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Experts say cigarette companies have infiltrated administration
Jump to full article: South China Morning Post, 2008-04-18
Author: Mary Ann Benitez
Intro: Senior government officials are being chummy with tobacco industry insiders who have infiltrated the administration, even using the industry's stock phrases to rationalise why Hong Kong has not increased tobacco duties, international experts said yesterday.
David Simpson, former director of Action on Smoking and Health UK who recommended the setting up of the Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health, said his main concern for Hong Kong was "that tobacco industry people have taken positions in influential places where in my view they should not be permitted to be".
He pointed to government officials using the phrase "people who choose to smoke".
"For example, we heard that at quite senior level in a private conversation, a senior government official was saying it is difficult to ask taxpayers to foot the bill when people choose to smoke," Dr Simpson, director of the International Agency on Tobacco and Health, said.
"Why should taxpayers have to pay for the cost of enticing them to quit?" he said, adding: "There is only one source of the phrase `choose to smoke'."
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