Tarbox joins smoke-free group
Edmonton / The husband of anti-smoking crusader Barb Tarbox will add his voice to a coalition that wants to make sure youth don’t take up the deadly habit.
Pat Tarbox spoke Tuesday at the launch of the Smoke-free Alberta coalition that wants tobacco taxes increased, a ban on all candy-flavoured tobacco products, and provincial legislation to make it illegal to smoke in cars carrying children.
Tarbox’s voice joins those from the Alberta branch of the Canadian Cancer Society, the Lung Association of Alberta and the Heart and Stroke Foundation. They want to reduce the current 14-per-cent smoking rate of Alberta youth age 12 to 19.
Tarbox said Barb, who died from lung cancer in 2003 at the age of 42, spoke to 50,000 children and teens about the perils of smoking.
“She didn’t go after the adults. They were already making their own choices. She was worried about the kids,” Tarbox said. So are the tobacco companies, he added. “If they don’t have any smokers in a couple of generations, they’re out of business. They’re not stupid. They know where their future dollars are, so if we don’t start combating it now, we’re going to have the same problem in 10 years, 20 years.”
Les Hagen, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, said Pat Tarbox was key in convincing the federal government to move forward with using two stark, disturbing images of a dying Barb on new cigarette packaging, to come out starting March 1.