Welsh government told to act boldly

Campaigners are calling for more legislation to cut the number of adult smokers in Wales because Welsh Health Survey figures have revealed a fall of only one per cent in six years, according to a BBC Online story.

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) said the Welsh government had to take ‘bold action’ in light of the figures.

The figures showed that 23 per cent of people were still smoking despite a 2007 ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces.

“The Welsh government needs to look at banning smoking in cars and around children,” said Elen de Lacy, chief executive of ASH in Wales.

“We need to be thinking about packaging to stop young people being attracted to smoking.”

The call for the government to be “thinking about packaging” is probably a reaction to the fact that standardized tobacco packaging was not included in the list of legislation being brought forward during the current session of the UK parliament.

One way to circumvent this ‘omission’ might be to encourage the implementation of standardized tobacco packaging in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and later to say that having England as the only part of the UK without such packaging was creating problems.