by Bankole Oluwafemi
The global tobacco industry counts on this ignorance to bolster a business that is reported to be booming in emerging economies, where information about the negatives of tobacco consumption aren’t quite as widespread and the regulatory frameworks aren’t as effective.
So you don’t smoke. That doesn’t necessarily mean that all is right with the world. Far from it, in fact. The negative health effects of smoking on smokers are obvious and almost universally acknowledged. What isn’t as obvious however, is the effect of smoking on non-smokers. It’s a serious concern that doesn’t get the amount of attention that it really deserves, seeing how focused we are on actual smokers themselves.
But it is an unavoidable reality that tobacco smoking endangers and kills many other people asides the smoker themselves. None of this stuff is made up. Years of scientific concensus and statistical research have shown that secondhand smoke is a known human carcinogen and contains more than 7,000 chemical compounds. More than 250 of these chemicals are known to be harmful, and at least 69 are known to cause cancer.
Basically, every time someone smokes, they treat everyone around them to a toxic cocktail of lethal substances that you wouldn’t find in your ordinary margarita. Check out (but don’t sample) some of the ingredients –
Hydrogen cyanide — a highly poisonous gas used in chemical weapons and pest control
Benzene — a component of gasoline
Formaldehyde — a chemical used to embalm corpses
Carbon monoxide — a poisonous gas found in car exhaust
That certainly doesn't sound like an agreeable mix, not in the least. And that’s just four out of 69 very dangerous substances.
Evidence also shows that inhaled sidestream smoke, the main component of second-hand smoke, is about four times more toxic than mainstream smoke.
The overall effect of secondhand smoke are summed up by sobering statistics. Over 600,000 non-smokers die each year from inhaling second hand smoke, an unbelievably high death toll for such a passive activity. Men, women, and heart-breakingly, children who are not only most vulnerable but often aren’t in a position to do anything about it.
By now, do you still think it's okay to be near that person that smokes? Not to mention living, working or being married to one.
On the 11th of July, the Ministry of Health released a report on adult tobacco use in Nigeria — Nigeria's Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) — the first of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa. The news from that report is both good and bad. Tobacco use in Nigeria is low – around 5.6 percent, a fact that can be possibly be attributed to predominant social, moral and religious compunctions. The bad news however is that widespread ignorance of tobacco smoke’s deleterious effects still persists.
The global tobacco industry counts on this ignorance to bolster a business that is reported to be booming in emerging economies, where information about the negatives of tobacco consumption aren’t quite as widespread and the regulatory frameworks aren’t as effective.
Which is precisely why the Nigerian government needs to take a harder line in approaching the looming menace of tobacco. There are already such policies in play in Lagos and Abuja that ban smoking in Lagos and Abuja, but those are clearly isolated instances that need to be implemented across the board.
At the federal level however, there are however growing indications that Nigerian policy makers have finally begun to advert their minds to the pursuit of concerted legislative measures at the behest of a number of local anti-tobacco advocacy NGOs, that will limit the sale, marketing and consumption of tobacco in the country.
Creating a smoke free atmosphere is however not the sole duty of the government. Everyone has a role to play. So what can you do? First, get the facts –
- tobacco smoke, direct or second-hand, causes disease, and death.
- no level of exposure to tobacco smoke is safe. Not smoking is no guarantee. People who smoke are harming not just themselves but everyone else in their immediate vicinity.
- children are especially vulnerable because they cannot escape from authority figures who indulge in the habit.
Armed with these facts, you not only know to avoid tobacco smoke as much as possible but also to use that knowledge to help everyone around you, as well as support any anti-smoking/tobacco initiatives.
For that friend, acquaintance, co-worker or spouse that smokes, you might start by asking what they would rather be — their brother’s keepers and not their brother’s killers? Perhaps going past the desire for personal well being to appeal to their sense of duty to other humans, including their loved ones, might convince them to drop the habit.
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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.
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