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Tobacco boxes in Paris: According to the Tobacco Control Scale, no other EU country regulates the cigarette industry as laxly as in Germany
Photo: PanoramiC / imago images
The message with the 127,000 dead is only a side note, many online media ignore it completely this afternoon.
These deaths are not counted daily, county by county.
There are no global databases of all cases, no death curves.
Hardly any politician speaks of them.
They are the everyday dead.
The tobacco dead.
127,000 people die in Germany every year as a result of smoking.
That is more than every eighth death.
This is what it says in the new tobacco atlas that the German Cancer Research Center published on Tuesday.
Not all tobacco victims have smoked themselves
Accordingly, smoking in this country has claimed around 116,000 lives so far in 2020 - around seven times as many as the pandemic.
Both causes of death are terrible.
Political leaders should do their utmost to avoid them.
But while they are determined to fight the virus, they are doing little to contain the tobacco epidemic.
Although that would be a lot easier.
The cigarette is a weapon of mass destruction.
Mathematically, a person dies every four seconds as a result of tobacco consumption; neither alcohol nor traffic can do that.
And not all victims had "free choice" (provided that nicotine addicts really did have a free choice).
According to the World Health Organization, 1.2 million tobacco deaths per year are passive smokers.
They die from having to inhale other people's exhaust fumes.
That's a scandal.
But we have got used to this millionfold suffering and death over decades.
And therefore don't do anything about it.
"There is no good argument for leaving a substance in the legal sale, of which it is undisputed that it kills well over 100,000 people a year," writes the Federal Drug Commissioner Daniela Ludwig in the foreword to the Tobacco Atlas.
"But we also know the reality of life," she continues.
"Who of us would want to enforce such a ban, with oneself, one's own family and among friends?"
Prohibition would probably not be able to win a majority, perhaps excessive.
But the state would save many lives if it made the cigarette product less attractive.
According to the Tobacco Control Scale, no other EU state regulates the cigarette industry as laxly as in this country.
Germany is the pariah in tobacco control.
Other countries are way ahead of Germany
Only here are companies still allowed to advertise their goods on large posters in public spaces - although it has been scientifically proven that cigarette advertising tempts children and young people to smoke.
This form of advertising will not be banned until 2022 - after years of delay maneuvers, especially by powerful CDU politicians like ex-general secretary Volker Kauder.
Soon afterwards, e-cigarette advertising will be banned, even if the electronic glow sticks could help some tobacco addicts to quit and are probably safer.
Other countries are way ahead of us: for example Great Britain, where the butts cost almost twice as much as ours.
In the UK, young people do not even see tobacco products in the supermarket.
After all, the sales outlets are not allowed to interpret tobacco products as openly as in this country.
You have to keep them behind lockable doors - and are only allowed to take them out when specifically asked by customers.
The pack of Marlboro or Camel then looks completely different from what we are used to: olive green, without a brand logo, the product name in a small uniform font, but large shock images and warning notices.
Countries such as France, Norway, Ireland, Turkey and most recently the Netherlands have also introduced this same »plain packaging«.
The uniform boxes should make it difficult for smokers to identify with a brand.
They're too ugly to put on the bar table in front of you.
All of this seems to be having an effect: in Australia, which was the first to launch a comprehensive anti-tobacco policy, as well as in Great Britain, smoking rates have fallen dramatically over the years.
Millions of young people have never even started.
In Germany, on the other hand, the politicians responsible do not even seriously discuss plain packaging.
Why is it?
Perhaps because of another German peculiarity: even after the end of poster advertising in the year after next, sponsorship should remain allowed - for example at party conferences.
The CDU and SPD still let the cigarette lobby co-finance them.
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