“The first legal industry to generate disposable consumers”
– David Byrne, European Health Commissioner
Dr Judith Mackay MBE has been a devoted campaigner for stricter tobacco control and a critic of tobacco industry practices for more than 20 years. From the praise and insults she has received, she has obviously done her job very well!
The tobacco industry previously called her all manner of un-savory names, like, “psychotic human garbage,” a “gibbering Satan” and an “insane psychotic just like Hitler” yet today she is powerful enough to influence the likes of billionaire philanthropists Bill Gates and Michael R. Bloomberg to donate U.S. $375 million to a global effort to reduce the use of tobacco.
Bill Gates with a copy of Mackay's The Tobacco Atlas
Blasted as “Nothing more than an evil-possessed, power-lusting piece of meat,” she is about to receive an OBE from the Queen and has previously been named by Time Magazine as one of the hundred most influential people in the world. Not bad for a mild mannered lady who calls Hong Kong home!
Mackay's journey began as medical physician in Hong Kong. She noticed chronic illnesses were caused by certain factors and that tobacco was the main cause. A series of South China Morning Post articles led to the tobacco industry calling her “entirely unrepresentative and unaccountable”. So began a lifetime of advocacy.
We will be uploading a podcast from which many of the facts of this article have been taken, please return on Wednesday Nov 26 -in honor of the presentation of an MBE by the Queen of England- to download and listen to Mackay's very passionate and extremely well-informed chat with iCUBED.us...
Mackay continually fights the Tobacco Industry and she has good reason to pick this fight. The facts are worrying:
• 5 trillion cigarettes produced annually. 5 million deaths attributed to smoking annually.
• If patterns continue, tobacco will kill 10 million people every year by 2020 and up to 650 million of today’s smokers.
• Globally, more than a billion males smoke: 35 percent of those in developed countries and 50 percent of the men in developing countries. Globally, 250 million females smoke.
• According to the Tobacco Atlas, at present, one in seven teenagers aged 13 to 15 smokes, with 25 percent of them trying a cigarette before the age of 10. Nearly 100,000 teenagers become addicted every day.
• Smokers pay twice as much for life insurance and will die an average of more than 12 years sooner than non-smokers.
• If every smoker smoked one less cigarette per day it would cost the tobacco industry U.S. $1 to $2 billion per year.
One of the main gripes of campaigners is that cigarettes are the only legal product which kills more than half its consumers. Ingredients such as nicotine are proven to be addictive, yet billions are spent by tobacco interests (in 2003, U.S. $15.5 billion was spent in the United States alone) to lure consumers, especially teenagers.
The statistics are worrying, yet surely people have the freedom to choose whether to smoke or not?
To some smoking seems a sort offreedom of expression. Tobacco advertising has equated smoking to emancipation, to freedom, to slimness, and all other manner of desirable traits. Mackay argues that the fundamental concept that people have freedom to smoke is a misconception. Easily influenced young people start smoking due to peer pressure, the desire to be perceived as “cool’’ and the desire to appear grown up. Nicotine is addictive, so many quickly get trapped and spend the rest of their lives struggling to give up. A simple expression of freedom for some can lead to a lifetime of addiction. Mackay says it is rare for people older than 30 to start smoking; in fact, the younger they are, the easier it is to lure them into this destructive habit!
Subliminal messages and advertising techniques are employed to lure especially the young into the habit of smoking. To lure young males, smoking is portrayed as a masculine habit linked to health, happiness, power and status. Ironically though, the two original Marlboro men died of cancer!
For women, brands such as Virginia Slims link smoking cigarettes to emancipation, to vitality, health, sophistication and sexual freedom. Again the reality is very far from the imagery. Health warnings do exist but are not as compelling as the powerful, professional images put out by those huge advertising/marketing budgets. Once "addicted,” does a consumer have the freedom of choice in this vicious circle?
Dr. Mackay argues that no other industry has the freedom to market a product that kills as uniquely as tobacco does. Any other dangerous product that kills up to 50 percentof its customer base would be banned immediately.
She also stresses that some limitations on freedoms are commonly accepted by all. For example, stopping at red light and driving on a certain side of the road are for the public good. Due to the dangers of passive smoking, limiting tobacco advertising and restrictions on where you can smoke are also for the public good.
Tobacco companies argue that limiting their advertising power would be infringing on their right to freedom of speech but Dr. Mackay points out that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that the four exceptions to freedom of speech including public health. If it is in the interest of public health then freedom of speech can be limited. And smoking is definitely a public health issue, not only for the smoker, but also for the second-hand smoker who inhales it - maybe for as much as eight hours a day because he is a bartender or waiter, or working in an office that isn't smoke-free.
Millions may die from smoking but as customers many millions are being lured into this deadly habit (a habit that is directly responsible for up to 50% fatality) millions from ages as young a eight are already trapped in this destructive smoking habit - it is without doubt a form of ‘bondage’ and not at all any sort of freedom. Do smokers really have a choice when they are being sold images of "glamor, powerful independent cowboys and emancipated women 'who've come a long way baby'"? It's false advertising, and cigarette boxes show the brown teeth, lung and other forms of cancer, even loss of fingers and limbs! Then there are the images we all see nowadays, of small clusters of addicted smokers standing outside office building puffing away over a smelly dirty ashtray. Is THIS what Freedom looks like? (It might be worthwhile to look into smoking internationally…cigarette advertising already is banned or severely limited in much of the west. As a result, the number of smokers have dropped, which has caused American cigarette makers to look abroad for more customers – and for places to sell their cowboys and slinky women…)
Anti-smoking campaigners such as Mackay are here to insure that more people don't get trapped into a lifetime of destroying their health. And we should all be thankful that she will be continuing to fight the good fight.
For more on Dr. Judith Mackay, please go our exclusive interview here.
Podcast link coming on Wednesday Nov 26 (a very fascinating audio interview, so remember to download it)...
Dr. Judith Mackay has very graciously agreed to pen a column tentatively called "sex in the new year" to help answer your questions on relationships and sex. We look forward to launching that in 2009...
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