Dear Editor,

I refer to an article published on Monday, June 7 in the Daily Observer which referred to a youth smoking prevention campaign.

On the face of it, the company sponsoring the campaign appears to be laudably fulfilling its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR); however, activities under this heading have been shown worldwide to be a Trojan horse, as they introduce a potentially deadly product to the young who are often not fully aware of the consequences.

In a nutshell, in this instance, the CSR is a clever marketing tool designed to make tobacco use/smoking very attractive to young people in particular, since the industry, by its own internal records, acknowledges that the addicted older smokers are prematurely dying or succumbing to a range of disabilities, precisely because they consumed tobacco/ smoked cigarettes.

The tobacco industry knows that global socialisation, heightened by its own clever marketing, accepts smoking as the norm; as cool, sexy and a liberating rite of passage from the constraints of childhood to the independence of young adulthood, despite the fact that cigarettes are the only legal product that will kill you when used exactly as the manufacturer intended.

There is global evidence that the tobacco industry uses the CSR label to disguise its real intent, which is to make smoking more attractive to the young.

An important arm of worldwide tobacco ad campaigns shows up locally in the spaces displaying cigarettes, such as in pharmacies and other points of sale where customers’ eyes are drawn to the photograph of a smiling retailer/vendor under the caption “I do the right thing — I don’t sell to minors” and the entire area delivers the powerful subliminal message: “Don’t worry that you’re only 12 years old; when you’re 18 you will be free to smoke; smoking is a part of being an adult.” This is only one aspect of the subtle, ongoing promotion of tobacco use/cigarettes. In light of space constraints, the Jamaica Coalition for Tobacco Control (JCTC) invites you to read more evidence of this and other tactics by the tobacco industry as noted below.

For more information about issues surrounding CSR in the tobacco arena please see two websites:

video.google.com/videoplaydocicd=4851577105036137701 &hl=en#

and

video.google.com/videoplay?docicd=4851577105036137701 &hl=en#1

Please also note that the World Health Organisation (WHO) spearheaded the world’s first public health treaty, the Framework Convention On Tobacco Control (FCTC), which came into being in 2005 in direct response to the tobacco epidemic, which plays out in a horrendous death toll (globally, five million people annually or one death every six seconds) and a dismal record of increased disabilities and rising poverty as affected families cannot cope financially.

Jamaica and most of the other Caricom states are signatories to this critically important treaty that mandates Governments to implement several public health protection measures.

According to the WHO, the “corporate social responsibility of the tobacco industry is an inherent contradiction, as the industry’s core functions are in conflict with the goals of public health policies with respect to tobacco control”.

Please examine more of the FCTC and our Government’s obligations as a signatory to the treaty at: www.who.intlfctcltextdownload/en/index.html.

The JCTC, along with other public health and tobacco control advocates, welcomes every opportunity to repeat the global medical and scientific evidence that there is no safe level of smoking, even when the cash-rich industry persistently and cleverly suggests that a youngster who waits until the age of majority to smoke, is being initiated into a world of harmless behaviour.

Knox Hagley

Chairman, JCTC

30 Beechwood Avenue

Kingston 5