Occupational Medicine & Health Affairs
Open Access

Commentary

Failure of Tobacco Control in Central Europe

Medical University of Vienna, Austria

*Corresponding Author:

Manfred Neuberger
Medical University of Vienna, Austria
E-mail: manfred.neuberger@meduniwien.ac.at

Received date: February 21, 2013; Accepted date: March 21, 2013; Published date: March 23, 2013

Citation: Neuberger M (2013) Failure of Tobacco Control in Central Europe. Occup Med Health Aff 1:109. doi: 10.4172/2329-6879.1000109

Copyright: © 2013 Neuberger M. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Failure of tobacco control in Europe is mainly due to lack of enforcement of smoke-free workplaces and public places, low tobacco tax and price, easy access of cigarettes for adolescents, and public smoking visible to children as the normal adult behavior. Driving force behind alibi laws without implementation is the corruption by the tobacco industry. An example of an EU member country is given, where tobacconists distribute the newspapers and the government resists amendments of the tobacco law to meet article 5.3 and article 8 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This WHO convention should be included in binding directives of the European Union.