Tobacco = Evil
If there is one single thing that makes global health professionals completely crazy, it's tobacco. We spend so much time and energy trying to improve health around the world, and then people just blow away their good health in a gust of smoke. Tobacco doesn't just make people sicker; the cost of buying tobacco makes people poorer, too. As an added bonus, tobacco cultivation leads to deforestation and requires extremely poisonous pesticides. Nothing positive comes from tobacco.
The surprising thing is that even though everyone knows that tobacco is a big player in the global burden of disease, it still doesn't get the attention it deserves. It's mostly a contributor to illness and death, not a primary cause, so it escapes a lot of blame if you just look at statistics. However, do not be fooled. Tobacco makes you more prone to pneumonia, Tuberculosis - virtually any respiratory infection. It makes you more likely to get cancer. Not just cancers you'd expect, like lung and throat, but all kinds of cancer. It makes you more likely to get heart disease, the primary killer of the developed world, and more susceptible to the often-deadly respiratory infections of the developing world.
Add to that the expense of paying for tobacco. Smokers pay to wreck their health. They spend money their families need for food and medicines on tobacco instead, because they are addicted. Then add the environmental toll of tobacco farming. Tobacco is not just brutal to those who smoke it. Tobacco is brutal to those who grow and harvest it. It is brutal to the land it's grown on.
And we let major corporations go around actively marketing tobacco. Both in the developed world, and in the developing world. Sometimes to kids. All of this wreckage is completely preventable. Preventable. PREV- (Sorry, I'm raving. Did I mention that tobacco makes public health professionals insane with fury?)
In the face of all that, this news from Durban made me really happy. Developing nations are banding together to ban government officials from investing in tobacco companies, and to support laws that limit tobacco advertising. 32% of the population of Vietnam smokes. 33% of Argentina. It's about time that governments started pushing back to protect their citizens.
These kinds of agreements are a good way to do it. Minimizing the harm caused by tobacco is all about prevention. We need to keep people from starting to smoke, because we really have no idea how to get them to stop. (There's not a lot of proven ways to help people quit smoking; the few that work center around expensive aids such as nicotine gum or antidepressants.) Limiting cigarette advertising and removing government incentives that support smoking will go a long way in reducing the harm caused by tobacco.
COMMENTS (149)