MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Falklands Councillors reject heavy smoking label

Some members of the Falkland Islands Legislative Council, who are currently pondering whether or not smoking should be banned from public places in the Islands, today reacted negatively to the suggestion in a Mercopress report on this subject (Thursday 10th August) that the Falklands is “a community of heavy smokers”, something that Councillor Mike Summers referred to as “a slur on our good behaviour”.

The Falkland Islands Government Medical Department is currently carrying out a survey on the smoking habits and has circulated questionnaires to everybody over the age of sixteen on the hospital's database.

According to Councillor Mike Rendell, who holds the Public Health Portfolio, while some 1800 of these questionnaires have not yet been returned and probably never will be, the 800 completed questionnaires received indicate that just over 24% have declared themselves as smokers.

Comments Cllr. Rendell, "Deduce from this what you will; it is impossible to say how many smokers have not responded. In statistical terms however I would suggest that the percentage of returns (about 30%) is sufficient to make a reasonably accurate estimate."

If the figure of 24% of the Falkland Islands population being smokers is accepted, it compares reasonably well with figures produced elsewhere.

In 2001, the most recent year for which numbers are available, the US Centers for Disease Control estimated that 25.2 % of all men and 20.7% of all women in the USA were current smokers.

According to Cancer Research UK, in 1948, when surveys of smoking began in Britain, smoking was extremely prevalent among men: 82% smoked some form of tobacco and 65% were cigarette smokers. By 1970, the percentage of cigarette smokers had fallen to 55%. From the 1970s onwards, smoking prevalence fell more rapidly, but since 1992 the rate has levelled out and, in 2002, 27% of men (aged 16 and over) were reported as smokers.

While the cost of treatment of smoking-related disease is a concern in the Falklands as it is elsewhere in the world, its councillors may take some comfort from surveys published by the World Health Organisation which indicate that in Uruguay, source of the recent critical comment about smoking in the Falklands, the percentage of adult smokers in 1998 was calculated at 49.5%.

John Fowler (Mercopress) Stanley