Council Recommendation 2003/54/EC
September 22, 2015
by Frank Davis
I usually cite a 2009 EU parliament vote in reference to the EU’s intentions on tobacco. If I’ve heard of this before, it certainly didn’t register until today. From Bill Gibson on Facebook:
And here is the recommendation in full, with its ominous title:
Prevention of smoking
This Recommendation is intended to encourage the Member States to improve tobacco control, with particular emphasis on stepping up the prevention of smoking among children and adolescents.
ACT
Council Recommendation 2003/54/EC of 2 December 2002 on the prevention of smoking and on initiatives to improve tobacco control [Official Journal L 22 of 25.1.2003].
SUMMARY
In accordance with Article 152 of the EC Treaty, the Community strives to ensure a high level of public health protection by complementing national policies. Smoking remains the biggest cause of avoidable death in Europe. The advertising, marketing and promotion strategies of the tobacco industry foster tobacco consumption and help to increase the mortality and morbidity associated with tobacco products. Some of these strategies are aimed more particularly at young people of school age. Studies have shown that 60 % of smokers have their first cigarette before the age of 13, and 90 % start smoking before the age of 18. The Recommendation accordingly focuses more closely on the prevention of smoking among children and adolescents.
The measures advocated are additional to the provisions of the Directive on tobacco products adopted in 2001, and those of the Directive on advertising and sponsorshipof tobacco products adopted in May 2003. Europe’s legislators have, moreover, ensured that these measures are consistent with the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO), which, at the time of adoption of the Recommendation, was still being negotiated.
Reducing the supply of tobacco products to children and adolescents
The Recommendation urges the Member States to adopt legislative and/or administrative measures designed to prevent the sale of tobacco products to children and adolescents, e.g. by:
requiring vendors of tobacco products to establish that purchasers are old enough, according to the age limit set by national law;
removing tobacco products from self-service displays;
restricting access to vending machines;
restricting distance sales, e.g. via the Internet;
prohibiting the sale of sweets and toys intended for children and manufactured with the intention that the product and/or packaging has the appearance of a tobacco product;
prohibiting the sale of cigarettes individually or in packets of fewer than 19 cigarettes.
Restricting the advertising and promotion of tobacco products
The Recommendation urges the Member States to adopt measures aimed at prohibiting the following forms of advertising and promotion: the use of tobacco brand names on non-tobacco products or services; the use of promotional items (ashtrays, lighters, parasols, etc.) and tobacco samples; the use and communication of sales promotions, such as discounts, free gifts, premiums or opportunities to participate in promotional contests or games; the use of billboards, posters and other indoor or outdoor advertising techniques (such as advertising on cigarette vending machines); the use of advertising in cinemas.
Measures targeting manufacturers of tobacco products
The Member States are urged to take steps to require manufacturers of tobacco products to declare the expenditure they incur on advertising, marketing, sponsorship and promotional campaigns.
Protection against passive smoking
The Member States are urged to implement legislation providing suitable protection from the effects of passive smoking at workplaces, in enclosed public places, and on public transport. In particular, it is recommended that priority consideration be given to educational establishments, health-care facilities and places providing services to children.
Other measures
The Recommendation calls on the Member States to strengthen programmes aimed at both discouraging the initial use of tobacco products and overcoming tobacco addiction. They are urged also to adopt and implement appropriate measures for the pricing of tobacco products so as to discourage tobacco consumption.
Monitoring
Every two years, the Member States should inform the Commission of the action taken in response to the Recommendation. No later than one year after receipt of this information from the Member States, the Commission is to report on the implementation of the proposed measures and to consider the need for further action.
According to Wikipedia:
Recommendations are without legal force but are negotiated and voted on according to the appropriate procedure. Recommendations differ from regulations, directivesand decisions, in that they are not binding for Member States. Though without legal force, they do have a political weight. The Recommendation is an instrument of indirect action aiming at preparation of legislation in Member States, differing from the Directive only by the absence of obligatory power.
However, the monitoring clause above would seem to indicate that member states were expected to act on the recommendation, and report what they had done to the Council.
And in fact, within a year, there began to be calls for a public smoking ban in the UK as well as in other EU member states.
In this manner a social culture was destroyed.
But with luck the EU itself won’t survive very much longer. Sun:
Far from standing united – one for all, and all for one – it is every country for itself.
This is the price we and the refugees are paying for the inexcusable incompetence of Europe’s so-called statesmen.
The immigration crisis has been brewing all year, with millions on the move across Africa, the Middle East and beyond. The EU sat on its hands and then panicked.
Read and see links.
UKIP conference: Smoking ban ‘more harmful’ than pit closures
25 September 2015
By Gavin Stamp Political reporter, BBC News, Doncaster
A UKIP MEP has told the party’s conference the ban on smoking in public places in England has “damaged more communities than the pit closures did”.
At a fringe meeting about which political party best spoke for the working class, Tim Aker said the 2005 ban had upped levels of hidden drinking by forcing people “to retreat inwards”.
It was evidence of a “bankrupt” Labour telling people “what to do and think”.
Senior UKIP figures have also targeted new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
UKIP made big inroads into traditional Labour heartlands in May’s election – coming second to the party in a host of seats in the north of England – but it has been suggested that Mr Corbyn’s election could halt this momentum.
But Mr Aker, who lost to Labour by 800 votes in Thurrock in May, said Labour had “ceased to exist” as a party of working people, choosing to “lecture rather than represent them”.
Citing the smoking ban as an example of a policy that had hit C1 and C2 workers, he said: “They (Labour) say all the time, despite ignoring the facts, that it was the pit closures that destroyed all the communities.
“But I put it to you that the smoking ban has destroyed more communities than any any pit closure has done because when people don’t have a place to meet, a place to socialise, they retreat in.
“What sort of outcome is it to say ‘we don’t want you drinking and smoking, take it out of the licensed area’, and it goes all the way back to the homes where people are drinking and smoking more in front of their children.”
In contrast to Labour, he said, UKIP would stand up for working people by giving them more power over their lives.
“We are the ones that embrace the one concept that has helped working class voters more than the minimum wage, more than anything else – the greatest thing for the working class is democracy.”
Speaking to the BBC later, Mr Aker said the closure of pubs in many communities meant “there was no community left”. He insisted he did not mean to “belittle the hardships of those who lost their jobs in the pits” but sought to “draw a parallel between their closures and the closure of pubs”.
‘Unreconstructed communist’
Speaking at the same meeting, former vice-chairman Suzanne Evans said Mr Corbyn was an “unreconstructed communist and like all communists it is the poorest who will suffer (under him)”.
And speaking in the hall, deputy leader Paul Nuttall said Mr Corbyn was a “trendy lefty” rather than a working class hero and suggested that working people would not warm to a man “who says nice things about the IRA, wants to give the Falklands back to the Argentinians and, above all, won’t sing the national anthem”.
More than ever before, he suggested, UKIP was poised to become the alternative to Labour in the Midlands and the north of England and to the Tories in the south of England.
But it would only continue to make inroads in the traditional Labour vote if it was “bold and told it like it is”.
He added: “We must not tone down our language. We must not change. If we change and sound like all the rest, we are finished.”
‘Tweed and corduroy’
Meanwhile, Matthew Goodwin – professor of politics at the University of Kent and the author of a book on UKIP’s rise – has cast doubt on whether Mr Corbyn’s election will stop the leaching of Labour votes to UKIP.
Mr Goodwin told the fringe meeting that past assumptions that UKIP voters were “exiled Tories who liked to wear tweed and corduroy and spend most of their time playing golf” had been scotched by its performance in May – when it attracted 29% of working class votes, compared with Labour’s 27%.
“Labour is in real trouble among these groups and it is not a problem that is going to be fixed by Jeremy Corbyn,” he said.
But he warned that UKIP, as well as other parties, risked losing working class voters to “political apathy”.
