Smoke-free public places: Taking a cue from Spain

SIR: A New Year ushers in good tidings and new beginnings. For Spaniards, it was the beginning of a new era, as their government was ready to start the year on a “clean bill of health” and taking their health as top priority. On January 2, 2011, the Spanish government placed a complete ban on smoking in public places. These include bars, restaurants, casinos, workplaces, other enclosed public places and even outdoor areas such as playgrounds, hospital yards etc. Non-compliance with this ban attracts a fine of $40 and as high as $100,000 if caught three times.

Spain is not the first country to take the initiative of enacting a smoking ban to protect her citizens from the harmful effect of tobacco. Several other countries have done the same in the past, these include the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, France, Italy,  Australia, Finland, New Zealand, most states of the USA, Egypt, Uganda, to mention a few.

Safeguarding the health of the citizens is the responsibility of any people-oriented government. The ban of smoking in public places is one of the proven ways of controlling tobacco consumption and reducing tobacco-related diseases and deaths.

Over 167 countries are signatories to the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), which is a treaty with several articles aimed at achieving global tobacco control. Nigeria who ratified the FCTC guidelines in 2004 is presently yet to pass the tobacco control bill and also lacks a comprehensive tobacco control structure.

Smoke-free environment helps to de-normalise tobacco smoking, protects non-smokers from the harmful effects of secondhand smoke and helps current smokers to consider quitting. Consequently, individuals, government and insurance companies would spend less income treating tobacco-related diseases. The products of the tobacco industry are generally known and even self-acclaimed to be addictive and injurious to one’s health, causing several health conditions. In simple terms, the tobacco industry is a threat to the health sector of any country. Therefore, a comprehensive tobacco control structure should be put in place to control tobacco consumption in Nigeria.

Arguments such as unemployment that could result from the enactment of smoke-free public places legislation are largely baseless. This is because it’s been widely reported that enforcement of this ban in other countries has shown no negative economic impact and in fact, some economic gains were noted in the long term. Conversely, such countries have experienced a significant drop in the smoking population and an evidence-based improvement in the health of the citizens.

As a nation, our true asset is our health and this should be guarded jealously. Let’s prevail on the National Assembly to pass the Nigeria National Tobacco Control Bill before the expiration of this current dispensation.  It’s a new year and we could take a cue from Spain!

 

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‘How smoking causes instant gene damage’

A STUDY by United States (U.S.) scientists has shown how cigarette smoking within minutes causes genetic damage linked to cancer.

The Agence France Presse (AFP) quoted researchers as saying that the “effect is so fast that it’s equivalent to injecting the substance directly into the bloodstream.”

The study is the first on humans to track how substances in tobacco cause deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) damage, and appears in the peer-reviewed journal Chemical Research in Toxicology, issued by the American Chemical Society.

Using 12 volunteer smokers, scientists tracked pollutants called PAHs, or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, that are carried in tobacco smoke and can also be found in coal-burning plants and in charred barbecue food.

They followed one particular type – phenanthrene, which is found in cigarette smoke – through the blood and saw it form a toxic substance that is known to “trash DNA, causing mutations that can cause cancer,” the study said.

“The smokers developed maximum levels of the substance in a time frame that surprised even the researchers: just 15-30 minutes after the volunteers finished smoking,” the study said.

“These results are significant because PAH diol epoxides react readily with DNA, induce mutations, and are considered to be ultimate carcinogens of multiple PAH in cigarette smoke,” the study said.

Lead scientist, Stephen Hecht, said the study is unique because it examines the effects of inhaling cigarette smoke, without interference from other sources of harm such as pollution or a poor diet.

“The results reported here should serve as a stark warning to those who are considering starting to smoke cigarettes,” Hecht said.

Lung cancer kills about 3,000 people around the world each day, and 90 per cent of those deaths are attributable to cigarette smoking.

The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute.

 

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Tobacco: The ruthless killer next door 1

•Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye, a notable essayist and columnist says that smokers are burning their lungs...

Today, as I allow my mind to endure the oppressive thought that tobacco still remains the ruthless killer next door, what then shall we call its producers and distributors? The answer can only be simple and straightforward: They are people who prosper at the expense of other people’s lives. They make their billions by ruining other people’s health, and eventually terminating their lives. They should therefore not complain if anyone refers to them as proud, happy, licensed murderers

Packs of Killer Poison

How these people are able to deaden their conscience to go on prospering and sustaining their own lives by producing and marketing a scientifically confirmed poison whose only benefit is its ability to cruelly terminate the lives of their fellow human beings beats me hollow? Tobacco never adds even the tiniest value to life; it only destroys it completely. Without mercy. This is a fact nobody has even attempted to deny.

The Nigerian president should put the concern for the lives of many Nigerians above his often whispered personal tastes and habits and take another look at the massive freedom granted by his predecessor to tobacco companies to fill Nigeria with their neatly wrapped and attractively packaged killer poison called cigarettes. If he cannot immediately ban the production of cigarettes in Nigeria, he should, at least, put in place stricter regulations that would ensure that tobacco manufacturing would automatically become a very unprofitable venture in Nigeria. 

I call on Nigerians with lively conscience and genuine friends of Nigeria, to join this clearly winnable battle, to flush these heartless fellows out of Nigeria. The question I have always asked cigarette producers is: can they boldly come out in the open and assure me that the commodity they manufacture and distribute to hapless individuals cannot be rightly classified as poison? Again, they should tell me one single benefit the human body derives from smoking cigarettes. Has it not been convincingly proved everywhere, and publicly admitted even by tobacco producers, that tobacco is a merciless killer, an unrelenting cannibal that devours a man when his life is sweetest to him?  If then tobacco is a proven killer, can’t those who manufacture and circulate it in society be classified as murderers? Hasn’t even our own Federal Ministry of Health been shouting and warning us with passion, sense of urgency and alarm that TOBACCO SMOKERS ARE LIABLE TO DIE YOUNG?

What the Health Ministry here is saying is very simple: Anyone offering you a cigarette is only wishing you an untimely death. In fact, he is just saying to you: May you die young! That is exactly what tobacco companies, including the government that issued them the license to transact their deadly trade in Nigeria are wickedly wishing their Nigerian victims! Yes, tobacco companies manufacture products that make people to die young. How wicked and heartless could they be!

Before now, these tobacco companies would erect fresh, beautiful billboards, and fill several pages of newspapers and magazines with glossy adverts. Unfortunately, that option is no longer available to them, because of the ban on outdoor advertising of their lethal products. I am glad that those pleasant pictures of vivacious achievers smiling home with glittering laurels just because they were hooked to particular brands of cigarette which used to adorn glossy billboards and magazine pages, and which had proved irresistible baits to several people, especially youths, have now vanished from the public domain. 

As a youth, the elegant, gallant, athletic rodeo man whose image marketed the 555 brand of cigarette was my best idea of a handsome, hard-working winner. My friends and I admired him, carried his photographs about, and yearned to smoke 555 in order to grow up and become energetic and vivacious like him. One wonders how many youths that have been terminally impaired because they went beyond mere fantasies or obsession with their cigarette heroes and became chain-smokers and irredeemable addicts. Managers of tobacco adverts are so adept in this grand art of monumental deception that their victims never suspect any harm until they have willingly placed their heads on the slaughter slab. Indeed, only very few are able to look beyond the meretricious pictures and the pernicious pomp of cigarette promotional stunt and see the blood-curdling pictures of piecemeally ruined lungs and other sensitive organs, murky, chimney-like breath tracts and heart region, the looming merciless and spine-chilling fangs of an all devouring cancer, tuberculosis, sundry lung and heart diseases, and their associate unyielding killers. 

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Group seeks quick passage of anti-tobacco bill

SOURCE: PUNCH, MONDAY 20TH, DECEMBER 2010

GROUP SEEKS QUICK PASSAGE OF ANTI-TOBACCO BILL

The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria on Sunday stated that the passage of the National Tobacco Control Bill by the Senate was being stalled by the absence of the Chairman, Senate Committee on Health, Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello.

The bill which, according to the group, was sponsored by Senator Olorunnimbe Mamora from Lagos State, was scheduled to be presented for third reading last Thursday but was stood down due to the absence of Obasanjo-Bello.

The bill has been in the Senate since 2008 and is a comprehensive law that will regulate the manufacture, sales, distribution and marketing of tobacco products in Nigeria.

A statement by ERA/FoEN’s Director (Corporate Accountability and Administration), Mr. Akinbode Oluwafemi, said it was disturbing that the bill had suffered another setback. The group urged the Senate to give it proper treatment.

He said it was a comprehensive law that would save the lives of millions of Nigerians, if passed.

Oluwafemi said, “We find it disturbing that the National Tobacco Control Bill should suffer this setback again. We think the Senate should accord the bill the importance it deserves. It is a comprehensive law that is designed to save millions of lives now and in the future.

“The tobacco control bill is a bill for the next generation and it should be treated with the utmost importance that it deserves. We are sad that once again, we seem to have missed a very important opportunity.”

Oluwafemi, however, praised the efforts made on the bill so far adding. “We salute the courage of the members of Senate who have worked on the bill in the last two years, we commend the maturity displayed by members of the health committee and especially the Senate President, David Mark, for his support. We hope the Senate will continue deliberations on the bill at the earliest opportunity.”

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The African Tobacco Control Consortium Launches a Virtual Resource Centre for Tobacco Control

Lagos - The African Tobacco Control Consortium (ATCC), a coalition of public health organizations focused on preventing  the tobacco epidemic in Africa,  coordinated by the American Cancer Society in partnership with the Africa Tobacco Control Alliance (ATCA), Africa Tobacco Control Regional Initiative (ATCRI) Framework Convention Alliance (FCA), Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (CTFK), and the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) is unveiling its virtual resource centre today - http://www.africatobaccocontrol.org

 

Visitors to this multilingual website will find extensive information on a wide range of tobacco control issues and highlights on various happenings around tobacco control in the sub-Saharan African region. More so, the trilingual (English, French and Portuguese) website provides information about the different components of the ATCC project including grants, technical assistance and how it plans to support tobacco control advocates and organisations in this part of the continent.

Furthermore, this unique  one-stop e-warehouse for tobacco control resources  dedicated to sub-Saharan Africa houses a virtual library in which materials relevant to tobacco issues and its control specific to this region can be accessed. It is planned that the site will be interactive in the nearest future in order to stimulate debates on current and pertinent tobacco control issues, as well as provide space for experience sharing among tobacco control stakeholders in the region.

Above all, the site shall be updated regularly and shall highlight tobacco control profiles of the 46 countries of the sub-Saharan African region as defined by WHO as well as offer an in-depth knowledge on each country through collated researches and studies. 

Reducing tobacco-related deaths in Africa

-Alexander Chiejina

As stakeholders advocate passage of Nigeria Tobacco Control Bill

African nations seem poised to undergo the highest increase in the rate of tobacco use among developing countries. This is as about 90 percent of people on the continent, perhaps, remain without meaningful protection from second-hand smoke.

Earlier this year, it was estimated that smoking will claim the lives of six million people globally in 2010, 72 percent of whom reside in low and middle-income countries, Nigeria inclusive. However, it is believed that if current trends continue, tobacco may kill seven million people annually by 2020 and more than eight million people annually by 2030.

Following health risks associated with tobacco consumption, which according to health experts is the second leading cause of death (after hypertension) and currently responsible for the death of one in 10 adults globally, experts are of the view that enacting effective policies towards reducing tobacco consumption in Nigeria will go a long way in saving the lives of people.

In an interview with BusinessDay, Akinbode Oluwafemi, programme manager, Environmental Rights in Nigeria/ Friends of the Earth, said cigarette contains about 4000 toxic and cancer-causing chemicals which are responsible for most cases of lung cancer.

While acknowledging the fact that smoking causes various forms of cancer, Akinbode noted that measures aimed at reducing smoking in Europe and America has driven the tobacco industry to developing countries like Nigeria, where the industry continues to flout regulations, marketing to young and impressionable youths, and ity, there is the need for Nigeria to key into WHO”s FCTC which seeks to protect people from the consequences of tobacco consumption by reducing the demand for and supply of tobacco, call for stronger tax and price measures, regulation of tobacco advertisements and the introduction of strong health messages on tobacco packages, adopting protective measures against exposure to tobacco smoke, the lives of Nigerians would greatly be protected.

It is noteworthy to state that in about less than two years, Kenya and Niger Republic enacted national smoke-free policies, and South Africa, which has been smoke-free since 2007, demonstrated that smoke-free laws could work in Africa. In what seemed as a first for the region, Mauritius recently passed a law that hooking them on smoking.

“Several African countries are fighting against the tobacco industry‘s aggressive campaigns to stop public health interventions by putting smoke-free laws into place, probably protecting more than 100 million more people since 2007. Smoke-free public places are one example of a low-cost and extremely effective intervention that must be implemented now to protect health,” he observed.

For Tosin Orogun, programme manager, Africa Tobacco Control Regional Initiative, Nigeria, “the World Health Organisation insists that strong worldwide enforcement and implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) could save 200 million lives by the year 2050.”

Orogun stated that though Nigeria signed the FCTC, which had been ratified by over 168 countries since 2005, there have been deaths relating to tobacco, especially cancer.

As parties to the global tobacco treaty begin their biennial meeting in Uruguay, the African Tobacco Control Consortium (ATCC), a coalition of global and African public health organisations focused on preventing the tobacco epidemic in Africa, there is the need to ensure that adoption of effective guidelines on Article 9 & 10 of WHO’s FCTC which seeks to promote smoke- free environment which tobacco multinationals’ are alleging to scuttle.

At the moment, only Osun, Cross River States and the Federal Capital Territory have passed the law prohibiting people from smoking tobacco in the public in Nigeria. Giving this realCancer

and challenge of management in Nigeriais close to meeting the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control standards, ranking among the most robust anti-smoking measures in the world.

The National Tobacco Control Bill (NTCB), which seeks to prohibit tobacco smoking in places and is now before the National Assembly, saw over 45 non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including local and international organisations, making presentations in support of the bill.

Since the Public Hearing in July 2009, Nigerians and other stakeholders in public health including Babatunde Osotimehin, former health minister; Umar Modibbo, former FCT minister, Nigerians are expecting Senator Iyabo-Obasanjo Bello, chairman, Committee on Health at the National Assembly to return the bill to plenary for adoption. But for how long will the hope of 150 million people be eventually realised?

Stakeholders are of the view that when the bill is passed and enforced, two outcomes are possible: The level of national savings will increase and other forms of consumption expenditure will be substituted for tobacco expenditure.

Studies in several countries have examined the potential economic impact of the complete elimination of tobacco use and production. The evidence shows that elimination of tobacco will not affect the economy. This is because tobacco use has many externalised costs (costs not paid for by smokers or tobacco manufacturers). This involves healthcare costs incurred by governments to take care of smoking -related diseases.

When people no longer spend their money on tobacco, they will spend their money on other things. This alternative spending will stimulate other sectors of the economy. If the money is saved rather than spent, the increased savings are likely to have stimulatory macroeconomic effects.

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