Tobacco, the killer with a friendly face

In 2024, 67,107 people died in Catalonia; of these deaths, 10,939 were due to avoidable causes. In fact, 16% of deaths had lung cancer as the primary cause, and it is no secret that the reason is almost always smoking. It is still hard for it to be understood to what extent tobacco kills in a clear and forceful way. The reason is simple. Large tobacco companies have invested thousands and thousands of millions of dollars in scientific research with the goal not so much of proving that tobacco does not cause harm – something that nowadays is indefensible – as of diverting attention toward other possible causes of the disease. That is to say, they have invested in research that has other, totally legitimate objectives, such as genetics, pollution, or stress. The idea, as explained very well in an interview by Robert Proctor, the scientist who helped convict the tobacco companies in the United States, is to spread doubt about the direct effect of tobacco by dispersing the causes and thus blurring the responsibilities.

The strategy, which has since extended to other highly profitable but equally harmful industrial sectors, such as fossil fuels or ultra-processed foods, has worked. Proctor, however, warns of the deception that this entails. Each cigarette, he warns, takes ten minutes off one's life on average, and this is not a future possibility but a reality. Cases of centenarians who smoke are anecdotes for the Guinness Book. They do not count.

Precisely for this reason, the health plan that the Generalitat has just presented for the next 10 years is important. Among its objectives is, precisely, to reduce tobacco consumption, the largest avoidable risk factor, along with alcohol, which affects the health of Catalans. The goal is, with various measures that have not yet been fully defined, to go from the current 20% of smokers to 15% in people over 15 years of age and to reduce exposure to tobacco to almost the minimum -also to vapers, which are causing a new addiction among the youngest that greatly worries experts-. For this reason, in addition to the restrictive measures that are already applied and are expected to be expanded, there is reliance on the anti-tobacco law that has now been stalled in Congress due to the calling of elections, which included, for example, the prohibition of smoking on terraces. It is an important measure because, according to the data pointed out by Proctor himself, 55,000 Spaniards die each year because of tobacco, and of these about 5,000 were passive smokers, that is, their death was caused by breathing the smoke of others.

Smoking, like eating ultra-processed foods and foods rich in sugars and fats, is addictive because it causes pleasure. This is well studied. In fact, cigarettes themselves contain a lot of sugar, which is what makes inhaling the smoke so pleasant, but that same thing is what makes them so harmful to health. There is a part, of course, of individual will and personal responsibility, but the administration is responsible for regulating and avoiding these damages as much as possible, especially when they also affect third parties who have not chosen to commit suicide slowly. And, above all, it is the responsibility of companies that put products on the market that are clearly toxic while hiding or disguising their harmful effects.