Anti-Smoking Fight Never End

Expert said that the fight against tobacco will never end because this fight is like the fight against cancer. Dr Abrar Javed, the Hospital Cancer Department chief, said that in Pakistan every day die 75,000 people because of tobacco use.

He told that all these deaths will be avoided if people from Pakistan will just stop using tobacco. He added that smoking cigarettes, using hookah, sniffing tobacco, as well as passive smoking, were all very dangerous to a person’s health. In third-world countries like Pakistan smoking is on the rise, while it appeared to be decreasing in the Western world because people became more aware of its consequences and health hazards, according to a study.

Many people especially youth, becoming hooked on smoking. Mr. Abrar Javed thinks that they were attracted by media promotion through attractive advertisements by tobacco manufacturers. The cancer specialist said that a study, conducted in three medical colleges of the country, had discovered that 6.4 percent of all medical students in the northern and southern parts of the country were longtime users of sniffing tobacco.

Dr Abrar said that the fight against smoking would be long and hard. He said the biggest obstacles facing society were those arising from the cultivators, promoters and users of tobacco. He added that if will be possible to ban the cultivation and promotion of tobacco on a gradual level by providing compensation to cultivators through alternate cash crops. He said it was necessary for the government to enact legislation that would cover all such aspects of tobacco use to save precious human lives.

There are several benefits to giving up tobacco, such as the risk of dying from heart attacks disappears steadily and becomes equal to that of a non-smoker within three to five years, a person feels better than they have in years after the initial withdrawal symptoms have passed, and non-smokers also get protection from heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, and their life expectancy also increases.

Researchers said that attractive ads on TV promoting tobacco use should be prohibited because life is far more precious than the few hundred million rupees that are earned by the government on an annual basis through taxes.