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| Health Authorities Urge Governments To Tell The Truth About The Tobacco Industry |
CAMPAIGN FOR
TOBACCO INDUSTRY
DENORMALIZATION720 Spadina Avenue, Suite
221,
Toronto, Ontario M5S 2T9
FOR RELEASE - MONDAY, NOVEMBER
1, 2004
HEALTH AUTHORITIES
URGE GOVERNMENTS TO TELL CANADIANS THE TRUTH ABOUT THE TOBACCO
INDUSTRY
_______________________________________________
TORONTO
– Some of Canada’s largest health agencies joined with medical officers
of health and influential health experts to urge the federal government
to recognize that the tobacco industry operates outside the boundaries
of normal, ethical business.
Prominent Canadians,
including
Dr. Fraser Mustard, founder of the Canadian Institute for Advanced
Research, Professor Robert G. Evans, University of British Columbia
health economist, Dr. Pierre Durand, Laval University Dean of Medicine,
and Dr. Michael Rachlis, author and consultant, and more than 50
others, wrote to health minister Ujjal Dosanjh today calling for
stronger tobacco control measures. They want the government
to
implement an aggressive health strategy to expose the tobacco
industry’s destructive role in the development of the tobacco epidemic
and the 47,000 deaths annually that the industry’s products
cause.
“The
Campaign for Tobacco Industry Denormalization was formed to persuade
governments that they must transfer responsibility for the tobacco
epidemic away from individual behaviour and teen misjudgement and onto
the predatory corporate misbehaviour of the tobacco industry,” said
Garfield Mahood, executive director of the Non-Smokers’ Rights
Association (NSRA). “Governments must move away from their
‘blame-the-victim’ approach to tobacco control. Tobacco Industry
Denormalization is a ‘best practice’ health strategy designed to
achieve this goal.”
"This is a policy shift that
needs to
happen across the federal government," said Professor Evans. "A
government that is serious about the tobacco epidemic should not be
letting public pension funds invest in tobacco companies. Nor should
industry representatives be invited to join government officials in the
promotion of tobacco sales on foreign trade missions. And it is
extraordinary that Canadian tax law still allows tobacco companies to
count marketing and promotional spending as legitimate business
expenses and deduct them from their taxable
income."
“Neglecting
to discuss the industry’s role as the disease vector in the tobacco
epidemic,” said Dr. Rob Cushman, Ottawa medical officer of health, “is
like failing to discuss the behaviour of mosquitoes in a malaria
epidemic or the role of rats in an outbreak of bubonic plague. From a
public health perspective, it makes as much
sense.”
“For
decades, the tobacco industry has blocked or slowed the significant
reforms needed to address the tobacco epidemic by claiming that it is a
normal, legal industry selling a normal, legal product,” said Dr. Mary
Jane Ashley, chair of the expert panel on the renewal of the Ontario
Tobacco Strategy and professor emeritus of public health at the
University of Toronto.
“Tragically, the marketing
that
developed this perception was constructed on a failure to warn, and
on lies about addiction and the targeting of youth. If a perception of
industry normalcy for Big Tobacco helps to block major tobacco control
reforms, then tobacco industry denormalization is the public health
strategy needed to reverse this process.”
“The
tobacco industry
is a rogue industry that operates outside the norms of legitimate,
ethical business,” said François Damphousse, head of the Quebec office
of the Non-Smokers’ Rights Association. “The failure to view this
industry differently has led to blocks on plain packaging, to
opposition to bans on power-wall displays of tobacco and the
acceptance of tobacco industry funding by universities, hospitals and
political parties. The responsibility of public health must be to throw
a spotlight on this industry’s behaviour and reframe the
debate.”
“Another
area where tobacco industry denormalization must be implemented is in
mass media tobacco control campaigns,” said Ken Kyle, director of
public issues, Canadian Cancer Society, “Even though award-winning
American government media campaigns have made tobacco industry
denormalization a core component of their messages, our federal
government has been extremely reluctant to implement this ‘best
practice’ in its messaging. Our job is to persuade the government to
tell Canadians the truth about tobacco industry behaviour.
This,
perhaps more than anything else, will tell our youth that adults are
serious about the risks of using tobacco.”
Based on
corporate
annual reports and public statements, cigarette manufacturers hate
tobacco industry denormalization. After all, the health strategy
threatens everything the manufacturers have tried to achieve through
advertising, sponsorship and donations to hospitals and
universities.
“The
industry’s reaction tells us that we are on the right track,” said Dr.
Ashley. “The enthusiastic endorsement of this health strategy by former
health ministers and by people of the stature of Dr. Fraser Mustard and
Michael Pertschuk should help persuade governments of the value of this
approach” (Michael Pertschuk is a former chairman of the United States
Federal Trade Commission who was in charge of the regulation of the
U.S. tobacco industry for years.).
The Canadian
Cancer Society,
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canadian Nurses Association and
The Lung Association are among the many organizations urging the
government to get tough with Big Tobacco.
-30-
Contact:
Garfield
Mahood (416) 928-2900, (res) (416) 964-6279, (cell) (416)
451-4285
François Damphousse (514) 843-3250, (cell) (514) 237-7626
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According to the latest results from the Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey (CTUMS), for data collected between February and December 2005, slightly fewer than 5 million people, representing 19% of the population aged 15 years and older, were current smokers, of which 15% reported smoking daily. Approximately 22% of men were current smokers, higher than the proportion of women (16%). |
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