Cigarette: a blessing or a curse?
I have heard and read this common statement many times: “The federal Ministry of Health warns that smoking tobacco is dangerous to health” or “The federal Ministry of Health warns that smokers can die young.” Despite all these warnings in Nigeria, for example, the production, sale and consumption of cigarettes has been on the rise. It is no wonder that we continue to witness the deaths of many young people in our society.
On Thursday March 3, 2005, a Nigerian newspaper, Tribune, published news about the rate at which passive smoking kills. According to the document, more than 11,000 people die annually in the UK, far more than previously thought, as the study showed as a result of passive smoking alone. If the statistics show this only for passive smoking, I wonder how many people would have died due to smoking. The British Medical Journal study gives a figure of people who die from secondhand smoke in the workplace, 600 a year, for the first time.
Top doctors said the findings showed that a complete ban on smoking in public places was needed. Given the indisputable scientific evidence, it is now essential that policies are in place to protect the public from exposure to second-hand smoke.
Researchers from the University of Queensland in Australia compiled the report from a UK database on causes of death, employment, household structure and levels of active smoking and exposure to passive smoking. His observation produces surprising results. 2,700 deaths between the ages of 20 and 64 could be attributed to secondhand smoke and 8,000 in people 65 and older.
Tobacco, one of the raw materials used in the production of cigarettes, has continued to grow and the business has earned millions of dollars for many stakeholders at the expense of the death of our loved ones. Cigarette signatures are all over the world, but we keep announcing that it kills.
The question then is: if we all know and agree that smoking is a curse rather than a blessing, why have we been fooling ourselves with useless advertisements?
The government must urgently tax the production of cigarettes and all other related items such as Indian hemp, cocaine, heroin, etc. We must stop fooling ourselves with the solution that we know will fail.
Many people have wondered why God created tobacco if He does not want us to smoke in the first place, for example medicine to cure diseases so as not to create more problems for man because everything that God created is meant to benefit man. Lot, in biblical days, used a broken wine to intort himself even though that was not God’s initial plan.
We have to stop this disease as Africans to lead the campaign against it and become a reference for other continents in the search for solutions to the problems of the delight of young people and children. Africa is a proud owner of good and well preserved moral values, we must not allow civilization to destroy our good norms, culture or the education and child education for which we are known, even if other continents have lost or destroyed theirs. We must endanger the future of our children because we want to make a fortune in a particular industry or product or not.
The newspaper I quoted earlier later concluded: “BMA President James Johnson said: As physicians, we see firsthand how secondhand smoke kills. I don’t know how John Reid (the Home Secretary can continue to serve the average public – health measures. We need a total ban and we need it now. “
