allAfrica.com: Gambia: Tobacco-Free Youth (Page 1 of 2)

On 31st May, each year, WHO celebrates World No Tobacco Day, highlighting the health risks associated with tobacco use and advocating for effective policies to reduce consumption. According to WHO, tobacco use is the second cause of death globally and is currently responsible for killing one in 10 adults, worldwide.

However, the theme of World No tobacco Day 2008 is 'Tobacco-Free Youth'. WHO believes that young people are aggressively targeted by the tobacco industry, which spends billions of dollars each year marketing its product.

To protect the world's youth from experimenting with tobacco and becoming regular users, this year's World No Tobacco Day campaign calls for a ban on all forms of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.

WHO created 'World No Tobacco Day', in 1987 to draw global attention to the tobacco epidemic and its lethal effects. Tobacco is the number one preventable epidemic that the health community faces.

In view of this development, Health and Nutrition Bantaba joins the campaign on the crusade against tobacco use by highlighting its potential risk to the health of the people. It is indeed a common knowledge that cigarette smoking causes serious health implications and it is even considered to be a most risky habit. This is because it is liable to turn one's life around. It causes hypertension, because there is link between hypertension, cholesterol and smoking.

Smoking elevates the blood pressure and increases anxiety through adrenaline increase. It also impacts the lungs, larynx, pharynx and teeth.

Research further suggests that up to 18 in every 100 deaths from coronary heart disease are associated with smoking. Generally, if you smoke, your risk of a heart attack is about twice that of a non-smoker. However, even if you don't smoke, regular exposure to second-hand smoke, known as passive smoking, can increase your risk by around 25%.

It is rather unfortunate that the majority of smokers are youths and this is what inspires WHO in commemoration of this year's World No Tobacco Day to urge governments to protect the World's 1.8 billion young people by imposing a ban on all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship. The organization noted that this year's campaign focuses on the multi billion dollar efforts of tobacco companies to attract young people to its addictive products, through sophisticated marketing.

According to WHO, recent studies prove that the more young people are exposed to tobacco advertising, the more likely they are to start smoking. Despite this, only 5% of the World's population is covered by comprehensive bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship. Tobacco companies, mean while, continue targeting young people by falsely associating use of tobacco products with qualities such as glamour, energy and sex appeal. It is therefore prudent for all hands to be on deck to protect our youthful population from this deadly addictive products.

In addition, the WHO framework Convention on Tobacco Control preamble revealed that scientific evidence has unequivocally established that tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke cause death, disease and disability, and that there is a time lag between the exposure to smoking and the other uses of tobacco products and the on set of tobacco-related diseases.

This is telling us that not only smoking tobacco can cause health implications but one can also have your health seriously impacted only by exposing to smoke-passive smoking. This should, however, necessitate all and sundry to wage a campaign against public smoking. The habit of smoking cigarette in public transports, social gatherings and workplaces are not uncommon to see and efforts should be made to discourage it, if we are to protect non-smokers from acquiring smoking related ailments.

This is precisely the reason why article 18 of WHO framework Convention on Tobacco Control categorically stated that: "in carrying out their obligations under this convention, the parties agree to have due regard to the protection of the environment and the health of persons in relation to the environment in respect of tobacco cultivation and manufacture within their respective territories."

Furthermore, as we celebrate this year's World No Tobacco Day, the WHO Director-General, Dr. Margret Chan, was quoted as saying that; "in order to survive, the tobacco industry needs to replace those who quit or die with new young consumers." He said the industry do this by creating a complex "Tobacco marketing net' that ensures millions of young people worldwide, with potentially devastating health consequences. "A ban on all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship is a powerful tool we can use to protect the World's youth," the Director-General added.

Since most people start smoking before the age of 18, and almost a quarter of those before the age of 10, tobacco companies market their products wherever youth can be easily accessed in the movies, on the internet, in fashion magazines and at music and sports venues. In a WHO study of 13 to 15 year-olds in schools worldwide, more than 55% of students reported seeing advertisements for cigarettes on billboards in the previous mouth, while 20% owned an item with logo of a cigarette brand on it.

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