What legal consumer product can harm everyone exposed to it, kills half of the people who use it as intended, is the single most preventable cause of death in the world today and will kill more than five million people this year? This is not a trick question. Most people already know the answer, although some ignore it while others are in denial. It is tobacco.
In spite of this and the fact that this information is widely available, particularly online, tobacco use around the world is escalating. Thousands of mainly young people are, even as you read this editorial, taking their first cigarette. For the majority of them it will lead to addiction and poor health and for some eventually death.
Unfortunately, the ravages tobacco causes to one’s health are not seen immediately. For some it takes years, decades even, and for many by the time the damage is evident it is too late to correct it. Anti-tobacco/smoking advocates believe that the best way to stop tobacco/nicotine addiction is never to start smoking and they are right.
However, they are facing an uphill battle in getting people to take this on board, as they must battle the spin put on the use of tobacco by those for whom selling death is simply business.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is pushing for a tobacco-free world.
In addition to all of the work it has done over the years, including at the international level, initiating a multilateral treaty, which some 150 countries have now signed, to reduce the demand and supply of tobacco, it has established six tobacco control policies that could be effective, but which need political will to work. The new strategy, MPOWER, calls for governments to expand the fight against the tobacco epidemic, by monitoring tobacco use and prevention policies; protecting people from tobacco smoke; offering help to quit tobacco use; warning about the dangers of tobacco; enforcing bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, and raising taxes on tobacco. Why does this strategy need political will? Because the tobacco industry worldwide is controlled by corporations that are among the largest and wealthiest in the world and also because some of those who are already addicted to tobacco can in fact be found in governments and positions of power around the world. In addition, some persons will baulk at the removal of the tobacco dollar from sports sponsorship, particularly in countries where there is a dearth of funds for this. Some governments prefer not to “offend” the hand that feeds or to run the risk of upsetting their constituents by attempting to save their lives and those of their children and loved ones.
As the developed world began to take firm steps to control tobacco use some years ago, global tobacco companies moved into developing countries and bought up the controlling shares in indigenous companies which allowed them to use their big bucks for marketing and advertising strategies proven to pull in the next generation of addicts. The data on tobacco use shows that it is increasing in developing countries and particularly among women and adolescent girls. It is widely believed that if a person does not start smoking before the age of 21, s/he is unlikely to ever start, hence the move to appeal to the younger generation.
Today is World No Tobacco Day and the theme is ‘Tobacco-Free Youth:
Break the Tobacco Marketing Net.’ In Guyana, the government through the Ministry of Heath has already taken some steps towards tobacco control with its promotion of smoke-free government buildings and schools and enforcing the use of written warnings on cigarette packages and in advertisements. However, it has not yet tackled the heavier issues satisfactorily – marketing, sponsorship and taxation among them. The WHO urges that civil society join with governments in implementing MPOWER in recognition that it will take a concerted effort to beat back what has become a long and established tradition. Perhaps a way to awaken society to its role in this is to use some of the more graphic imagery that has caused waves in the developed world. The WHO has used drama to some effect in the presentation of its report on the global tobacco epidemic: “In the 20th century, the tobacco epidemic killed 100 million people worldwide.
During the 21st century, it could kill one billion.” To this we might add, will you or your descendants be among them?
