Smoking is bad for you and many people die from its effect. This is well known and proven without shadow of doubt, but the smoking industry, making a lot of money from those who smoke, spreads counter propaganda.
Most countries spend money to dissuade people from smoking, hoping to promote better health in their citizens and save hospital bills in the process. Malta is definitely one of these countries, though we have not gone as far as some others.
There is now worrying news about young smokers in our country. They are as bad, we are told, as their European counterparts. But the statistics shatter any possibility of assigning medals to ourselves for our campaign against smoking so far.
A health behaviour survey carried out among schoolchildren this year shows that a quarter of children aged between 11 and 15 have experimented with smoking, marking almost a five per cent rise over a similar study carried out two years ago, Health Promotion Department principal scientific officer Maria Ellul said.
Twenty-five per cent of 13-year-old boys smoke tobacco compared with 31 per cent of girls. Girls remain in the lead at the age of 15, with 39 per cent of them puffing away, compared with 38.2 per cent of boys.
Young people smoke because of its attraction from the very prohibition. Sometimes they do it to improve self-image, out of peer pressure, or just not to be the odd-man out.
As if smoking is not bad enough, Dr Mario Spiteri, department health promotion officer, said that studies clearly show that children who smoke tend to drink alcohol too - and smoking is clearly linked with drug abuse, mostly cannabis, ecstasy, and, to a lesser extent, cocaine.
Last year there were 342 deaths attributable to smoking, with another 195 victims in the first six months of this year. That amounts to almost one person per day.
The health ministry, though worried, has by no means thrown in the towel. It has mobilised all its forces by launching a new anti-smoking campaign aimed at young people, with the slogan 'I choose smokefree 2B trendy'. Getting rid of an addiction is no easy matter, although some manage to do it on their own without any outside help whatsoever. Which is why anti-smoking campaigns are essential in any national drive to check the habit.
In an attempt to make the campaign more effective, the department has invited Jeffrey Wigand, who achieved prominence in 1995 after he was fired by Brown & Williamson and later went on to expose damning inside information on the industry's efforts to minimise the health and safety issue of tobacco use.
Today he is a strong advocate of prevention and he has set up a non-profit foundation called Smoke Free Kids to counteract the pressures young children are exposed to by the industry.
He will be going round the schools giving talks to schoolchildren aged between 10 and 17, as well as to medical students at the university.
This is a very good idea, one that, hopefully, will help drive the message home that tobacco kills. But what is particularly important though is for the campaign to be kept going all the time.
Of course, this is easier said than done, but an extra effort would need to be made by the department to keep transmitting the message, especially to the young.