Anti-smoking law: Only 1% of Nigerians are protected by smoke-free laws —Report

By Waheed Bakare

Only one per cent of Nigeria’s over 140 million people are protected by strong smoke-free laws, a new report released last Wednesday by Global Smokefree Partnership and the American Cancer Society has revealed.

Besides, the report also stated that in Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory, 55 per cent of school pupils were not aware that secondhand smoke is harmful to health.

Medical experts had repeatedly said there was scientific evidence that secondhand smoke was a proven cause of serious diseases and premature death.

According to the report, “Global Voices: Rebutting the Tobacco Industry, Winning Smokefree Air,” nearly 90 per cent of people on the African continent are without meaningful protection from secondhand smoke.

The report noted that it was worrisome that Africa, which accounted for 14 per cent of the world’s population, had just four per cent of the world’s smokers today. Despite the infinitesimal percentage of the world’s smokers on the continent, the report noted that African nations would soon undergo the highest increase in the rate of tobacco use among developing countries, “with more than half the continent expected to double its tobacco use within 12 years if current trends continue.”

“If we don’t act now on tobacco control in Africa, millions of lives will be lost because tobacco is now becoming an issue in Africa,” Tom Glynn of the Global Smokefree Partnership told the Agence France Presse.

Despite the gloomy picture, the report noted that many African countries were resisting tobacco industry’s aggressive efforts to stop governments from putting in place smoke-free laws.

“For the first time in history, we have the tools in hand to prevent a pandemic. Recent data suggests that, with current trends, more than half of the region of Africa will double its tobacco consumption within 12 years. Smoke-free public places are one example of a low-cost and extremely effective intervention that must be implemented now to protect health.” said Dr. Otis W. Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.

To back up its claim, the report observed that Kenya and Niger had enacted national smoke-free policies within the last year, and South Africa, which had been smoke-free since March 2007, still played a major role on the continent.

The South Africa’s inspiring role, the report added, was an indication that smoke-free laws could work on the continent.

“In a first for the region, Mauritius recently passed a law that is close to meeting the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control standards, ranking among the strongest anti-smoking measures in the world,” the report stated.

But it said implementation remained a challenge in many places such as Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana and Uganda, adding that “barriers include identifying resources for implementation, and tobacco industry opposition to smoke-free laws.”

For instance, a Lagos-based lawyer, Mr. Fred Agbaj, regretted that since anti-smoking law was passed in 1990, Nigerian law enforcement agencies were yet to arrest and prosecute any violator.

He said, “I am aware that in this country, the regime of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida passed the anti-smoking law in 1990. By this law, smoking was banned in public places. I am aware that the law is still in force but no arrest has been made. Police have access to public places where people smoke but how many have they arrested?”

Agbaje, who spoke on the phone with our correspondent, advised the government to have the will, resources and determination to enforce this law in the interest of the majority who were not smokers.

However, the Programme Manager, Enviromental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, Mr. Bode Oluwafemi, faulted the report and disagreed with Agbaje.

He said the report was a “fallacy”, adding that ban of smoking in public places was still in force in Nigeria. He said the law specified that smoking should not be carried out indoors.

Oluwafemi described anti-smoking law as “citizen law meant to teach attitude.” He said if people for instance, smoke within a court premises, they had not violated the law as such places were not indoors.

“There is a lot of misconception about this law. The law says you cannot smoke indoors. If you go to government buildings, schools, restaurants, hospitals, do people smoke there? The answer is no. Enforcing the law does not mean people should be jailed. The law is self-enforcing and it is meant to teach attitudes,” he said.

In spite of this sharp division, the report exposed tobacco industry’s tactics aimed at holding back legislation and convincing African governments that tobacco was important to economic activity, that raising taxes on cigarettes and implementing smoke-free laws would result in revenue and job losses.

The report estimated that in 2010, smoking would kill six million people worldwide, 72 per cent of them would come from low and middle-income countries.

It added that if the current trends were not abated, tobacco would claim the lives of seven million people a year by 2020 and more than eight million people annually by 2030.

The report, which was launched at a media summit hosted by the American Cancer Society on November 12, 2009, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, observed that some one billion people in 45 countries were now protected from health hazards of secondhand tobacco smoke at work and in public places.

“Despite this progress, more than 85 per cent of the world’s people are without such protection,” it warned.

Countries that have enacted strong, nationwide smoke-free laws include: Bermuda, Bhutan, Colombia, Djibouti, Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Uruguay. Most Canadian provinces/territories and Australian states/territories have also enacted such laws.

The National Secretary-General, Nigerian Medical Association Dr. Ken Okoro, said secondhand smoking is better known as perceive smoking. He said percesive smoking was when non a smoker inhale the smoke puffed out by a smoker.

Okoro in a telephone interview confirmed that perceive smoker could be at higher risk compare to a smoker because perceive smoker had no control over the quantity of smoke he or she inhales.

He said, “Sometimes a perceive smoker is sometimes more expose to danger than actual smoker. A smoker inhales the smoke and puff out some. So, he can determine the level of smoke he inhales. Whereas, a perceive smoker innocently inhales as much smoke quantity as possible and cannot puff out any smoke.

“This presupposes that a secondhand smoker can have lung cancer, small blood vessel or cardiovascular disease.”

SOURCE

Femi Kuti - Why I Quit Smoking

You just mentioned that you neither drink nor smoke. Where do you get your kicks?

It is my work. Hard work.

But it may be difficult for people to believe you.

That is their business. I have smoked before and I don‘t deny it. But I have stopped. I stopped smoking for fifteen years. I did it again for two years and finally stopped. I started smoking after my mother died because I was very depressed. I have not done it for a couple of years now. Because of this same argument, I stopped. I don‘t need to smoke to become a great man. Even some people say that I don‘t smoke like my dad because I am not as strong as he was. I will not smoke.

Why the decision?

It is bad for my health. It gives me chest pains, but the main reason is on moral ground. It is because I address a serious and important subject that concerns justice and values and I don‘t want anybody to rubbish me by saying that I am a smoker or that I smoke Indian hemp. If I am fighting social ills and I continue to smoke, people will not take me seriously and I don‘t want that. Even if most members of my band smoke, I have to restrain myself just to combat issues. There are so many social ills that I am fighting against in my music and I cannot afford to allow myself to be embarrassed and dismissed as a hemp smoker.

SOURCE

15 cigarettes: all it takes to harm genes

-Steve Connor

Study reveals the genetic mutations suffered by smokers who go on to develop lung cancer

One genetic mutation occurs on average for every 15 cigarettes that a typical lung-cancer patient smokes, according to a study that has identified for the first time all of the mutations acquired during the lifetime of a cancer patient.

Scientists have completed a full genetic analysis of the genomes of cancer patients, and hope the information will lead to a fundamental understanding of the causes of cancer – and possibly drugs and treatments – by identifying the mutations that turn a healthy cell into a cancerous tumour cell.

They studied a lung-cancer victim who had built up about 23,000 DNA mutations in his lung cells that were linked with exposure to the toxins found in cigarette smoke and had accumulated over his lifetime.

They also looked at a patient with malignant melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, who had acquired 30,000 specific genetic mutations known to be associated with exposure to sunlight.

Scientists believe this new insight into the genetics of cancer will eventually lead to new drugs and tailor-made treatments that target the specific changes to the gene that help to trigger the disease, as well as new techniques for identifying secondary cancers that have evaded treatment in other parts of the body.

"For the first time, we have a comprehensive map of all mutations in a cancer cell," said Dr Peter Campbell of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, which led the Cancer Genome project to decipher the entire DNA sequence of tumour cells in order to identify the mutations.

"The profile of mutations we observed [in the lung-cancer patient] is exactly that expected from tobacco, suggesting that the majority of the 23,000 we found are caused by the cocktail of chemicals found in cigarettes. On the basis of average estimates, we can say that one mutation is fixed in the genome for every 15 cigarettes smoked," Dr Campbell said.

The study, published in the journal Nature, involved the sequencing of the entire genome of a lung-cancer cell 60 times in order to be sure that all of the smallest mutations were identified. The scientists then compared the genome sequence with that of a healthy cell taken from the same patient.

A similar procedure was performed on the cells of a patient with skin cancer, which is how the researchers were able to show that the malignant skin cells contained changes that resulted from exposure to ultraviolet light, said Professor Mike Stratton at the Sanger Institute.

"These are the two main cancers in the developed world for which we know the primary exposure. For lung cancer it is cigarette smoke, and for malignant melanoma it is exposure to sunlight," Professor Stratton said.

"With these genome sequences, we have been able to explore deep into the past of each tumour, uncovering with remarkable clarity the imprints of these environmental mutagens [mutation-causing agents] on DNA, which occurred years before the tumour became apparent," he said.

SOURCES 1, 2 ,3 , 4 , 5

Revolutionary case against tobacco use in Nigeria

-Alexander Chiejina

…Tobacco control bill yet to be passed by National Assembly Without a doubt, the health, economic, social, and environmental consequences of tobacco use in Nigeria and the continent are enormous.
Little wonder the World Health Organisation (WHO) recently revealed that African countries are experiencing a 4.3 percent annual increase in the rate of tobacco consumption. This has resulted in an upsurge of lung cancer and related cases which are now prevalent in the society.
It was against this background that experts, at a recent training for health reporters on cancer reporting organised by Journalists Advocacy on Tobacco and Health held recently at Ogba, Lagos urged that the trend should be checked.
Speaking at the event, Akinbode Oluwafemi, programme manager, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth (FoEN), noted that tobacco smoking is responsible for more than 85 percent of lung cancers. This, he explained, is because smoking-related cancer accounts for 30 percent of cancer-related deaths, adding that renowned journalists in the country like Steve Kadiri, Yinka Craig, Momoh Kubanji, Tina Onwudinwe and Beko Ransome Kuti lost their lives due to the health hazards associated with the consumption of cigarettes.
“Research findings have it that there are about 599 approved additives in a stick of cigarette. However, cigarette smoke has been proven to contain over 4000 toxic and cancer causing chemicals; carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, to name but a few,” Oluwafemi disclosed. According to him, cigarette advertising, promotion and sponsorship such as ‘Welcome to London, cool feeling’ have made cigarette smoking appealing to a lot of youths, without some of these tobacco companies apprising the public of dangers associated with smoking.
Lending his view, Tosin Orogun, programme manager, Communications and IT, Africa Tobacco Control Regional Initiative (ATCRI), declared that the rise in cigarette smoking in the society is traceable to tobacco companies which increasingly target the developing world as barriers rise and smoking rates fall in more mature markets. “What we (ATCRI) have been trying to do is to facilitate the adoption, implementation and enforcement of effective in-country tobacco control policies, legislation and programs in Nigeria and across the continent,”
Orogun revealed. Already, a 2009 report on the implementation of smoke-free environments aimed at combating Global Tobacco Epidemic shows that five more countries (Djibouti, Egypt, Islamic Republic of Iran, Malaysia and Mauritius) meet the best practices for health warnings on cigarette packages. Three other countries (Israel, Romania and the United Arab Emirates), meanwhile, offer comprehensive help in the drive to eradicate tobacco consumption. In the same vein, only Panama has joined the small group of countries that ban all forms of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, even as more than 90 percent of people lack protection from tobacco industry marketing. Six more countries (Czech Republic, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, the Netherlands and Seychelles) have levied tobacco taxes higher than 75 percent of retail price.
Lastly, of the world’s 100 most populous cities, 22 are smoke-free. Sadly, though, reports from the recently concluded media summit hosted by the American Cancer Society ahead of the AORTIC cancer in Africa, stated that 55 percent of school students are not aware that secondhand smoke is harmful to health, and only 1 percent of Nigeria’s population are protected by strong smoke-free laws. This lays bare the fact that if nothing is done to hastily check public smoking in the country, the rising figures of cancer and other non-communicable diseases may remain.
The bill to ban cigarette smoking in public places which had its public hearing before the National Assembly 19 July this year should quickly be passed into law. A part of the bill which seeks to protect people from secondhand smoke, raise taxes on tobacco, enforce a level of ban on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship would in the long run, save Nigerians from self- inducing cancer types.

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