Success Corner! Group warns youths against increasing tobacco jobs

Young people are increasingly becoming targets of tobacco companies in search of new markets, the National Tobacco Control Alliance has warned, amidst effort to push for a nationwide anti-tobacco law in line with a treaty Nigeria signed onto in 2005.

Anti-tobacco lobbyists want to “reduce the ability of [tobacco industry] to recruit young ones,” said Akinbode Oluwafemi, Director for Corporate Campaigns at Environmental Rights Action. “They are targeting young people because the older ones are dying,” he added.

A country youth tobacco survey show that, among people aged 13 to 15 in Nigeria, six out of 100 smoke, but the figure varies from city to city.

Rights groups have documented evidence of tobacco industry pushing cigarettes to young people by placing seemingly benign adverts, sponsoring school projects in the guise of corporate social responsibility, manipulating the media through sponsorship of media awards, engaging in dodgy marketing practices, placing them in music videos and Nollywood and outright organizing exclusive all-night smoking parties.

Nearly half the young people in the survey had seen cigarette ads in newspapers, on billboards or held an object with a cigarette or tobacco logo on it, while some 10percent of the children, the survey found, had been offered free cigarette by a tobacco company representative in cities as Calabar, Abuja, Kano, Ibadan and Lagos.

Anti-tobacco groups lobbying for control law want to “have environment conducive for children to grow without living with the consequences of tobacco smoke,” said Hilda Ochefu, sub-regional Director at Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.