The ‘good’ and the bad of smoking

Davao City collects P2.3 million from smoking and liquor ban violators. This is just one of the news most local dailies here contain. This is the only thing that vices yield positive result: the income they generate for the city.

All the other nuances of vices, especially smoking, produce negative results.

In Davao City for example, according to World Health Organization (WHO) smoke-free city case study (2011), smoking is one of the most significant threats to public health.

In a WHO manual entitled “Promoting SmokeFree Individuals”, it says: “Approximately 10 Filipinos die every hour due to tobacco-related diseases.”

The recent report from Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA) reveals that 107,183 deaths attributed to major tobacco-related diseases have been recorded in the Philippines annually.

Aside from the diseases tobacco brings, the same WHO manual states that: “It has been estimated that the Philippines loses 148 billion pesos yearly to smoking-related diseases and deaths. Aside from this cost, the poorest households with a family member who smokes, spends more than 10 percent of their income on tobacco.”

And that 10 percent could have been used to provide for the basic necessities of the members of the family: clothing, education, savings, vitamin supplements, etc.

Dr. Ashley Lopez, chief of Anti-smoking Task Force in Davao City, defines chronic smokers as those who smoke one or two cigarette packs a day. A cigarette pack contains 20 pieces of cigarettes, priced at P3 or more per piece. And as most smokers buy pieces by pieces of cigarettes and not by packs, they must have consumed P60 to P120 a day. Chronic smokers don’t realize how their vice affects their household economically speaking.

Thus, it cannot be ruled out that smoking also affects family relationships. For whose wife wants her husband to smoke their P60 to P120 a day away?

Smoking produces nothing but negative results to almost all aspect in one’s life, be it to his health, finances or relationships.

Dabawenyos are just fortunate that there is strict implementation of anti-smoking ordinance here.

But hopefully, one day, news that Davao City yields P0 from smokers can be read in newspapers or heard on tv or radio, not because authorities are not doing their jobs well, but because there are no more smokers anywhere anymore.