The tobacco industry is the only one that knowingly produces a consumable product that will kill up to half of its users. In the North East, that means that the equivalent of one person a day will die in each of our 12 local authority areas – with extra at weekends and bank holidays. That’s 5,500 people a year. Around 9,000 children start smoking each year in the region, and it costs our NHS about £100m, with more than 500,000 GP sessions spent on tobacco-related matters.1 I know there is always the call that ‘it’s a legal product’ and should be treated the same as any other legal product. Well, yes it is legal – unfortunately, at the moment – but it doesn’t have to stay that way, and any trading standards officer (TSO) that defends tobacco as a legal product should go and sit in a darkened room while they ask themselves if they should really be in a profession that is dedicated to protecting the public. It’s not the same as any other product; the computer I wrote this on, the chairs you’re sitting on, the cars you drove to work in, none of them will – with the knowledge of their makers – kill up to half of their users. Tobacco is not a normal product, it’s a toxic substance and society should treat it as such. When I put up some comments about tobacco issues on the CTSI Members’ forum last year, one of the responses was: ‘What’s next? References 1. Figures from Fresh North East are available to view. 2. BBC report from 1998. 3. The Observer (16 November 2014).TAP TO NAVIGATE PAGES 123456 Challenging industry The idea to challenge the tobacco trade – and for CTSI to campaign against the tobacco industry – was submitted as a motion to a meeting of Council in March. This decision was made by the North East Trading Standards Association (NETSA) – following a long discussion about the issues surrounding the tobacco industry – when its members agreed that: ‘All possible action should be taken to “de-normalise” the use and availability of tobacco products and, to that end, will campaign for a robust, positive licensing system for tobacco retailers. ‘This system will include appropriate sanctions, including suspension or removal of a licence, for breaches of tobacco control legislation, especially of legislation covering the sale of tobacco to children and the possession for supply of illicit tobacco products. The income from the licensing system will provide funding for tobacco control activities to be carried out by trading standards officers.’ The minutes from the March meeting of Council state that it was believed the Department of Health, which sits on the Tobacco Focus Group (TFG), was comfortable with its compliance with the World Health Organisation convention. Furthermore, as all members of the TFG are required to declare the nature of any relationships with the tobacco industry, it was not thought appropriate to exclude colleagues because they have tobacco manufacturers in their area. Rejecting the motion, Council agreed that there should be no recommendations to revise the terms of reference. A second attempt to table the motion at June’s annual general meeting, in Gateshead, was blocked because it was against the Charter, which states in clause 15: ‘The Council is the elected body responsible for giving general guidance on the aims and objectives to be followed by the institute.’ Further developments on the running of the institute can be read in the article headlined, ‘Meeting of minds’, which discusses the latest CTSI Council meeting.