Ode to Wanda de Kanter | Warrior against tobacco industry

This text was translated using AI and may contain errors. If you have suggestions or comments, please contact us at info.ode@amsterdammuseum.nl.

I met you on 18 December 2018 at Most Influential Woman award ceremony of the feminist magazine OPZIJ. A well-attended party at the Amsterdam Museum. You received the coveted title - number one on a list of 100 influential women - together with lawyer Bénédicte Ficq. You received the award for your ongoing - and more than five years later we can say successful - fight against the Dutch tobacco industry. You are a lung specialist at the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek hospital here in Amsterdam and have been fighting the tobacco industry in all kinds of ways and with all kinds of initiatives to prevent lung cancer for more than 15 years.  

At that party in December 2018, many people were present to congratulate you and the other winners. Yet you found time that evening to have what I felt was a very valuable conversation with me. I told you about my father's illness, his treatment and prognosis but, above all, about the struggle I experienced with the fact that he smoked. 

I don't smoke myself. In fact, I am totally against smoking. I had a very hard time understanding why my father couldn't quit. Not even during chemo treatments when there was still a small chance he could beat that nasty disease. Even as I write this down, I know that there will be many people who think: ‘’How stupid that a cancer patient continues smoking during treatment‘’. People even question whether a patient who is addicted deserves treatment. 

Wanda, that evening you explained to me that it is more common that patients unfortunately cannot quit, even when their lives depend on it. You explained to me that my father, born in 1959 and smoking from the age of 15, was a victim of an enormously strong lobby of the criminal tobacco industry and the normalisation of smoking. And that as a result, he is now a victim of this terrible disease. You told me, just as you tell anyone who will hear, that the ruthless tobacco industry makes children addicted. Because of advertisements and popularity of smoking, as many as 90% of men in the Netherlands smoked in the 60s and 70s. My father started smoking as a child in 1973. As a child, because that's what you are when you are 15. 

You explained to me that that is exactly what makes you so angry; the blame for addiction lies with the criminal tobacco industry, not with those who have been knowingly made addicted. Patients, according to you, are far too often seen not as victims but as people who have done it to themselves. I agreed and explained to you that when I told people that my father had lung cancer, people often asked me: did he smoke? As if that made it less bad. You confirmed that this is a bizarre reasoning and unfortunately very common. This recognition did a lot to me.

I told my father about our conversation. I confidently explained to him that as a lung cancer patient, he is a victim of the tobacco industry. He waved it away: ‘’Oh my darling, it's just really stupid to smoke,‘’. He was embarrassed, I think. Meanwhile, my father passed away. Of lung cancer. Because of smoking.

Talking to you made me understand my father better. I hope many more people will learn to understand lung cancer patients better. Of course, you can't have a personal conversation with all Dutch people like you did with me, but you are doing a good job of making as many people as possible realise that the tobacco industry kills. In this list of influential women doing something meaningful, you should therefore not be missing.