<B>By Touria PRAYAG</B>

If we wanted to introduce a good Sex Education Programme in schools, would we be inane enough to invite Marc Dutroux, the world notorious rapist and child molester, to sit on the committee?

If one?s answer to the above is, ?probably not?, can someone then please explain to this simple mind what I am missing in what follows:

The Ministry of Health is presently discussing new amendments to the tobacco law in Mauritius. We hailed this as an excellent measure and praised the Minister of Health for being so proactive and thinking about health in terms of prevention.

The next thing we knew was that some of the members who sat on the Steering Committee on Tobacco Control, at its meeting of 12th February 2008, were, in fact, representatives of the Tobacco Board themselves, who actually defend the interests of the tobacco industry! No, you did not misunderstand! The ones peddling the very death the committee is trying to fight by trying to decrease the human toll of tobacco companies.

Now, if there is something I am missing, please do tell me. Otherwise, there are only two interpretations to their presence: either we are insulting their loyalty to their institution by assuming they will give genuine ideas to destroy the very hand which is feeding them, or we are insulting our own intelligence by thinking that those who are responsible for the problem and are the vector of the tobacco epidemic can actually be part of the solution. Are we deluding ourselves into believing that those who defend the interests of British American Tobacco (BAT) are out there for our well-being? The fact that tobacco companies have been engaged in active, comprehensive campaigns of deception the world over is nothing new. BAT is trying by any means to approach the youth, its real target, through a so-called ?Youth Smoking Prevention Programme?, which in fact is all geared towards attracting more and more youth. Their highly successful line, ?We strongly believe smoking should only be for adults who can make informed choices as well as understanding that it poses risks to health,? has no other purpose than to target the youth. BAT understands that if you want to sell to 14-year-olds, you have to act as if you were aiming older. That is the heart of their whole school-of-cool approach.

BAT must recruit around 750,000 new smokers per year in order to maintain its global market share. How are they going to meet these targets if they don?t aim at the youth through their cynical and highly targeted marketing techniques? It is a well-known fact, and well understood by the tobacco industry, that 90% of the smokers have started to smoke as teenagers? so, marketing tobacco products to adult non-smokers is a commercial nonsense!The world is waking up and trying to counteract the deceitful strategies of the tobacco companies by introducing measures which research has shown to have been effective. Instead of taking a leaf out of their book, we are inviting the Tobacco Industry to sit around the same table and advise us on how to drive them out of business! If this is how we are going to protect our youth, please allow me to weep my sad bosom empty!