There has understandably and predictably been significant national controversy since Philip Morris placed notices in European newspapers concerning the relative risks of passive smoking or second hand tobacco smoke. The claims of the tobacco manufacturer in those notices have been broadly dismissed by health related organisations and by doctors concerned with the public health and the prevention of disease. Criticisms have been levelled that the data cited in the notices were highly selective and designed more to confuse than to inform it may well be that, in the longer term, the Morris campaign to make passive smoking seem less dangerous than many people now think it is will redound against all whose primary objective is to sell more tobacco.
For some years past, because of the very persuasive scientific evidence of the serious health risks of tobacco smoking, this newspaper has not carried any tobacco advertising. A decision was made to publish the notices from Philip Morris on this occasion because, at least marginally, they seemed designed to inform rather than to sell. Statements were made and attributed which could be argued about rationally. This is qualitatively different from standard advertising which sets out to sell, often on the basis of subliminal images and sub-conscious psychological triggers, rather than to inform or argue. And even if the information provided is wrong, confusing or misleading, tobacco manufacturers have the same basic civil rights of free speech as others do to try to make their case rationally directly to the public.
There is already ample evidence in this country, in Europe and in North America that the public have been listening to the arguments of the doctors and health educators rather than to the blandishments of those who make and sell cigarettes. In the past two decades the prevalence of smoking in Ireland has dropped by around 15 per cent and the signs are (despite some anxiety about a relative increase in young women smokers) that the decline will continue. There is much more widespread acceptance now of the creation of smoke free zones in places of both work and entertainment, and these zones are being created particularly to protect non-smokers from the hazards of the second hand smoke created by others.
No amount of notices from the tobacco industry will reduce those real hazards, and the Philip Morris notices will do little to convince most people of any public spirited impulse within the industry to provide unbiased information. Indeed, they may do more to persuade the public that the basic motive is to sell more tobacco a phenomenon already evident from the push to increase tobacco sales in Third World countries (without any public spirited information campaigns to accompany the increase) to compensate for the decline in sales in those countries where information and education levels are higher and resistance to advertising is greater.