John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome my Garda colleagues. I am sorry if I am being inappropriate but I would like to express my sympathy to them as it is close to the anniversary of the loss of one of their colleagues in the line of duty last year. I know it is in everybody's mind today.

The situation with respect to tobacco is unprecedented. If this product had been discovered during the 20th century it would never be legal. It is the ultimate example of something that was "grandfathered" into cultural acceptability. If tobacco was a component of refrigerator doors, we would not allow it to be legal now in the manufacturer of refrigerators. If it was a component of the paint used in cars, it would not be allowed - it is that carcinogenic - yet we allow people take it into their bodies. Every fibre of every organisation associated with the public good must realise that those who make it, distribute it and sell it - sometimes good people, sometimes misguided - are involved in something which is evil and must be stopped. We must also understand that a totally legal cigarette is just as likely to give one cancer as an illegally smuggled cigarette. There is no moral distinction in terms of what we are doing here.

People talk about precedents in tobacco control for other areas such as sugar and cholesterol. There are no precedents. If some misguided philanthropist sent containers of Big Macs to refugee camps in Africa where children were starving, the Big Macs would keep them alive. There is nutrition in the most unhealthy of foods. What causes the problem with unhealthy foods in general is having too much of it. Tobacco is in a case of its own. It brings no health benefits. It is an addictive, toxic, cancer-causing substance which has been allowed into our culture.

Spurious arguments are advanced against increasingly draconian measures such as the excellent measures the Minister, Deputy Reilly, is suggesting, and some of the other excellent measures Senators Daly, van Turnhout and I suggested, which for some reason have either been rejected or become terminally glued in the treacle-like bureaucracy of the health administration. However, these are good moves. The arguments often advanced against them is that they will decrease revenue and increase smuggling. The decrease in revenue argument is entirely spurious. If God appeared tomorrow on O'Connell Street and made everybody stop smoking, the Revenue Commissioners would be discombobulated for about a year but they would get used to it. The decrease in spending on health services would take a few years to kick in, but it would kick in and it would be a saving. The crazy argument is advanced that some of this money would disappear. People who had money in their pockets that they were not spending on cigarettes would spend it on their families, their children, heat, education, better food and a number of socially advantageous things. If the entire trade disappeared tomorrow, we would be better off the day after tomorrow. It is that simple.

In terms of the questions that must be asked, I echo those of my colleague, Senator van Turnhout. I will stick my neck out - this is the wonderful thing about Seanad privilege - and say that on a global scale the tobacco companies like smuggling. They encourage it, foster it and make sure it happens because it is in their interest. Smuggling is great for them. Most of the product smuggled is their product. Ultimately, it is bought at their distribution or wholesale price from them. The people who lose out are the Revenue Commissioners and perhaps the shopkeepers in border areas between jurisdictions. The companies do not lose, and therefore I am sceptical when I hear that the companies want to lobby our Government on their concerns about smuggling. Smuggling does something else for the companies. It provides cheap, addictive product to impressionable children. It is easier to get people addicted to something that is cheap than to get them addicted to something that is expensive. All of these arguments trickle away.

With no disrespect to the representatives, when considering the health impacts of plain packaging and increasingly draconian measures, we should not even think about smuggling. It is great that the Revenue Commissioners, the Garda and the National Office of Tobacco Control do a good job interdicting it, but this unintended collateral consequence should not be what drives our public policy. It must be remembered - Senator van Turnhout alluded to this - that the arithmetic is overwhelming in that it suggests there is something extremely fishy about export patterns of tobacco to small countries from whence it mysteriously appears in other larger jurisdictions.

My father sold tobacco products in his little mom-and-pop shop in Brooklyn, New York, after he emigrated from Leitrim - his shop was called Jack's Cigar Store - so I understand the cultural influences that lead people into this line of trade.

Everybody who sells these products from the local shop to the wholesaler to the importer to the shipper to the manufacturer is dealing in death and buying into a business which must recruit 50 children per day to make up for the people who die. Those here should remember the business plan of the tobacco industry; it comprises four words - they should write them down as the plan is easy to remember - "addict children to carcinogens". If the industry does not do that, it will be out of business.