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HEARING THE NEWS report that New York’s Mayor Bloomberg intends raising the legal smoking age from 18 to 21, I couldn’t help noting that he was described as “an anti-smoking crusader”. It’s a suitable moniker. The Mayor’s zeal when it comes to the health of the citizens of New York is unmatched stateside.
And he is getting results. Since Bloomberg was first elected Mayor in 2002, the smoking rate in New York has dropped from 22 per cent to 14 per cent, the biggest decline in the United States and lower than many European states, including our own. That’s impressive. It’s due to a range of initiatives, like mass media campaigns for instance, and health warnings on packs.
In reality what it means is that fewer people are smoking, and fewer young people are starting to smoke. This means fewer deaths from smoking. More people are alive in New York today because of what Mayor Bloomberg is doing. There is less cancer and less heart disease.
Bloomberg believes, as we do, that it is possible to aim for a generation that doesn’t smoke. We share that ambition, as does the Irish Government, which recently published a strategy entitled “Tobacco Free Ireland”. There’s a range of tools that have been proven to work in other countries that have been used to discourage children from smoking – whether it’s by raising the legal smoking age to 21 or by introducing plain packaging which will rob the industry of its most powerful tool – branding.
It’s interesting to notice the pushback against the campaigning zeal of Mayor Bloomberg, that he is “prohibitionist”, recalling an era in the United States when alcohol was prohibited and associating his campaign with state repression and killing off choice. This is the language used by the lobbyists funded by Big Tobacco.
We are beginning to hear the same language used on this side of the Atlantic too, especially from groups like the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think-tank reportedly funded by the tobacco industry which recently held a meeting in Dublin as part of a massively-funded campaign which it is rolling out in an attempt to prevent the Irish Government introducing plain or standardised cigarette packaging.
In no way are the efforts used to reduce the number of people who smoke ‘prohibitionist’. The fact is that these strategies are working. Fewer people in Ireland are smoking than ever before (22 per cent of people smoked in 2012 compared to 27 per cent of people in 2009) and they’re not switching to illegal cigarettes (the Revenue Commissioners reported in its 2012 Annual Report that in just one year, there has been a drop from 15 per cent to 13 per cent in the amount of smuggled tobacco being consumed). But the tobacco industry and its front groups are trying desperately to claim that strategies that are protecting children and young people from the tactics of the tobacco industry are prohibitionist.
What they are actually concerned about is that the smoking rate is falling because people are giving up. There is no evidence to show that people are switching to black market cigarettes, despite the false figures put out by the tobacco industry.
In Ireland, the rate of smoking among children, while dropping, is still high by European standards and 78 per cent of smokers say they started before they are 18. Children need to be protected from the marketing tactics of the tobacco industry and we in the Irish Cancer Society believe that the Government’s plan to remove cigarette branding, colour and logos from packs will rob the industry of a powerful marketing tool and in the process protect children.
If you haven’t already, have a look at this video of children and their reaction to cigarette packaging, both branded and not.
Uploaded by Irish Cancer Society
This is the generation which can be protected from Big Tobacco. This could be the generation free from smoking.
Kathleen O’Meara is Head of Advocacy and Communications at the Irish Cancer Society. More information about cancer and the Irish Cancer Society’s campaigns is available at www.cancer.ie.
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Good to know. Well done humans.
Let’s celebrate with a giant bonfire!
I’ll bring the CFC canisters!
Pfft ‘Ozone Layer’ – its about as real as that global warming nonsense that people were harping on about. In the 80′s the rainforests were the big thing.. now there is no problem.
When I was I school during the 80s and 90s the ozone layer was all they’d bang on about. Must be 20 years since I last heard it mentioned.
Lets burn down the observatory so this never happens again
Thank you again science!
Good to know the earth can repair itself, all we need to do now is stop using fossil fuels, nitrogen & stop poisoning the rivers and by extensions ourselves. There are more important issues than Brexit and the world needs to focus.
Sure it needs to focus , in this case how a bunch of academics managed to convince everyone that humans have control of the planet’s temperature . Maybe they should opt for something more manageable like controlling the jetstream and moving it North of Ireland so we can have a decent summer.
The science is so far over my head I’d need the Hubble telescope to see it, however a recommended read is James Hansens ‘Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity’, also an interesting link which we can identify with when we look upwards http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/artificial-weather-revealed-post-9-11-flight-groundings
I wouldn’t recommend anything other than people make up their own minds and if these type of fear driven agendas make sense. It is a bit like the political mess called ‘brexit’ where huge fears are generated and once people act on those fears nobody has a clue how to behave and all reason goes out the window. The fearmongering was always a part of the aggressive strain of empiricism that began in Royal Society England and only a few people, among them Von Humboldt, nailed down that it prevents people from enjoying their surroundings both terrestrial and asronomical.
“This assemblage of imperfect dogmas bequeathed by one age to another— this physical philosophy, which is composed of popular prejudices,—is not only injurious because it perpetuates error with the obstinacy engendered by the evidence of ill observed facts, but also because it hinders the mind from attaining to higher views of nature. Instead of seeking to discover the mean or medium point, around which oscillate, in apparent independence of forces, all the phenomena of the external world, this system delights in multiplying exceptions to the law, and seeks, amid phenomena and in organic forms, for something beyond the marvel of a regular succession, and an internal and progressive development. Ever inclined to believe that the order of nature is disturbed, it refuses to recognise in the present any analogy with the past, and guided by its own varying hypotheses, seeks at hazard, either in the interior of the globe or in the regions of space, for the cause of these pretended perturbations. It is the special object of the present work to combat those errors which derive their source from a vicious empiricism and from imperfect inductions.” Von Humboldt ,Cosmos
Hope it makes sense to somebody.
The great thing about science is that it is true regardless of public opinion.
And with that, a mighty cheer went up from the heroes of Earth. They had banished the awful Ozone Layer hole forever…because it was haunted. Now let’s all celebrate with a cool glass of turnip juice
That’s great to know.maybe our government could lay off the carbon tax now
Dick the carbon tax collected by our government goes no where near any solution to the ozone problem more likely the hole in the minsterial pension fund
Carbon tax has to do with global warming, nothing to do with the ozone layer.
Let the carbon pay the carbon tax!
Carbon taxes are to offset and discourage use of greenhouse gasses. Greenhouse gasses cause global warming and climate change.
Ozone layer is depleted by CFC gasses and similar. Ozone layer shields us from UV radiation.
Two separate global issues. One is getting better, the other is FUBAR
I’d be surprised if carbon taxes were being used for any environmental causes
Expanding foam to the rescue https://youtu.be/I6uGEo75vbg
How do we know that the hole wasn’t always there?
Because scientists had data before the hole to say that there was no hole then they diagnosed both the hole and the cause for the hole. The world then acted and now the hole is closing.
Me hole :-)
Pfft, science is wrong most of the time. Every idiot on the street knows that.
Kirks logic is sound…..
The hole was first discovered in 1950 some 37 years after the discovery of the ozone layer itself.
Its discovery was via a process of deduction rather than actually finding it.
Only in latter times have we developed the technology to enable proper monitoring and analysis of atmospheric ozone.
We have no idea how long the hole was there before we found it.
Good news
Maybe a sock in the hole would work.
Phew!
Looks like there might not be an
Ozone layer tax beside my USC on my payslip any time soon!
I wonder did the 2000 + nuclear weapons tests which took place from 1945 – 2006 have any effect on the ozone layer or the earths climate?
I am sure that people can see what is going to happen next, at least those who can read passed the headlines . I doubt they will announce their success about acid rain anytime soon since they latched on to carbon dioxide and went for broke with ‘global warming/ climate change’ and how humanity can tax themselves into sorting it out.
Do you work in the oil industry?
I never doubt the intelligence of people however common sense is not always present and especially among academics. At the bottom of it all is a single statement representing an awful ideology which drives empiricism and these silly notions which equates the planet to a common greenhouse and fills in the gap between the two with a lot of bluffing, voodoo and wrapped up in contrived fear.
“Rule III. The qualities of bodies, which admit neither [intensification] nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.” Newton
It simply isn’t that difficult, begin with the fall of an apple and scale it up to planetary motions and fill it in with every half baked notion that mesmerizes his followers who hadn’t a clue what he did beyond that he seemed to give them a passport to wreck astronomy. A number of his followers did admit they had no idea how he arrived at his conclusions but I sure do -
“The demonstrations throughout the book [Principia] are geometrical,
but to readers of ordinary ability are rendered unnecessarily
difficult by the absence of illustrations and explanations, and by the
fact that no clue is given to the method by which Newton arrived at
his results.” Rouse Ball 1908
Again, there is nothing difficult about any of this .
Yes or no would suffice
Do you really have to go back to the mysteries of Newton to support your theories?
Newton was the Boris Johnson of astronomy, full of bluster but with depth or substance to his agenda. The difference between me and his followers is that I actually know what he tried to do.
Oops, that should read ‘little depth or substance’ .
Obviously because of all the carbon tax we paid, well done money!
Best not to mention that the Montreal Protocol was Margaret Thatcher’s initiative. This story and Brexit within a week would make any self respecting Guardian reader’s head explode.
Articles like this let you see how thick people really are.
Ozone hole has nothing to do with climate change.
Mary Robinson can stop the climate change for justice mullarkey now..
Why?
What has ozone hole got to do with climate change?
When Danny Healy Rae stood up in the Dail and suggested that God ultimately decided these things the whole country laughed at him.
They’re not laughing now though are they?
Lol seriously .. Lol
Least of our worries.
its getting smaller due to the fact of insurance company’s robbing us so we stop driving or find it impossible to start
Someone dug another hole and used the spoil to fill in that hole. They did in their hole.
have your say