How the Irish break smoking habit...

Press, 23 April 1980, Page 21

How the Irish break smoking habit...

From

SELWYN PARKER

in Dublin

When Ireland’s new Prime Minister, Charles Haughey, gave up cigarettes about 10 years ago, nobody could have predicted that it would end with the Government going into the anti-smoking business.

“C.J.,” as he is popularly known, had a rasping smoker’s cough. By his own admission, he could not perform his Ministerial duties as well as he felt he should.

He broke the habit and now he wants the nation to follow him. If nothing else, his methods are unusual.

Last February, shortly after he became premier in succession to the pipesmoking Jack Lynch, Haughey’s vehicle for his anti-smoking campaign the Health Education Bureau launched a “cigarette” brand called “Conquest,” in a royal-blue packet that has all the appearance of any other packet of 20. There the similarity ends.

Above the brand name is a Latin slogan, Salus et Vis, which translates as “Health and Strength.” At the bottom of the packet is the legend: “Tipped to filter out smoking.” On the back the advertising spiel reads that the

contents are “a subtle blend .of common sense and practical motivation” which combines to offer “the ultimate choice in cigarette packets and a longer, healthier life.” One side of the packet contains the dire warning: “Smokers die younger.” Inside, the smoker finds not cigarettes but a series .of graded cards to help 1 him, like it did the’ premier, to break the habit. Although the details were worked out by an advertising company — a condition of the agency gaining the Conquest contract was that it held no accounts in

tobacco companies — Conquest is ’ very much Haughey’s brainchild. He wants to reduce the huge cost to the state, of treating tobacco-induced cancers and heart diseases, and the royal-blue packet is just the latest and biggest of his anti-smoking campaigns. Cigarette advertising has already been phased out of Irish television and radio, and hoarding advertisements are banned. (Instead, the hoardings now

praise the pleasures of Conquest.) The idea of the packet was chosen for its therapeutic effect — “Smokers need the actual physical presence of the packet,” explained a Health Education Bureau spokesman. Smokers, it is intended, carry it around in their pockets but, instead of shaking out a cigarette, they pull out the first card.

It is one of a series preparing the smoker for the “Off you go” phase. The last in the packet -says:“You are now in a good position to go. off cigarettes... ..”

The $BOO,OOO advertising campaign will run until the end of this month and it seems to be going well. Chemists, in whose shops the Conquest packets are given away, report a huge demand. “We’ve given away hundreds. People come in and ask for them all the time,” one chemist’s assistant says. Another Dublin chemist reports: “We were cleaned out in the first couple of days.” In the northern suburb of Baldoyle, the

packets “were snapped up the moment they came in.” In all, reports the Health Education Bureau, some 200,000 packets have gone out and more are being produced. At this stage it is too early to say whether Conquest has made smokers give up the habit, although one chemist says that Conquest converts have reported back that they have either given up or reduced their level of smoking. However, the huge interest in Conquest does indicate a national desire to get off cigarettes. Plainly, the cigarette companies do not like the Conquest campaign. One has announced its intention to sue the Government over the brand name which, it claims, the company' had already registered for itself. Strangely, Charles Haughey’s cabinet seems less impressed by' his campaign than the nation at large. His defeated rival for leader of the ruling Fiannr Fail party, the Energy Minister George Colley persists in smoking sma! cigars, as does the Educa tion Minister, and many of his colleagues. In fact, two out of every three Cabinet Ministers smoke.