2 Texans Down Under

“Less tar, more taste,” proclaimed a United States cigarette company
ad a few years ago. Today, the US and Australia could claim this:
“Less smoking, more pollution.”

Americans send huge amounts of toxic stuff into the air and water and
Australians pollute more per person than any other nation, but while
we foul the atmosphere, we are breathing easier at ground level than
we otherwise would because of steady declines in tobacco smoking.

Phillip Adams, a prominent print and radio commentator here, recently
wrote about parallels between the indefensible tactics of tobacco
companies peddling their products over the decades and the way our
political leaders in both countries avoid taking effective action to
stop “giving the planet lung cancer.”

Propaganda and profit, he argues, are keeping us from cleaning up our
environmental act in the same way lies and deceptions allowed
companies to manufacture and sell billions of highly addictive
products that maim and kill.

These little white sticks that Adams labels weapons of mass
destruction (March 22-23, 2008, The Weekend Australian) are still
being manufactured and sold, of course, often addicting the poorest
and most vulnerable before they reach the legal age of consent. Adams
could have written about corporate child abuse, too.

Tobacco use is still the leading cause of preventable death in the US,
according to the Center for Disease Control, but the proportion of
adults smoking there is as low as it’s been since the 1930s. About
21% of adult Americans smoke.

A government report says 70% of Aussie men and 30% of Aussie women
smoked in the 1950s. About 17% of adult Australians smoke now.

In both countries, prohibitions against smoking in enclosed public
places has made a huge difference. Kristi and I got an abrupt
reminder of that in Europe last month.

In the Netherlands, 33% of adults still smoke. Until new laws take
effect, they can light up in restaurants and bars, and they do. About
28% of Belgians smoke. We had forgotten how bad second-hand smoke is.

If you are a smoker, please don’t think we are feeling
holier-than-thou. We know some people are addicted from the first
puff and that quitting is hard to do. We are probably just
luckier-than-thou.

We know, too, that the poorest people and the poorest countries are
hardest hit by this plague. Aboriginals are the most tobacco-addicted
group here, and about 31% of Americans with incomes below the poverty
line smoke. More than half the adults in some developing countries
are smokers. Kenya has the fourth highest adult smoking rate, 49.4%,
according to the World Health Organization.

If you live in Australia, the US, or Canada (21% smoking rate,
according to the BBC) and you’re a non-smoker, count your lucky stars
and pray the trends in smoking accelerate downward.

I wish I could be confident that Phillip Adams is overly pessimistic
when he worries that we’re approaching our national addictions to
fossil fuels with “The same suppression of science, the same decades
of denial, the same lying propaganda, the same consumer resistance,
and the same tragic consequences.”

I wish I could.