‘World No Tobacco Day’

May 31, is “World no Tobacco Day”. It will mark the 30th year since 1987 when the World Health Organization (WHO) implemented its annual campaign aimed at educating the public on the dangers of smoking tobacco and at fighting the tobacco epidemic that has cut short the lives of thousands of smokers around the world.

The t heme of t his year’s question, other cigarette addicts would celebration – “Tobacco, a threat to be benefited. development” – falls in the wake “Willpower,” he quipped. “On the of President Rodrigo Duterte’s day I decided to smoke my last stick, Executive Order 26 (dated May 16, I did it.” 2017) banning smoking in public Just like that? What a fine example places and public utility vehicles of strong determination to quit! nationwide. By that example, Toni debunked

I have friends who tried but failed the notion that willpower alone is not to stop cigarette smoking. But there’s enough to suppress tobacco addiction. one who beat the habit cold turkey A really determined quitter would do it – no less than Regional Director in exchange for better health. Toni June Tamayo of the Technical As I write this, I remember my later Education and Skills Development father. He had many times attempted to Authority (TESDA). quit by smoking less frequently. But the

I discovered how he had done only time he finally quit was when he it during a chance meeting in a caught lung cancer. Too late, he passed restaurant. Since we had worked away as a result. together at TESDA in the past, I If you are one of those trying to asked him whether he was still a cut back on your number of sticks chain smoker. because you can’t quit outright, the

Before Toni could answer, his bad news is that halving the number wife Dinda butted in, “He no longer of cigarettes you smoke every day smokes.” hardly makes a difference in your

“How did you do it?” I asked Toni, risk of dying from smoking-related hoping that if he could answer the disease. Take it from a study made

by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo, Norway.

“A reduction i n cigarette consumption by more than 50 percent,” wrote study author Aage Tveral, “is not associated with a markedly lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease or smoking- related cancer.”

The study included over 51,000 men and women between the ages of 20 and 34, who were monitored twice over a period of 20 years.

The participants were grouped according to their smoking history. There were those who never smoked and ex-smokers. But among those who began the study as smokers, there were quitters ( stopped smoking over the course of the study), moderate smokers ( 1- 14 cigarettes daily), reducers (started the study while smoking 15 or more cigarettes but cut that number by half) and heavy smokers (15 or more cigarettes a day).

At the end of the study, researchers found that there was no difference in the number of smoking-related deaths between the heavy smokers and the reducers. For women, in fact, the death rate from cancer rose in the group that reduced the number of cigarettes they smoked.

Only the group of men who cut back the number of cigarettes they smoked during the first 15 years of the study saw any improvement in death rates, although it was slight.

Tveral wrote that as a result of his findings, doctors and other health educators should make sure that patients understand that cutting back is not nearly the same as quitting.

In other words, the only safe way out of the risk caused by smoking is to quit. com/

(hvego31@gmail. PN)