Queen Letizia has ratified her commitment to health this Tuesday, by presiding over the ninth European Conference Tobacco or Health (EcToH). Accompanied by the Minister of Health, José Miñones, the wife of Felipe VI recalled in a speech delivered in English that smoking is “the number one public health problem”. And she has affirmed that “smoking is not a habit, it is a disease and we must help people who suffer from it.”
Doña Letizia, who has described smoking as an “epidemic”, has listed the advances in science to take steps “towards more prevention”. The Queen recalled that “the increase in the price of tobacco reduces its consumption”, also, that “in Spain, the costs of illness associated with tobacco consumption are three times greater than the tax collection generated by the industry”. Thus, the wife of Felipe VI has asked to “review what is known and continue taking steps” to reach “primary prevention”.
These days are the main European forum for tobacco control advocates and are organized every three years in collaboration with the European Cancer League (ECL) Association. Doña Letizia already attended the conferences organized in Portugal in 2017. This year she has recalled that “a healthy life requires curiosity for knowledge to know how to make daily decisions that affect our health” and she has encouraged promoting “individual responsibility”.
Since the first ECToH in 1996 in Finland, progress has been made in adopting and implementing the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the 2014 EU Tobacco Products Directive. But tobacco remains the leading cause of cancer and remains one of the leading causes of death and disease in Europe.
This year, the objective is to generate a social movement that involves the different actors that play a key role in tobacco control to achieve the main objective that the European Union has set itself, which is: a tobacco-free generation in Europe where least than 5% of the population will consume tobacco by the year 2040. The hope is to create a space in which all European tobacco control initiatives can join forces and work together towards the eradication of the tobacco epidemic.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
