The blockade of tobacco advertising
After Merkel, former short-term health minister Spahn, who always had good ideas, and current health minister I-see-good-out-and-rich-Klöckner spoke out in favour of a ban on tobacco advertising 'before the end of this year', new targets are being set every hour after heated and smoky debates. There is talk of 2020 and 2021, then again of a gradual abolition of cinema advertising from 2022.
The fact that, in contrast to tax breaks for high earners and increases in road traffic fines except for MPs' official cars, the haze line is not so clear at the turn of the year is simply due to the fact.
After all, Germany is the only country in the EU that has been throwing the guidelines and recommendations of the WHO (World Health Organisation - the H stands for health) to the wind for years. Of course, recommendations are not binding vis-à-vis the legislative powers, but one does not want to be on a blue haze list, let alone a grey list, like banks of independent countries. Therefore, it is time for some movement on this smoky issue.
It burns from both sides of the glow stick
Most recently, due to the absurd speculation that young people could be seduced into tobacco consumption when they see billboards, although everyone knows that young people only look at their smartphones, a study was initiated by the Rehsmart Institute, which found that advertising can present health benefits of certain cigarette brands that would not become known without advertising measures. This can be seen in neighbouring France. There, distribution is a monopoly business, and the state-subsidised corporation thus supports tobacco-producing countries that are former colonies. Plausible argumentation of the government: 'then at least they don't produce cocaine'.
The advertising ban has been established there for many years and the novice smokers do not even know how to start their nicotine addiction and smoke the herb they still know from their parents. Since only 2.25% of the 4000 substances released in a cigarette are demonstrably harmful to health, the fantastic effect as an antidote to environmental pollution does not come into play at all in this way.
Independent research findings support turnaround
The plans, which even the lungs of the Union cannot oppose, foresee the abolition of cinema advertising for previews of films intended for viewers under 18 years of age. The compromise: whether and what is smoked in the films remains unaffected. The fog in the minds of CDU/CSU politicians cleared after the findings of a research panel headed by Prof. Mahlborrow were casually summarised with the words 'you can really smoke cigarette advertising in your pipe'.
This step is understandable, especially since mobile phones are banned in cinemas and the danger of holding something else in one's hand is far too great. Of course, one does not want the generation that is supposed to finance cancer research with their own hands to lose their limbs prematurely due to arteriosclerosis.
The lobby does not hold
What is unthinkable in many sectors of the economy is proving true in the tobacco industry. For more than 30 years, the investments in cancer research and the steadily increasing tax levies were the deathblow argument of the lobbyists. It was not allowed to happen that declining tobacco consumption also caused declining tax revenues. So the prices were regulated by graduated levies in agreement in such a way that the sum never even stagnated at any time. No one would have gained if smokers actually gave up their addiction - unless in favour of some other tax-friendly addiction.
The alternative of banning advertisements with disgusting images because they are unpleasant at supermarket checkouts and replacing them with friendly slogans like: 'Buy cancer', 'We offer blood vessel clogging guarantee' or 'Enjoy your coffin nail - it could be your last' could not turn the tobacco tide either. Perhaps the next step is that smoking on neighbours' balconies is no longer seen as personal freedom, assault with smoke is punished as a negligent health hazard, and offering a cigarette to a fellow human being when asked is classified as an offence of intentional damage to health.