Letters: Cigarette adverts

Cigarette adverts

Sir: Stopping cigarette advertising, as the Government intends to, is neither here nor there; the only effective step towards preventing nicotine addiction would be to ban vending machines while strictly enforcing the law against selling cigarettes to minors.

Children do not take the long view; adults have to do it for them. But they are susceptible to aesthetic considerations such as bad breath, yellow fingers and productive coughing, and these should be stressed in the counter- advertising that should be paid for by those who advertise cigarettes.

But the last thing that the Treasury wants is for everyone to stop smoking and thus deprive it of easily collected revenue.

JOHN A DAVIS

Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire