Last night the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy O'Shea, announced that the existing controls on smoking in certain places would be strengthened and extended. The new controls will apply from 1 January next year and the restrictions on smoking in restaurants will be extended further from 1 May of that year. He said there was now an unanswerable case to extend the ban on smoking in pubs. Under the new regulations, from 1 May next year all restaurants which meet ventilation standards must designate 25 per cent of their seating for non-smokers while all other restaurants will have to set aside 50 per cent of the seating for them. At present restaurants are obliged to have a non-smoking area but the number of seats has been left to the discretion of proprietors. Many owners of restaurants and pubs have carried out alterations to their premises in an effort to accommodate their customers and deal with the anti-smoking feeling which is now prevalent. These new proposals will create many problems for the owners of restaurants.
The Minister's proposals are a continuation of a process which began in 1988 when he introduced the Tobacco (Health Promotion and Protection) Act which prohibited the consumption of tobacco products in certain areas. These proposals will be well received by the medical profession but if the Minister is really serious about protecting the health of the public he should impose a ban on tobacco advertising. The public has become very health conscious in recent years and smoking is no longer allowed in many homes. The case against using tobacco is easy to make and while the relevant facts in Ireland are not fully known the British ones make startling reading. According to the British Government, every year 111,000 people die from smoking, 26,000 of these die from lung cancer while the remainder die from other diseases caused by tobacco. For every 1,000 smokers in Britain, one will be murdered, six will die in road accidents and 250 will die prematurely. The loss of 111,000 customers each year is a problem for the tobacco industry which seeks to replace them by advertising. Almost all adults who smoke began smoking before the age of 20. For that reason tobacco advertising is directed at teenagers and children, the only age groups in which the number of smokers is not falling.
The cost of smoking to the country is enormous. While this has never been properly quantified, all one has to do is visit a hospital to see the number of patients being treated for tobacco related illnesses. The cost to industry is also enormous. The Government has used price regulations, health warnings, a prohibition on smoking in certain areas and restrictions in other areas to deal with the problem. While these measures are generally welcomed by the public they do not achieve the necessary results. This has given rise to a game where, on the one side, the Government introduces anti-smoking measures while, on the other, the powerful and wealthy tobacco industry engages in sexy advertising campaigns. Advertising is big business for the tobacco industry. Last year the industry in Britain spent more than £100 million in advertising. It claimed that it was simply promoting brand switching but, as we know, people cannot be persuaded to change brands if they have not already been persuaded to start smoking.
A ban on tobacco advertising is not a new concept; it has already been implemented in a number of countries where the results speak for themselves. For example in New Zealand it resulted in a 7.5 per cent reduction in tobacco consumption, a reduction of 6 per cent in Canada, a reduction of 7 per cent in Finland and a reduction of 8 per cent in Norway. I do not want to ban smoking as I know some people love to smoke, they live for it.
