How People are Literally Dying for a Cigarette
The Universe
(September 07, 2003)
I READ an eye-opening report recently where researchers at the University of Bristol estimate that every cigarette puffed by a average male smoker lessens his life by 11 minutes.
That means a 20-a-day smoker presuming he smokes the same average through his life from 17 to 71 years, will consume 311,688 cigarettes . He will die 6.5 years earlier than the non-smoker. It really is dying for the sake of a smoke. In Britain and Ireland there are an estimated 13 million smokers and not only is the habit driving them to an early grave but they are affecting about 3 million non-smokers who cant avoid the deadly fumes.
This is why the July 2003 report of the Chief Medical Examiner of Britain has recommended banning smoking in public places. In Ireland, health minister Michael Martin has proposed a ban on smoking in public places to take effect by the year 2004. EU commissioner David Byrne is working for the earliest implementation of the recently signed global anti-smoking treaty.
This is the first-ever treaty on global public health, named the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. It was approved by the World Health Assembly in last May.
The tobacco industry has been desperately doing all it can to block the approval of this historic treaty but has failed. The Bush administration wrote to each of 191 member nations of the World health Organisation lobbying for a provision that would permit any government to nullify any part of the treaty that they found unacceptable. This was so inane that it disgusted member nations and thankfully it went up in smoke.
With sales dwindling in Northern countries, the tobacco giants trained their sights on the weak developing nations of the South and increasingly targeted the youth and female as their next victims.
In Asia and the developing world there is a huge smoking habit that was fuelled by a compelling advertisement campaign for many years. By the year 2030 five million people a year will be dying from smoke related diseases and 70 per cent of them will be from developing countries.
Every human desire and need is exploited by the tobacco advertising juggernaut to advance the smoking habit: sex, sports, wealth, happiness and colonial superiority.
In the Philippines a newly passed law has come into effect banning smoking in all public places including restaurants, except for separate designated areas.
The Secretary of Tourism, Richard Gordon, has appealed to all local mayors to delay the implementation because the tourism and entertainment industry is being badly effected. Tourists, he claims are staying away because of the new law.
So where daily kidnapping, beheadings, a military mutiny, a Muslim war, terrorist bombings and death squads have failed to deter the tourists, the smoking ban, he says is succeeding and it must be blocked. Incredible!
