The Commission wants bigger, more shocking health warnings and restrictions on tobacco sales – but will it be enough to cut the 700,000 annual death toll?

Tough new rules to curb smoking

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/16177589/n001-130108-001-en.srt

Smoking-related diseases kill  some 700,000 people a year in the EU

and cost abound 25 billion euros  in health care.

Now the Commission is proposing  tough new rules to discourage smoking.

With 70% of smokers  starting before they’re 18 years old,

We may convince one  or other smoker to stop,

but the most important aim is to prevent  young people from starting to smoke.

Only in the UK and Italy  are packets of ten cigarettes available –

Britain has the EU’s  second highest tobacco prices,

and neither product nor prices  can be displayed in supermarkets,

but until 2015 they can  in small shops like this.

The biggest difference is the price-marked  packs and obviously they can’t sell them,

we can, and therefore we sell far more  cigarettes than we ever did.

Under the new proposals,  warnings and graphic pictures

will cover 75% of cigarette  and roll-your-own tobacco packs.

Flavours like menthol or vanilla  will be banned

along with such claims as 'mild'  and 'low tar',

while the existing ban on chewing tobacco  remains, except for Sweden.

But taxes on cigarettes alone bring in well  over €75 billion each year to EU economies.

Governments are always suspect  in these terms

because many times they put the  fiscal targets ahead of public interest.

Tobacco is still grown  in some EU countries,

though subsidies to growers have been  cut from €1 million to half a million a year.

But those who sell tobacco products  are unconvinced

that shocking warnings will  make hardened smokers quit.

Shock tactics for anything  will work with a few people,

but the hard-core people will just  take no notice whatsoever, you know.

The police are still doing  drink-driving campaigns

and people are still drinking and driving.

A final directive is likely to be adopted  next year and enter into force in 2015.