Letter: Smoking Kate is not a model to follow

Sir: I am writing from a city ravaged by lung cancer, as evidenced by the publication last week of a lung cancer bulletin cataloguing the high rate of lung cancer in the city, compared with the rest of the country. It is, therefore, with dismay that I read the Angela Lambert interview entitled 'Kate Moss asks if she can have a fag' (28 September). The association of a large photograph of a supermodel aged 19 smoking a cigarette is exactly the subliminal advertising that the tobacco industry thrives upon.

Only this week, the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Kenneth Calman, has reported on the rate of smoking amongst teenagers being 10 per cent, with little change in recent years. One of the ways in which we can address smoking in young people is to stop promoting tobacco products in covert and overt ways.

On 5 November 1993, the European health ministers meet again, and banning tobacco advertising and promotion will be one of the subjects discussed. Isn't it time the media stopped promoting this habit?

Yours faithfully,

RUTH HUSSEY

Director of Public Health

Liverpool Health Authority

Liverpool

(Photograph omitted)