Clause 1 - Meaning of ``tobacco advertisement'' and ``tobacco product''.
Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill
12:15 pm
Ms Yvette Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary (Public Health), Department of Health; Pontefract and Castleford, Labour)
It is true that the level of prevalence is affected by many different factors, including access to support when people want to give up smoking, tobacco advertising and cultural factors.
Smoking prevalence dropped from 1948 for many years, until 1994, when it started to rise. Smoking among young people has been rising since 1992. The hon. Lady is right to say that there are a series of things that we need to do to tackle smoking, and I am a strong supporter of providing expanded cessation support for those who want to give up smoking —whether it be through nicotine replacement therapy or other kinds of support.
When 70 per cent. of smokers say that they want to give up, one way to reduce smoking is to help more people to give up. Banning tobacco adverting can help smokers who want to give up because it will ensure that they are not bombarded by information about new tobacco products or by communications from the tobacco industry. Equally, a ban helps to reduce the uptake among young people in the first place, given that the brands most heavily smoked by children are those that are most heavily advertised.
It is right that the Bill includes a comprehensive definition of tobacco products, and for very good reason. Given the health risks involved, this Bill is the right way forward, and we will have further discussion on many of the issues raised today. This is just the first of extensive and detailed debates, but it is clearly right that clause 1 should define what an advertisement is and the nature of tobacco products.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Further consideration adjourned.—[Mrs. McGuire.]
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes past Twelve o'clock till Thursday 1 February at Nine o'clock.