Giving up

How do you get someone to give up something, like cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, or, quite simply, too much food? If we become the second country in the world to sell ciggies in only plain packaging, will it really make smoking less attractive to young people? And what exactly gets them smoking in the first place? And if, after years of being brought up in an anti-smoking household, your youngsters do start smoking (and yes, that’s happened to me), is it really up to the government to do something about it, in the form of tighter restrictions on an entirely legal tobacco industry?

These were points put to me on yesterday’s programme by a listener called Henry who was himself anti-smoking, but defended the industry’s right to carry out their business – saying it was up to us, and not up to the government, to decide whether or not to buy their products. He even made the point that the revenue brought into government by the tobacco industry far outweighed the cost of smoking related diseases to the NHS.

So how do you really get people to make good decisions about how they live their lives? How does the marketing and advertising industry lead our liev? And is there a way to counteract the awesome power of advertising? I’d love your view. I wonder wether we rather too often call upon government to influence our behaviour when we should be doing it ourselves.