Josep M. Borràs
Scientific coordinator of the National Health System Cancer Strategy, director of the Catalan Oncology Plan and Professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Barcelona
The report reviews the implementation of all the policies defined in the MPOWER strategy (including taxes on tobacco sales, media campaigns, promotion of anti-tobacco counseling, messages on tobacco packages, etc.) in all the countries that have signed the anti-tobacco convention.
This is a successful experience in policies against a key risk factor in numerous chronic diseases, especially cancer, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, but not only these. It also demonstrates how difficult and slow it is to implement policies in all countries in a homogeneous and equally effective way. Spain has implemented practically all the agreed policies, although there is still some way to go in terms of intensity and extension, but we are on the right track.
The report also explains the measures developed by the industry to try to minimize these policies. In this sense, it is an excellent review of the state of the art when a sufficiently long period of time has passed to evaluate the policy developed.
We must continue to go further down this path of preventing smoking, by far the leading preventable risk factor for cancer. About one third of all cancers would be prevented if we eliminated smoking.