Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-06-14-Speech-3-141"
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"en.20000614.6.3-141"2
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"I was the rapporteur in this House for the common organisation of the raw tobacco market over 30 years ago.
In the enthusiasm of youth, I hoped then to convince my 141 fellow members not to introduce a market organisation for raw tobacco which would give us mountains of unmarketable raw tobacco to deal with.
Had I been listened to then, we would not now be crying over the billions spent on raw tobacco subsidies.
However, I am not trying here to come to terms with the past. Things are as they are and we shall have to live with them, because tobacco farmers cannot reasonably be expected to be left standing out in the rain after 30 years’ common organisation of the raw tobacco market. We have got them used to subsidies and that has, to all intents and purposes, destroyed our chances of restructuring the cultivation of raw tobacco. Now the health missionaries in the House want to stamp out the cultivation of raw tobacco in the European Union altogether; this will naturally benefit imported tobacco – which they cannot and do not want to stop – without, of course, making chain smokers give up smoking.
There is no question that a lot of people in the EU and everywhere else in the world die from lung cancer, which hits far more smokers than non-smokers. But the sort of bans imposing unreasonable demands on the European tobacco industry which the Committee on the Environment has cobbled together with no regard for job losses, especially for women, will not make the citizens of the European Union give up smoking, as the current drastic measures in relation to advertising and labelling have already proven. The suggestion that EU manufacturers should be required to comply with the same regulations as regards tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide yields for cigarettes intended for export to third countries is perverse in the extreme. Wanting to accept a sense of responsibility for the health of smokers in third countries is obviously well meant, but when this sense of missionary purpose results in the tobacco industry relocating production intended for export to third countries outside the EU, then all we will have managed to achieve are job losses. Measures such as this would result in the relocation of 12% of cigarette production in the tiny principality of Luxembourg alone.
What is being produced here now is out of proportion and unfair to tobacco farmers and discriminates against the European tobacco industry.
One cannot shake off the impression that certain people in the health lobby would prefer to exile smokers altogether.
I am in favour of warnings on packets, but not in favour of a skull which takes up 60% of the surface area.
I am in favour of a targeted information campaign, especially for young people, in order to make them aware of the dangers of smoking to their health. But I am against all the exaggerations contained in this report and am therefore unable to vote in favour of the report as it stands."@en1
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