A smoking ban for the whole of the Netherlands. It hurts for a while, but you get used to it quickly, editor-in-chief Rennie Rijpma writes in this comment.
Cancer has been the undisputed cause of death number 1 in the Netherlands for years. That threatened to fade into the background in the two years that the news columns were dominated by corona. But of the 170,000 people who died in the Netherlands in the corona outbreak year 2020, 47,000 people died of cancer, compared to officially more than 20,000 people from Covid-19. We will reach the number of 1 million Dutch people who have or have had cancer within a few years. If you don’t experience it yourself, you certainly know someone who has happened to this devastating disease.
Lung cancer is one of the most common cancers (after breast and skin cancer in place 3). It is also the most preventable cancer. “More than 80 percent of lung cancers are caused by smoking,” says Thijs Merkx of the Integrated Cancer Center in the Netherlands. Every reason to ban smoking.
The government is working on this by, among other things, restricting the advertising of cigarettes and banning smoking in more and more places such as sports fields and restaurants. We can hardly imagine that the waiter serves your tiramisu while someone at the table next to you lights a cigarette.
A smoking ban for the whole of the Netherlands. It saves thousands of lives and millions of euros in healthcare
Smoking is also discouraged by increasing the price. A pack now costs about 8 euros. If the government throws in 4 euros, 10 percent will stop. Only when a pack of cigarettes costs 60 euros, half of smokers would quit, Maastricht University researched.
If cigarettes did not exist and someone would like to market this in 2022, an entrepreneur would never never get permission; harmful to public health. But a stimulant – who the hell thought of calling something so sickening and deadly a stimulant? – we apparently find abolition or prohibition too complicated in the Netherlands. A smoking ban for the whole of the Netherlands. It saves thousands of lives and millions of euros in healthcare. It will also lead to fierce protest, such as with the smoking ban in the catering industry, but you get used to it faster than you think.
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#Smoking #lets #stop