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Despite a concerted effort to encourage people to stop smoking, the latest figures show there’s only been a six per cent drop in the number of daily smokers in the Island over the past decade.
As a result, the Health department is stepping up its war on smoking and has just released its new five-year Tobacco Strategy 2017-2022 – ‘Creating a generation of non-smokers’.
Its headline initiative is to ban branding on cigarette packs, moving to plain packaging instead, which the report argues will be less attractive to teenagers:
"New smokers are nearly always children or young people. Now that tobacco advertising and sponsorship are prohibited, tobacco packaging has become one of the tobacco industry’s only remaining promotional tools. An independent review (Chantler, 2014) considered evidence from both tobacco control experts and the tobacco industry and concluded that branded packaging plays an important role in encouraging young people to smoke and in consolidating the habit irrespective of the intentions of the industry. Branding drives teen smoking and awareness of packaging and new pack design is a key element on ongoing marketing (Moodie & Hastings, 2010)."
The report also sets out ways of making smoking more expensive, such as agreeing inflation-busting tax increases every year, pushing up the price of rolling tobacco to bring it into line with cigarettes, and looking at reducing duty-free allowances:
"Smokers are no different to other consumers when spending money: price dominates decision-making. Consequently, increasing the price of tobacco through taxation remains the single most effective way of reducing smoking rates (Wilson et al, 2012). Economic models show that a 10% increase in price leads to a 4% drop in smoking prevalence across the population with higher quit rates among lower income smokers and younger smokers (Jha & Chaloupka, 2009).
"The influence of tobacco price on numbers of cigarettes smoked and stopping smoking is also likely to be influenced by the accessibility of duty free tobacco on the Island. This differs from other jurisdictions where counterfeit tobacco can be more cheaply available.
"We intend to take action that strikes a balance between making tobacco products more expensive whilst reducing the availability of duty free tobacco to deter people from starting to smoke, and to encourage adults and children to stop."
Martin Knight, Head of Health Improvement: “If we are to create a smoke free generation, we need to shift social attitudes so that choosing not to smoke becomes the normal thing to do no matter what your social circumstances are. This strategy sets out the direction and evidence based actions that will help us work towards a generation of children and young people who choose not to smoke.
“Some may believe that smoking is a lifestyle choice but our choices, our health and our health behaviour is shaped by the conditions in which we are born, grow, live and work. We want the choice not to smoke to be the normal and easier choice no matter who you are, what you do or where you live.
The Health Minister Andrew Green said: “This strategy has an important focus on children and young people this is because we know nearly all adult smokers start young. I fully support our aspiration to work towards a ‘generation of non-smokers’. This will be key to preventing the harm that tobacco causes in our community into the future.”
Medical Officer of Health Dr Susan Turnbull added: “The breadth of interventions across our revised strategy will promote non smoking as the norm among adults and young people, together with supporting existing smokers to quit. This will have long term health benefits for individuals, the health service and our island community.”
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