Catherine Egbe

WORLD No Tobacco Day (WNTD) is celebrated on May 31 annually. The theme for the 2018 celebration is “Tobacco and heart disease”. This year’s WNTD gives us an opportunity to reflect on the tobacco epidemic destroying the health of our society.

The World Health Organisation has noted that heart diseases, which include stroke and other cardiovascular diseases, are the leading cause of death globally, and tobacco use has long been linked to these. Tobacco use has also been implicated in other diseases including cancers, respiratory and reproductive health problems. In fact, tobacco use has been identified as the leading preventable cause of death globally.

Not smoking yourself? But you may be…

Tobacco use does no good to anyone. The tobacco industry is motivated by growing their profits at the expense of the lives of the consumers of their products. From the cigarette smoker to the hookah pipe (hubbly-bubbly) user, to the vaper and the snuff user, tobacco has no health benefit to the user.

Instead, it has harmful effects which do not only harm the smoker but those in their vicinity. Secondhand smoke (the tobacco smoke you take in when you are around anyone who is actively using combustible tobacco products) and third-hand smoke (the leftover micro particles of tobacco which get stuck on the clothes and bodies of smokers, as well as on the materials in the vicinity) have been found to cause similar diseases to non-smokers as to active smokers.

This means the best protection against the harmful effects of tobacco use is no tobacco use. Even if you do not smoke yourself, you may die of tobacco-related diseases if you are constantly taking in the tobacco smoke from those using combustible tobacco products around you.

Tobacco use also creates a huge economic burden on those who use tobacco products. The money spent on purchasing tobacco products to feed the nicotine addiction impacts on the budget of the individual and family.

Nicotine is a drug Nicotine is a drug contained in tobacco which gets you addicted to using tobacco. Nicotine addiction makes it a challenge to quit using tobacco and this means that the tobacco user is no longer in control of him/herself once addicted. Nicotine works much like other drugs (like dagga and wonga) and cigarette and other tobacco products serve as drug-delivery devices. There is a higher likelihood of being addicted to the nicotine in tobacco products than to heroin, cocaine, alcohol or cannabis (dagga).

The tobacco industry once mentioned in their secret documents that nicotine is the drug they sell. Unfortunately, though poisonous and dangerous to our health, just like the hard drugs, tobacco products are being sold legally.

Here are some statements about the addiction caused by nicotine made by some of the big tobacco companies in the world (extracted from Tobacco Explained: The truth about the tobacco industry… in its own words by Clive Bates and Andy Rowell; see http://www.who. CATHERINE EGBE

int/tobacco/media/en/TobaccoExplained.pdf).

“… smoking is a habit of addiction… nicotine is… a very fine drug.” (British American Tobacco, 1962)

“Nicotine is addictive. We are, then, in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug.” (Brown and Williamson, 1963)

“The cigarette should be con-