Cigarette marketing is insidious.
In 1988, advertising tobacco products in Canada was banned. In recent years, that ban has extended to retailers being unable to display the products openly in their stores.
Regardless of those controls, tobacco marketing is everywhere. Turn on your favourite movie, television program or sporting event and chances are there will be some sort of tobacco placement whether it be in the form of subtle colour combinations or people smoking.
Tobacco companies have created a culture around smoking, which has made it virtually inescapable as it has infested nearly every corner of our society.
Most appalling is how young people have become a major target for this addictive and deadly product.
According to the most recent National Youth Smoking Survey, 39,000 high-school aged youth in Alberta smoke and 19,600 adolescents in the province use flavoured tobacco products.
With that in mind, it was great to see more than 70 St. Albert and regional youth join forces earlier this week to lobby the provincial government to move forward with its proposed ban on flavoured tobacco products.
Bill 206 the Tobacco Reduction (Flavoured Tobacco Products) Amendment Act passed first reading in 2012 and then third reading last December. While it received royal assent, it has yet to be proclaimed into law.
While the reasons for the delay have been widely speculated, there is ample evidence to support that flavoured tobacco products have lured many young people to take up smoking. The health effects of smoking are also widely known, as are the links of tobacco use to cancer.
While tobacco companies work to recruit more customers as their older clients die off, it is nice to see that anti-smoking campaigns in the province and across the nations – especially those directed at young people, are working.
Not only are more children choosing not to take up the habit, many – as seen during the Day of the Dead Event in Bon Accord are taking up the fight to bring the government on side.
It is time for the Alberta government to listen and end its reputation as a tobacco-friendly province. According to Action on Smoking and Health, an Edmonton-based anti-tobacco lobby group, our province “has the most affordable cigarettes in Canada due to low tobacco taxes and high wages.” It also states that Alberta has not raised taxes on tobacco products since 2002.
While other provinces and the federal government continue to increase tax to reduce smoking rates, Alberta is not doing its part. More must be done because 14 per cent of Alberta youths still smoke. This figure comes nowhere near meeting Alberta’s reduction goal of nine per cent, which in itself should actually be zero.
Following through with Bill 206 and making tobacco less affordable will help reduce the number of new smokers and compel those already hooked to butt out.
Fewer smokers, means lives saved and less spent on health care, an equation Health Minister Stephen Mandel can no longer ignore.
