allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Why Smoking is Not a Choice (Page 1 of 2)

The argument has raged for sometime between anti-tobacco activists and tobacco producers as to why the deadly habit should be seen as a voluntary past time for the addicted. However, as the battle to control the sale and distribution of the product shifts to the courts in Nigeria, activists insist the youths are involuntarily lured into smoking.

In these days of globalization that has reduced the world to a global village, an event in one part of the world automatically impacts on the others. Following the 1998 law suit by 46 states in the United States against tobacco companies to recoup health-care spending on tobacco-related illnesses, other hard-hit states of the world initiated their own actions. In the U.S. settlement, four tobacco companies agreed to pay 206 billion dollars to the 46 states over 25 years and to cease advertising targeting youth.

Added to that, U.S. juries have awarded millions of dollars in damages against tobacco companies in compensation to Americans affected by smoking through death and disease.

The Federal Government and some state governments working in concert with some non-governmental organisations, have since launched the onslaught against the tobacco firms by slamming several suits against them. This, is inspite of the fact that the tobacco firms say smoking is by choice. The suit filed at the Federal High Court in Abuja against big tobacco companies such as International Tobacco Limited; Philip Morris International; British American Tobacco Plc; its Nigerian subsidiary British American Tobacco (Nigeria) Limited; and the lobby group the Tobacco Institute, seeks to re-enact the American success.

The suit wants relief to regulate tobacco smoking, given the high number of under-aged children in Africa's most populous country. The government is also claiming 44 billion dollars in compensation from the tobacco companies. Several states have initiated separate suits aimed at recouping expenses incurred in public health over a long period of time.

However, the tobacco firms have often fought back spiritedly using their fat purse as incentive. But as Mr. Tunde Irukera, one of the government lawyers in the suit, said recently in an interactive session with the media, the suits must continue. "The claim is not just about medication for tobacco-related ailments, as some people assume. It covers the entire cost of health care related to tobacco; and the punitive and anticipatory damages that will result from tobacco smoking in future," Irukera said.

He said lawsuits offer the prospect of large monetary awards, which can help cover smoking-related medical costs and provide some compensation to government-financed healthcare systems or injured individuals. Irukera maintained that litigation against the tobacco industry abuses and brings to the fore public health hazards that the industry has concealed or government regulators have failed to address.

Also speaking at the forum organized by the Coalition Against Tobacco (CAT), Mr. Akinbode Oluwafemi, programme manager, Environmental Rights Action and coordinator of Tobacco Control Alliance, said cigarettes remain the only product that is manufactured and sold that has no advantage whatsoever to the body. He said the industry has launched the most aggressive and costly defence possible, refused to enter into settlement negotiations, resisted court orders to supply documents and sought to delay trials in order to wear out the plaintiffs' side financially and emotionally.

"Even as they denied that smoking caused health problems, the fact is that most smokers are unaware of the risks of smoking", he said debunking the argument that smokers voluntarily decided to smoke and thereby, "assumed the risk" of smoking.

Also speaking, Mr. Dapo Akinosun said smoking could not be said to be by choice since the youth, who are recruited early into the habit can hardly decide for themselves. "You cannot find a single person today, who says he took to smoking as an adult. Every one of them was lured into the act by a friend or an acquaintance at an early age either in the secondary school or as a fresh university undergraduate," he said.

He said given the rate of smoking among young people in Nigeria and the fact that tobacco-related ailments take about 20 years to manifest, the government anticipates a huge epidemic of tobacco-related diseases in the coming years.

"There will be a major strain on public health care because the majority of these smokers are poor people who have no means to access treatment themselves. They will depend on the government to bear the cost," Akinosun said.

Oluwafemi said the objective of the tobacco company is to falsely project its image as one of taking steps to stop young people from smoking, while they engage in subtle advertising to recruit them. He accused tobacco companies of embarking on such public relations campaigns while practicing the opposite. The companies run competitions in conjunction with smoking promotions.

According to him, the Nigeria Tobacco Control Alliance has particular demands regarding the warnings on cigarette packs. The print of the warning, he added, is so small that it is not easy for smokers to see them. "We want bold warnings that would up take no less than 30 percent of the space on cigarette wrappings," he stated.

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