The Youth Smoking Prevention Foundation (Stichting Rookpreventie Jeugd), founder of TobaccoNo ('TabakNee') and Smoke Alarm (Rookalarm), recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. The online publication ''Five years of action for a smoke-free Netherlands' ('Vijf jaar in actie voor een rookvrij Nederland') is now also available in English.

The booklet, published on the occasion of World No Tobacco Day, provides an overview of the activities of the foundation up to now. The booklet further announces that the foundation will more than before focus on influencing politicians. With a lawsuit against the State as one of the instruments.

The impetus to the start of the Youth Smoking Prevention Foundation was the publication in 2007 of the self help book 'Netherlands stops! Smoking' written by pulmonologists Pauline Dekker and Wanda de Kanter. The fact that the vast majority of their patients falls ill due to smoking, made the doctors decide to come into action against the tobacco epidemic.

'The effort it costs patients, sick due to using tobacco, to stop smoking, proves the importance of prevention', the doctors write in the book's preface. 'We have to stimulate smokers to stop and, more importantly, prevent children from starting to smoke. This is the reason why, using the Youth Smoking Prevention Foundation, TobaccoNo and Smoke Alarm, we try to create awareness of the damage caused by tobacco and of the villainous methods used by the tobacco industry to make people start smoking and keep them smoking, among as many people as possible.'

'Cigarettes, to quote the historian Robert Proctor, are 'deadly by design'. This is what politics should understand and what politicians should protect people against. 'This is not patronizing, this is protecting people', says the publication.

But instead of protecting people, the authorities simply listen to the tobacco industry. Amongst others TobaccoNo has demonstrated that officials and politicians of the Ministries of Health and Finance frequently gave room to the tobacco industry to influence the tobacco discouragement policy

The latter is in violation of the provisions in the global treaty of tobacco discouragement of the World Health Organization (WHO) - the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC)  - of which The Netherlands is a signatory. To prove that the authorities have been negligent and to ensure that they honor the mentioned provisions from now on, the Youth Smoking Prevention Foundation is preparing legal proceedings. The summons will be sent shortly.

Update (3 December 2012): The Dutch State has been summoned and the case has been taken to court in October. More information in English can be found here.

Click here to read the publication Five Years of Action in English.