World No Tobacco Month encourages the world’s citizens to kick the nicotine habit and adopt a healthier lifestyle.
Some facts you need to know about smoking:
Tobacco comes from the leaves of the tobacco plant (Nicotiana tabacum and Nicotiana rustica). The leaves are dried, cured, aged and combined with other ingredients to produce a range of products such as cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, chewing tobacco, and wet and dry snuff.
Leaves from the tobacco plant contain nicotine. Nicotine is a stimulant drug. Stimulant drugs act on the central nervous system to speed up the messages travelling between the brain and the body.
World No Tobacco Day is observed around the world every year on 31 May. It is meant to encourage a 24-hour period of abstinence from all forms of tobacco consumption across the globe.
The day is further intended to draw global attention to the widespread prevalence of tobacco use and to its negative health effects, which currently lead to 5.4 million deaths worldwide annually.
There is existing legislation on tobacco that defines where smokers are allowed to smoke and were they are not permitted. Since the introduction of the South African Tobacco Products Control Act in 1993, a notable victory has been scored in the battle against tobacco in South Africa – where smoking has been rated the second highest health concern, after HIV/Aids.
It is estimated that cigarette consumption has fallen dramatically since the early 1990s while the percentage of adult smokers in the country has dropped from 32 to 26.5 percent. The act also restricts smoking in public places which includes the workplace, restaurants and bars and public transport.
The act stipulates penalties for transgressors of the law, and specifies the maximum permissible levels of tar and nicotine. Although the environmental health department is responsible for enforcing the legislation, it still remains a challenge, as many citizens are not educated on the subject.
Dangers of smoking
Smoking kills 6 million people every year around the world, and more than half a million non-smokers get affected by second-hand smoke. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death. In fact, tobacco kills more people every year than alcohol, HIV/Aids, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined. Smoking increases the risk of heart disease, cholesterol, increased blood pressure and is dangerous for diabetics too.
Something to think about
How do you feel about inhaling insecticide, car exhaust fumes, gas chamber poison, ant poison, floor cleaner, moth balls and nuclear waste? This is what a smoker inhales in one puff. The insecticide is nicotine, car exhaust fumes is carbon monoxide, the gas chamber poison is hydrogen cyanide, ant poison is ammonia, the mothballs are naphthalene and the nuclear waste are radioactive compounds.
Chewing tobacco has even additional deadly agents such as formaldehyde (used to embalm dead bodies), cadmium (which is found in car batteries), and lead (found in paint). With all the negative information you have on smoking, would it be advisable to still smoke?
Details: Thami Mtembu (Environmental health practitioner), 011 582 1510.
