If there were any toxic substance other than tobacco causing upwards of half-a-million deaths a year, it is inconceivable that successive European Union ministers for health would have hesitated in banning its sale, never mind just its promotion. Yet the haggling over attempts to curtail tobacco advertising had gone on for almost a decade without success before a compromise agreement was cobbled together after a fraught 12-hour meeting last Friday. And by the time that this agreement results in the elimination of advertising and sponsorship by tobacco companies, a further five million Europeans will be dead from the effects of smoking tobacco, while millions more will be trapped by a lethal addiction.
The contrast between the Council of Ministers' vacillation on the issue of tobacco promotion and the EU's hysteria-driven decisiveness on the question of beef that might transmit from cattle with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy a disease which has killed only a small number of humans is stark indeed. It is almost certain that fewer than 100 people have died from the new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease which can result from eating infected beef products, yet beef products have been banned from sale on a widespread basis. Millions of European deaths from smoking have not, so far, resulted in a ban on the promotion of tobacco products, never mind their widely lethal sale.
This is not to say that the public health should not be protected against the potentially fatal effects of contaminated foodstuffs. Indeed it should, although preferably on the basis of sound scientific evidence rather than on the ground of hysterical public perceptions with little basis in fact. But if people deserve protection from relatively rare beef-borne diseases, they deserve much greater protection from the advertising wiles of an industry bent on hooking them into an addiction which is likely to cause cancers of various kinds, heart and lung diseases and more ailments on a very widespread basis.
Yet it will be October 2006 before the provisions agreed by the Council of Ministers last week come fully into effect. From the time that directives and legislation are in place to give effect to the Council's tardy and compromised proposals, newspapers will enjoy a four-year derogation from the regulations. This newspaper has carried no tobacco advertising since 1993 as a matter of policy and its advertising revenue does not appear to have suffered unduly, while its circulation has increased steadily. A derogation of eight years has been granted to Formula One motor racing so that it may continue to emblazon its cars with the insignia of tobacco company sponsors, yet there is some evidence to suggest that young people who watch the sport are more likely than others to take up smoking.
It is understandable that the EU Commissioner for Social Affairs has said that he is delighted with the outcome of last Friday's meeting of the Council of Ministers. He has, at least, managed to achieve something that had proved unachievable in 10 previous meetings of the Council over a nine-year period. But the assessment of the Irish Minister for Health, Mr Cowen, is more realistic: it is better to have the new directive than to have none. It is still not good enough in terms of the protection of the health of Europeans, especially young Europeans.