FURTHERMORE
Banning cigarette ads won't stop anyone smoking
PETRONELLA WYATT
THE LIBERAL Democrat MP, Mr Simon Hughes, recently sponsored a Private Member's Bill to ban cigarette advertising. The advertising ban has the support of the Cancer Research Campaign and the Royal Society of Medicine.
Mr Hughes and the above organisations make two claims. The first is that advertis- ing in shops, on billboards and in maga- zines 'encourages and sustains adults in the habit' — the habit of smoking, that is. The second is that by withdrawing advertising, tobacco may be 'de-glamorised'.
I will deal first of all with the latter asser- tion. This was an idea cooked up originally by Mrs Virginia Bottomley when she was Health Secretary. It had the strong support of the dour-as-dust Dr Mawhinney, now Tory Party Chairman, who was then at the Health Department.
It hasn't a chance. The anti-tobacco lobby makes the fundamental mistake of assuming that smokers can be made social undesirables, like violent drunks, tramps and the Princess of Wales. In fact, the Opposite is true. If history were divided into two sections, smoking and non-smoking, every person of taste would book a table in smoking. It is there that one would find the allure, wit, daring and intellect — not to mention the sound politics. In non-smok- ing, one would find most of the pusillanimi- tY, dullness and plain nastiness.
Hitler, of course, was a non-smoker. In 1942 he confided to his doctor that 'per- haps the German people owes its salvation to that fact'. He vilified smoking as a 'dis- gusting habit', aside from its dangerous lib- ertarian associations. The German people almost owed its salvation to that fact. Hitler's would-be assassin, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, was a smoker. So, as a matter of fact, were the majority of the anti-Nazis, such as Adam von Trott and Hans Bernard von Haeften.
It is telling how opponents of smoking Often look bad under scrutiny. James I, author in 1604 of the hysterical Coun- terblast against Tobacco as 'loathsome to the eye . . . and dangerous to the lungs', is an example politicians should shun. He argued that pleasures like smoking were the 'first seeds of subversion'; in other Words, of free thinking. Like Hitler, one might say that James I was more 'loath- some to the eye' than tobacco. But look at some of the more appealing leaders of the free world. Churchill was a smoker. So was General (later President) Eisenhower. Lord Cardigan smoked a cigar on horseback throughout the charge of the Light Brigade. It is alleged that it was still alight when he reached the Russian guns.
It has been found that smoking stimu- lates the brain cells. It is better than coffee when things get rough, as Dr Tage Voss pointed out in 1994 in his book Smoking and Common Sense. Where would our most charming authors and their heroes be with- out tobacco for inspiration? (Holmes or Marlowe, for example) Max Beerbohm's seductive portrait of the 1880s literary world in 'Enoch Soames' would be incom- plete without tobacco. Of the domino room in the Café Royal he writes, 'There in that exuberant vista of gilding and crimson vel- vet, with fumes of tobacco ever rising to the pagan and painted ceiling, and with the hum of presumably cynical conversation broken into so sharply now and again by the clatter of dominoes shuffled on marble tables, I drew a deep breath, and "this indeed," I said to myself, "is life." ' It is a sex life, too. According to a recent non-Government survey, smokers are more successful with the opposite sex. This is perhaps why there is now a black market in America in a new kind of erotic video — featuring beautiful young women smoking, fully dressed. A cigarette is an additional means of physical expression, like a hat. For people who strive to be distinct in aspect and in outlook it is a useful accesso- ry: it can hide minor physical defects as well as provide an aura of mystery.
Film stars smoked so often in the golden age of Hollywood that glamour became inextricably intertwined with tobacco. Those enamelled goddesses — Dietrich, Garbo and Turner — would not have been so alluring without smoke wafting graceful- ly about their careful coiffures. Those Dear Lottery winner, lam currently short of a few million pounds.' debonair yet manly idols such as Clark Gable and Cary Grant would have been less enticing without of their Chesterfields or Camels. Hugh Grant does not smoke. This, perhaps, may account for his having to resort to a prostitute on Sunset Strip. At the least, a cigarette would have given him something to do.
It must be suggestive that the last bastion of glamour, the world of the supermodel, is peopled by habitual smokers. The salaries of women such as Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell would indicate that they are on to something.
A cigarette is more than a product; it is, like the Roman Catholic Church, a way of life. As a smoker, I know. This is what peo- ple like Mr Hughes fail to grasp. Cigarettes will not be 'de-glamorised' by a ban on advertising. A recent official survey has found that advertising is not even a factor associated with first-time smoking. Indeed, reports suggest that tobacco intake has risen in countries which have introduced such a law.
The West European nations with the highest numbers of smokers are Italy, Por- tugal and France. All outlawed tobacco advertising in 1987. Since then consump- tion in France has risen by 5.24 per cent, in Portugal by 7.39 per cent and in Italy by 8.05 per cent. Of Norwegian children born since 1975, when a total tobacco ban was imposed, 36 per cent of 15-year-olds were smoking in 1990. In Hong Kong, where advertising is unrestricted, only 11 per cent of the same age group were smokers.
In 1992 the president of the Italian Sen- ate, referring to the tobacco law, comment- ed, 'At least it protects the national tobacco product.' Restrictions are known to have resulted in reduced tax revenues (VAT, income tax, social security contributions) and extra unemployment benefit payments. An independent report on the possible effects of outlawing advertising in Holland concluded that the government would lose 41 million florins in annual revenues.
So much, then, for the Royal Society of Medicine's claim that cigarette advertising encourages economic and social problems, trapping people in a 'cycle of deprivation'. If one is to believe that aforementioned report on tobacco and sex, it is the non- smokers who are indeed deprived. But, as those Government-sponsored helplines don't put it, it is never too late to start. Mr Hughes, you have been warned.
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