A healthy proposal goes up in smoke

After years of writing solely for scientific and medical journals, I chose to make a statement in the general press about an unhappy event that occurred on Wednesday, November 15, in the Knesset. A private member's bill tabled by MKs Haim Oron and Nissim Dahan, which would have banned ads for cigarettes and other tobacco products in the printed press, magazines and Web sites, fell by a 29-26 majority. Two Knesset members abstained.

First let's note that Israel has a law banning ads for cigarettes in electronic media like television and radio, in magazines targeting teens, and on billboards. But we still find, mainly on weekends, newspapers' entire back page sporting live color and eye-catching graphics devoted to ads extolling the virtues of smoking. It has to be said, however trite or even annoying as it may sound, that smoking is the number-one killer still legally walking around. It slays tens of thousands of smokers a year and about two thousand passive smokers, namely people who do not smoke but are around smokers and breathe in the fumes.

The bill to ban cigarette ads in the general press was a wise, moral one - a proposal to protect the public's health. Several nations already have similar laws including European countries like Ireland, Norway, France, Britain and Italy, as well as a number of Asian nations. In the United States, which has no such law, top-tier papers such as the New York Times and Washington Post took the initiative, based on criteria of fairness and ethics toward their readers, and stopped running cigarettes ads. They even stepped up the publication of articles against consuming tobacco.

Over here we cannot expect the leading papers to voluntarily stop running tobacco product ads. Here, economics prevails over all other values, however dear to our hearts. Therefore, our hopes had been pinned to the parliamentarians, who might, in a rare display of good sense, fairness and morality toward the public, be persuaded to pass a law that would reduce, however slightly, the number of people starting to smoke each day.

Our hopes were in vain. The fog of cigarette smoke blinded even the elected representatives' eyes.

If you assumed that the law's opponents were smokers themselves, you were wrong. The vote fell along party lines, even coalition lines, as explained below.

First, let's look at the winners of that miserable vote - the ones who support letting the press continue to promote smoking, even though they presumably don't want to see an increase in smoking-related diseases.

Out of 20 Likud members present at the vote, 17 voted against the proposal, while three - Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, David Levy and Ayoub Kara - supported it.

Those who apparently aren't concerned about the health of Israelis, or care less about it than about economics, include Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Interior Security Minister Gideon Ezra, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Ehud Olmert (whose ministry received billions each year from taxes on cigarettes), Omri Sharon (one of those behind the Clean Air bill, which deals with smog), and Health Committee Chairman Haim Katz.

What about Health Minister Danny Naveh, who usually is sympathetic in the fight against smoking? He said he wouldn't participate in the vote, although he'd like to vote in favor of the ban, since he didn't want to violate the ministerial legislative committee's ruling to reject the proposal.

Since I'm affiliated with the healthcare establishment, I'm forced to cite with distaste the names of three former health ministers - Ephraim Sneh (a doctor), Haim Ramon and Ehud Olmert - who voted against the bill.

Why did I suggest coalition discipline imposed on the Knesset members, with the Likud and Labor uniting in the Knesset plenum to trample the advice of opponents against smoking-related ads in the daily press? Based on the observation of tireless coalition whip Gideon Sa'ar, who was shown on Knesset TV spending the duration of the vote scurrying between Knesset members, urging them to vote against the bill.

Even though everybody is constantly scurrying about everywhere in our parliament, his behavior in the plenum was so extraordinary that the speaker called him to order.

Why would Likud and Labor, high-ranking ministers, and their leader unite to block a bill so right, so just, so healthy?

Only they know. But perhaps the answer lies in the power of the press barons, and in the Gordian knot between politicians and reporters writing about them. The press must not be angered, and cigarette ads bring them much filthy lucre. Did we mention that?

Professor Ben-Ami Sela is manager of the Chemical Pathology Institute at the Sheba Medical Center, and advises the Cancer ssociation of Israel on lung cancer.