Source: British Medical Journal
Date: 2010-06-18
Author:  Tony Sheldon

The Netherlands needs the political will to do more to tackle
smoking, experts on tobacco control urged at an international
conference in The Hague this week. The call came as the latest
figures show numbers of deaths from cancer and levels of smoking
higher than the European average.

The Dutch organisation Stivoro, the tobacco control expertise
centre that hosted the conference together with the Dutch
National Cancer Control Programme, called for a new direction for
tobacco control.

The conference heard that more incisive messages about the
consequences of smoking and more awareness about the influence of
the tobacco industry were needed. Only then would smoking become
less "normal" and the Netherlands properly fulfil its commitments
under the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on
Tobacco Control.

Measures proposed included replacing the written warnings on
cigarette packets with graphic ones, increasing the tax on
relatively cheap rolling tobacco, favoured by younger smokers,
and enforcing the smoking ban in the hospitality sector.

Geoffrey Fong, of the International Tobacco Control Project in
Ontario, Canada, co-produced a national report on the
Netherlands. This showed strong pro-smoking attitudes.