Member Services
- Text Decrease
- Text Increase
- Print Page
Footy a breath of fresh air (Herald Sun, opinion)
For Hawks fans, it was a great game at the MCG on Sunday. For us Demons tragics we left the G licking our wounds but quietly admitting it was a pretty thrilling afternoon.
There were other benefits: it gave me a break from work, and it got me out in the fresh air with my friends. Indeed the MCG this day was a breath of fresh air.
Only a handful of years ago it would have been thick with smoke as well as noise.
As I looked around at my fellow Demons fanatics I found myself imagining the ground all those years ago when cigarette advertising was an integral p art of the sporting scene, you know, the days when the tobacco giants told us that smoking was a normal part of life rather than a pathway to poor health and a lingering death.
The messages from the cigarette companies were as convincing as they were compelling. Doctors smoke Camels more than any other cigarette, proclaimed one commercial. Smoke Salem and you smoke refreshed, urged another.
Or you could ride a horse up a big mountain and round up cattle while dangling a Marlboro.
While sporting stars championed the smoothness of their particular brands on the telly, the G was filled with blokes smoking like chimneys, disappearing in a blue haze that enveloped the stands from the
Members through to Bay 13, endangering not only their health but those around them.
Film stars were just as silly.
Across the Pacific John Wayne spoke highly of Camel (mild and good tasting pack after pack. And I know because I've been smokin"em for 20 years). Before he died of lung cancer 27 years later, he made commercials urging people not to smoke.
Sport and fags went hand in hand as tobacco endorsements did much to underpin the Test match financials and pay the bills.
None of this now at the G, thank goodness.
Saturday is World No Tobacco Day, the focal day for the World Health Organisation's campaign to ban all forms of direct and indirect tobacco advertising, including promotion of tobacco products and sponsorship by the tobacco industry of any events or activities.
A generation or two ago, the Australian Medical Association was derided as a bunch of wowsers for suggesting that advertising cigarettes on television was a bad idea.
But like a breath of fresh air a new era has dawned. The number of places where smoking is acceptable has reduced, and smokers are given more encouragement to quit.
But we're not there yet. The issue must firmly remain on Government radars.
Apart from the great anguish and sadness for families when someone contracts a smoking-related disease, the cost to the public purse and the drain on health and hospital resources are massive.
There is more work to do and any polispeak must be followed by legislative action.
For starters, Victoria must come into line with some other states and ban smoking in vehicles with children.
Cigarettes were once an accepted part of the Australian landscape. Smoking pervaded culture, sport and community.
As a society, we have been strong enough to reverse the tide, and are now living longer, healthier and happier lives as a direct result.
As I shared my Sunday with the Demons at the MCG, my mind drifted off the game for a moment. I found myself imagining our community free of cigarettes, and the pain and misery they cause.
Dr Doug Travis is president of AMA Victoria
Victorian Medical Directory
Quick Reference Links
Networks
Preferred Providers
Next
Prev