Written by Rupert Kircz| Friday, 16 December 2011| There is 1 comment
howls of anger from smoking cessation lobby groups.
The Dutch government is receiving broadsides from the European medical establishment for relaxing its illness prevention policies with regard to tobacco and smoking. The policies which include the end to subsidies for smoking cessation remedies and a relaxation of smoking bans in public places have been met with howls of anger from smoking cessation lobby groups.
A group of medical experts from all around the world writing in the respected medical journal The Lancet said that these policies would have a huge human cost which could be as much as 145,000 deaths by the year 2040.
The letter to The Lancet says that the responsibility for these deaths would fall directly on the Dutch government which was hiding behind the slogan of personal choice and choosing to ignore the huge amount of damage that cigarettes did in the form of cardiac disease, cancer and respiratory disease.
Smoking is still the number one preventable cause of death in developed nations all over the world. Smoking rates in Holland are higher than in the rest of the European Union and it is thought that this is because of its policy to allow smoking in certain bars and very little help for people who genuinely want to quit smoking.
Speaking on behalf of the Smokefree Partnership, Florence Berteletti Kemp said that the Dutch government was ignoring clinically proven scientific facts and best practice. Professor Geoffrey Fong from the University of Waterloo in Canada who also formed part of signatories to the Lancet letter said that the Dutch government smoking policies went against the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control set up by the World Health Organisation of which the Netherlands was a signatory.
At Ukmedix News we have seen how government support for smoking cessation initiatives really helps people to quit smoking. The simple act of making sure that people do not smoke in bars and nightclubs really works in helping struggling quitting smokers to stay smoke free and can make all the difference between curing an addiction and reigniting it.
