Austria: small but deadly

If Germany is the bad boy of western Europe, in tobacco control terms, it is high time to meet its little brother. Austria, with just a 10th of Germany’s population, possibly has an even worse record for lack of action to protect its citizens from tobacco. In the past, some of this may have been due to the malign though seemingly cosy participation in government policy of Austria Tabak, the state monopoly that dominated the Austrian tobacco industry until European Union (EU) requirements saw it part privatised in 1997, then sold off to UK-based Gallaher in 2001. Austrian citizens must be among Europe’s worst educated about tobacco, with tobacco related morbidity and mortality rates to prove it. Leaders of its medical profession seem to have been suffering from some form of collective denial or disbelief, and all those delegates from Austrian medical charities who have faithfully attended international meetings seem to have managed to sit through the tobacco control sessions in some sort of delusion that such matters just did not apply back in their comfortable, tolerant home country.

And tolerance is part of the excuse: it is a word often used by health ministry and other officials, and by the mass media, in defending the country’s hopeless position, and when responding to those who over …