Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

As Deputy Wallace pointed out, it is a shame that 80% of the girls doing the leaving certificate smoke because it is considered trendy and cool and because young people think in pictures, not words or figures. They do not read spiral bounds or Bills but they read pictures, hence they use their telephones to take pictures and send pictures to one and other. They look at movies, DVDs television and so on. With regard to the consumption of cigarettes, it would be timely to remind them of what it looks like to develop a cancerous growth as a result of smoking.

One of the landmark moments in a student's experience is when the school organises a tour to visit a jail. Students then realise how sad it is that lives have gone off the tracks and people have to spend time in prison for their offences. The physical visit to a jail tells more about the slide into wrongdoing or keeping the wrong company. People dream and think in pictures. Nobody has dreams about columns of figures or paragraphs of words, although I may be contradicted by Deputy Wallace.

I just want to touch anecdotally on these issues in support of the Bill. Do people realise that thousands of other ingredients are added in the manufacture of cigarettes and not only nicotine, which is addictive? This is also done in the manufacture of ice cream. Let us take orange juice as an example of a generic product, without going into brands. If people discovered it was carcinogenic, every carton of orange juice would be whipped off the shop shelves. However, because smoking has become embedded and is part of the fabric of generations of people, nobody is prepared to give it a shock. A consumer ECT is needed.

Deputy Wallace also referred to sports and smoke free zones, especially at competitive levels. I also experienced this because my four children swam competitively. None of them smoked but when they stopped and because it was cool and people were outside bars on the street or under verandas and so on, it was looked on as cool. Why not be different socially? It takes a huge decision when one is a smoker to stop. One cannot do it and think, "I will just have the one because I am at a wedding or a christening". That does not work; one has to make a clean cut because of the additional addictive substances.

What cigarette manufacturers do is wrong. It would be like selling people fast cars for the momentary and immediate thrill of driving a turbo-charged car, knowing that there are no brakes to stop them. It is wrong.

In the 1960s in the United States the connection between cancer and smoking cigarettes or tobacco was first being discussed and there were denials by the industry, which was big. The most powerful, successful and richly rewarded lobbyist at the US Government level suddenly did a volte-face because he developed cancer himself. He knew that being a smoker was the cause of his illness. He went against the tobacco lobby. He said that those in the advertising industry knew cigarettes and tobacco were carcinogenic and that smoking caused emphysema and death.

It is tragic to see someone of perhaps 60 years of age wheeling around an oxygen trolley so that he or she can breathe. The trendy youngsters do not see the end product - the emphysema wards. They do need to see the picture on the pack. At the point of entry where the containers come in to the country we need to get to not just the people who unload them. We should also speak to the carriers who are very careful about what goes into them. Deputy Dowds said his mother called them drug pushers, and they are. Let us face it. Tobacco is addictive. I am sorry that my mobile telephone is ringing.

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