When people are not allowed to smoke everywhere, they become aware of their behaviour in a different way than before. For the first time people start to feel that they should do something about their smoking. Tobacco as a product Zatonski argues that an important element of successful tobacco policy is to change the concept of tobacco production as regular business. Tobacco is not an ordinary product. As long as we are advertising cigarettes and allow the building of a good image of smoking, we are sending out the message that smoking is not that dangerous, that it is just one habit among others.
Pricing is one of the most powerful tools for reducing smoking.
If you count how long you have to work to buy a pack of cigarettes, the cheapest brands still allow you to smoke very inexpensively in eastern Europe. Governments have had a policy of keeping prices low. Zatonski believes that both private and public changes in attitudes are making way for a reduction of smoking in the CEE countries. He reckons that governments can and must choose if they want to speed things up. But even if they side with the tobacco industry, the process cannot be stopped.