fax too much over-simplified.
(Incide-ntally, it's not t--ae that
all Physicians think the same way.) But I'll tell
you wfiat I mean by
over-sim=lified. There is no ill person who has
been affected by one
thing oniv. We live in a world of gas and petrol
fumes and all- kin ss of
-- -
;F-
air pollution. We over-eat and we over-d-rink and
overdo all sort of thi-igs.
~t~
'A I don't see how people can be isolated from all
brat one influence, as
1, you're s-aggesting. I&V~~ lh~-' 1-tr "--2" AAA
hLW
3. The R.C.P. has shown t1hat for every cigarette
smoked, you shorten your
S;i
UA
minutes.
life by
WAI AA
Let's take a simple example: a man is U.ShIng to
catc!L B-,:s Bus to work.
He misses it and gets in late. He is shouted at by
his boss. Ee receives r6oj
a call frcm his bank manager about his overdraft.
He gets back late from 0411
lunch and is shouted at again by his boss. Be has
terrible tXouble gettingi
home to be met by screaming children and a wife
who says he doesn't love
her any more. He sits doum, pours himself a
Scotch, lights a cigarette
and scmec-e shouts, "Don't do that - it's killing
you". It Is nonsense.
All I kncw is that right now the=e are hundreds of
thousands of people
alive and well who have smoked for fifty or sixty
years. And there are
thousands who are dying young who have never
smoked a cigatette in their
lives. t P I- I.&- Pk I&J A'~r"
, -.0444
Pregnant -w-cmen shculd be advised not to smoke -
it has been shcwn that the
babies of smcking mothers have a lower
bi--thweight.
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4. Q.
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A. When a wc--an becomes pregnant, she changes
many aspects of her life-style.
She often gives up smoking and drinking and
certain types of food because
10 ao her tastes have chanaed. There are many
factors which affect the birth-
;eight of a baby of which environmental and
dietary factors are the most
important. I really don't feel it is prudent for
me to give advice on
pre-,.ancy. C-4- S
- jep6c ae dl) I "
5. 9. If everyone gave up smoking tomorrow, the
N.H.S. would save over E100
m-Ulicn t)er annum. .A.W) ~, C,~-t Aa tcoil xlxj~
A. That is a misleading and meaningless figure.
The same sort of' thin could
. 9
be said about people who won't weat seat-belts, ea
ch, drink too
s
s'
~h a ut p opl o wo 't w t eat-
e e wh n ~a s bel . e~a uc
much, go mountain climbing~, hang- 1. play
dangerous sports, ride
.u limb h 1 ay
ang ro~'~
go - ta' c * ' g' _g
dl p~ld e s s:.
aid bo t Sur'..
motor cycles the list ess- "If only they would
not", people say,
_-z _v. 1-s the list 'If
d
they ml
"there wo,"11 a vast saving on Casualty and
Surgical Departments in
vast v d
there C~wo a a on asu-Ity al Depp
s. u o~, are o' wr -d cot wool
e e n a..L
h _ rals." But people are not wrapped up in cotton
wool or in padded
.1
cells; they choose their own life-styles and scme
of these may lead to
medical costs. Surely you are not suggesting that
people should be
refused medical treatment if, for any reason at
all, one doctor believes
that the cause of their *illness is
self-inflicted. By the way, like a lot
ol people, you're forgetting that duty from
smokers amounts to over E3,500
_LU-.10million every year to the Government - and
a lot of that goes straight
9,, ~n
V to the N.E.S. In fact, smokezs contribute over
half the cost of all
ser7ices offered throughout the country by the
N.H.S. every year. The
recent, much vaunted, saving announced by Patrick
ZTe.,Ukin of E30 million
a year is equivalent to three day's revenue from
tobacco taxation.
6. Cigarette advertising is immoral because even
if it doesn't emcourage
young people to take up smoking or existing
smokers to smoke more, it
does create a climate of social acceptability for
smoking.
A. There is a great deal of misconception about
the role of advertising and
~u
people in general:are vt - icious about all
advertising. They feel
that scmeone g to manimualte them. rTh. fact is
that people are
.g . man
far too clever to be manipulated by advertising
and much of it is either
ignored or rejected. r-f advertising were as
powerful as people th-ink it
is, I would have been a millionaire because I
would have guaranteed
sales success. iut, of course, I am notD_ I think
the argument is really
about open ccm~petition carried out in an open way
o~r the creation of a
climate of mystery. Children and yo -peopl-e see
smoking cigarettes
~5 ~
,,in their daily lives but if it-were seen to be
even mcre of a crohibited
'adult' activity,_they"are much more likely to do
it on the sly. SweepLng
somethin,: der the carpet a!-.a-.?s encourages
people to see it as a
prohibited pleasure.
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But advertising must be there to persuade people
to smoke, Otherwise why
do you spend so many millions of pounds on
advertising?
A. There is ample evidence == show that Peo-ple
will buy products whether
there is advertising or nct. In the case of
cigarettes, there is a
or-lk- -lex voluntary agree=enz with the
govern:--ent and part of at agre ent
comn th em
6"W1.1 641 is that advertising shou2d not be used
to persuade people tc smoke. In
this country, it -,s exclusively a matter of brand
com-petition, trying to
I JUA04~v4 persuade an existing smoker to switch
fror- a rival brana to one manufactured
by your own company. In c=ntries where there has
been an advertising
ban for many years, sales of cigarettes continue
steadily- indeed perhaps
the best example are thcse countries behind the
Iron L'urtain where
advertising of both alcc.---! and tobacco have
been banned for very many
Ill ;wr%L years and where consumuticr.. still
remains very high. Ecualiv, 'those more
develooed countries whic'-- have int--ciduced
restrictions on ad7ert_4 sing
have not seen any signif-fizant change in sales
patterns; in Noruay, which
is often quoted by the smoking campaigners as a
prime exam~p
1 e, sales
are higher now than they were before the
advertising ban was introduced
in 1975, and are contimui~= to rise.
ou will be aware that it is the customer who
chooses whether he buys
r not; the manufacturer has little, if any,
control.
S.. ~Should smoking be made sccially unacceptable?
Should we not be trying to
ensure that non-smoking is the norm?
hx.-A 1,4
/.A,&*-K -,& -c k-k-r-
A. Evexy other person - one cut of two adult
peoplia - smokes. 'What you're
VL suggesting is that one of the two should be
able to force his opinion on
the othex. The non-smoker is trying to make the
smoker a second-class
;.,6, cit'izen and that is not richt and proper".
I'm for smokers' Lib - S=ke--s' Liberation. in the
old days, women were
F *second-class citizens altzough they actually
outnumber men. Well, t!mtls
all changing now. One ha:_r of the adult
population has no right to push
the other half around.
WlCrC RAZ (r rjyt~
9. If the Tobacco Companies d=n't believe
cigarettes are danger::us, why are
they spending so many millions a year on research
into new proclucts?
y
A. Y_X industry that doesn't ;ut a lot of money
into Research & Develcpment
is going to drop out of t:--e market. It's as
simple as that. (L
But there's anot-her th-Lig. The tobacco industry
is a very responsible one CD
(& --cd " -
and when we were asked by the government to do
research, we did' it; and
we kt)e-nt our money doing rot t-he taxpayer's.
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BATCo document for Province of British Columbia 5
November 1999


10. Q.
A.
L161 , (>-p~Cp,
LX;f~
Other people's smoke is damaging to me, so why
should I have to
put Up with it? V__1 kpac -
No one, not even the most ardent anti-smoking
researchers, have
use disease.
eve suggested that other people's smoke is going
to ca
Yes, it is irritating for some but that is a
question of
considerat-lon and courtesy on the part of the
smoker. There ought,
in any case to be proper ventilation.
(Supplement)
10. Q. I have hea-rd that smoke can damage your
lungs even if it does not
cause disease.
A. Only one piece of research has ever suggested
this and that was
conducted by someone in California who is trying
to organize a ban
on smoking. There is a lot of doubt about the way
he chose the
people he tested and a lot more work will have to
be done be-fore
his interpretation can be accepted.
k'A
11. Q. Do you t1iJnJk people should be free to
smoke pot'> k' 04*
A. It i; not -n t,, me, it is a question for
goverr-ent(But if people
are determined to do something they will do it
anyway, and ProhibitL=
is an obvious example. r,4..L 4L.-4 -%&,L. '.
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12. Q. Smoking is anti-social and dirty.
4 106,~ -
A. It need not be. Certainly, some people behave
in an anti-social
way and scme of these are smokers. Social
behaviour of any sort
is s.ubject to Codes of Conduct and some people
break the rules.
It can be Irritating to a minority of non-smokers
but then all
sorts of things are.
13. Q. Why don't you smoke?
A. That's because it is my choice. If I wanted to
smoke I would
expect to be able to do so and, equally, if I
don't want to
smoke I expect to be able to make that decision
fer myself.
14. Q. Do you believe that smoking is bad for you?
jr6LC/~,h&ij4Zoy
A. Nobody buys cigarettes to improve their health
- they buy them
for pleasure. There are many things that peqDle
buy every day
U4
for their pleasure which are said to be bad for
them:-
doughnuts, choco*late, spirits, cakes, butter,
etc., etc. and they
get a great deal of satis24ction from doing so,
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BATCo document for Province of BritiSh Columbia 5
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15. Q. But other pleasure produc=s can be picked
up and put dow-n without
becomi.-ic addictive, as c4ca-rettes do.
A. We are all denendent, to a greater or lesser
degree, on vazious forms
of physical and psychological comfort during the
day. Cf course, ideal!Y,
we would all love to be very strong-willed and
don't w4sh to think that
we need these things in a:--,- wav. In fact, even
if we do not need them,
pleasure they provide is probably worth it aid
certainly many people
have taken a decision that in the end the balance
of what they are told is
weakness over what they calculate as pleasure
co=es dow.- on the side of
Dleasure.
6.
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BATCo document for Province of British Columbia 5
November 1999