Tony Blair's 10 years of tobacco control

Abstract

The White Paper Smoking Kills, published in December, 1997,3 included the most comprehensive portfolio of tobacco-control policies ever presented by a UK Government, including proposals to ban tobacco advertising, increase the real price of cigarettes by at least 5% a year, restrict the availability of cigarettes to children, invest in health-promotion campaigns, and uniquely, to establish smoking-cessation services available to all smokers through the National Health Service. Having been appointed Minister for Public Health in 1997, Tessa Jowell might have been expected to implement the legislation to restrict smoking in public places she had proposed as a private member's bill (a bill by a Member of Parliament who has no official office in Government) 3 years earlier.5 However, the White Paper policy on public places comprised a Public Places Charter, a voluntary agreement negotiated with the hospitality industry in consultation with a tobacco-industry-funded organisation—Atmosphere Improves Results6—which included only a commitment in principle to introduce “non-smoking areas, air cleaning and ventilation, as appropriate and whenever practicable”.3 Subsequent events suggested that the Government was further losing its resolve. The 2004 White Paper on public health, Choosing Health, duly promised to do so, but with exemptions.9 However, one of the main proponents of exemptions for pubs and clubs then proved to be the Secretary of State for Health, John Reid, on the grounds that smoking was a “working class pleasure”,10 and the unsubstantiated claim that legislation would increase exposure of children to smoking in the home.11 Labour has achieved more in terms of tobacco control than any other UK Government, establishing the UK as a world leader in this respect,12 and deserves credit for doing so.