Here's one to make even the most cynical tobacco control advocate reach for the anti-emetic. No doubt shamed by BAT's fine programme of sponsoring community facilities such as health clinics (Tobacco Control2000;9:361), Philip Morris has started a website for Hungarian teenagers, to help guide their development as they struggle through adolescence into free, informed, choice-making adulthood. Children and teenagers are invited to write to PM's experts, posing questions on all sorts of personal concerns and anxieties, with the promise that the experts will respond.

As PM comfortably assures its young friends, it does not want to find the best solutions to their problems instead of letting the teenagers themselves do it, and it certainly doesn't want to tell them what to do. Instead, it will simply offer understanding and partnership, in really friendly terms, to help the youngsters find the very best answers to the questions they are most concerned about. Hungarian parents must feel deeply reassured by the knowledge that their children have such well intentioned, trustworthy, and reputable new friends.