MPs in all-out assault on tobacco industry
By Marie Woolf, Political Correspondent

Government praises select committee report as exposing industry evasion on tobacco [14 Jun '00] - Department of Health [DoH]
 

CIGARETTE manufacturers faced a blistering attack from MPs yesterday and calls for a Government inquiry into allegations that they had "deliberately stimulated" the smuggling market.

The Commons health committee urged the Government to "keep its distance from the tobacco industry" and set up an independent regulatory body with powers to control its activities, including the marketing of cigarettes.

 The report into the health risks of smoking concluded that addiction to cigarettes was "comparable to hard drugs". It criticised ministers for taking the "pusillanimous" decision to exempt Formula One motor racing from a tobacco advertising and sponsorship ban until 2006.

 The report said: "The extraordinarily dangerous nature of the produce being marketed means that tobacco companies cannot expect to operate in the same commercial environment as most other industries."

 The MPs' conclusions came as the European Parliament voted to increase the size of health warnings on cigarette packets and to make them more hardhitting. Euro-MPs voted for health warnings to cover 35 per cent of the front of cigarette packets and 45 per cent of the back. Descriptions such as "low tar" and "light" would be banned.

 The Commons report backed moves to make health warnings bigger and said a new warning about links between smoking and male impotence should be added. The Department of Trade and Industry said it was considering the proposal for an inquiry into smuggling "closely". 

The Commons report said British American Tobacco should face criminal proceedings if the allegations were substantiated. It urged the Trade and Industry Secretary, Stephen Byers, to investigate claims that BAT profited from bootlegging and "deliberately stimulated the market".

 Clive Bates, director of the anti-smoking group Ash, said: "This is a devastating broadside at every aspect of the tobacco industry."

 BAT wrote to ministers last night expressing hope that the report would not "deflect our attempts to get a more constructive relationship with Government" and criticising the call for an investigation into the smuggling allegations against the firm.

 Gallaher, which makes Amber Leaf rolling tobacco, was attacked by the committee for advertising "which seems to want to court those doing the smuggling".

 The report said advertising agencies "have shamelessly exploited smoking as an aspirational pursuit in ways which inevitably make it attractive to children and have attempted to use their creative talents to undermine Government policy and evade regulation".

 Ministers should sever links with cigarette companies to avoid being "manipulated". The committee chairman, David Hinchcliffe, said: "The tobacco industry has run rings round the Government in recent years. There has been manipulation of the political process."

 The report called for greater restrictions on the sale of cigarettes, with bans for shops which sell tobacco to under-age children. Yvette Cooper, the minister for public health, said: "Voluntary agreements don't work. Let us not forget that tobacco industry products kill 120,000 people a year." 

While Euro-MPs backed bigger health warnings on packets, and a reduction in the maximum level of nicotine per cigarette, they also voted to continue subsidising Greek farmers who grow particularly unhealthy forms of tobacco.