HL Deb 20 November 1968 vol 297 cc844-5

2.39 p.m.

LORD SORENSEN

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

[The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government why, in view of the exclusion of advertisements of cigarettes from television, advertisements of alcoholic beverages are not also excluded on the ground that both excessive cigarette smoking and excessive consumption of alcohol are liable to cause serious physical ill-health and disease.]

LORD KENNET

My Lords, the dangers of excessive drinking are well known, and I am not sure that a ban on television advertising would add much to other measures of control, particularly over the sale of alcohol to young people. I understand that by agreement between the distillers there is almost no advertising of hard liquor on television, and the position is therefore not very different from that on tobacco where the ban applies only to cigarettes, the form which is most harmful to health.

LORD SORENSEN

My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that unsatisfactory reply, may I ask him whether he is not aware that, though we frequently hear of offences of a violent nature caused through excessive drinking, no one has heard of any case brought against a person for violence because of excessive cigarette smoking? In those circumstances is it not completely inconsistent to ban one and not the other? Is it not true that the excessive consumption of alcohol is, in the long run, much more serious in every way than that of excessive cigarette smoking?

LORD KENNET

My Lords, I should hesitate to judge the relative importance of these two articles of consumption and their effects as between violence and lung cancer.

BARONESS SUMMERSKILL

My Lords, would my noble friend not agree that there is this great difference: that whereas the man who drinks kills only himself, the man who smokes helps to kill other people?

LORD KENNET

My Lords, not if he is driving a motor car.

LORD SORENSEN

My Lords, may I ask whether it is not true that large numbers of people under the influence of drink have killed many people and are likely to kill many more?