THOSE disgusting images on the packets of cigarettes mean little to smokers. The pictures shown warrant viewers’ discretion. They are shocking and gory, with little respect for taste and style. It is supposed to deter people from smoking. Very few, I am sure, kick their smoking habit by merely looking at them. At least, I have not known anyone who did that.

We have yet to ascertain how effective the expensive anti-smoking campaigns launched so far are. I have a feeling that the prohibition sentiment fires up more smokers. Forbidden fruit tastes better, they say.

Some years ago the regional office for the Western Pacific of the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that half of all Malaysian men smoke. The study also showed that every day about 50 teenagers below 18 begin to smoke and about 30 per cent of boys aged between 12 and 18 smoke.

WHO acknowledges the fact that the Western Pacific Region, which includes East Asia and the Pacific, has the highest smoking rate in the world. To put it in perspective, about one in three cigarettes are consumed here. More than 30 per cent of the world’s smokers come from China. India contributes 11.2 per cent of smokers while Indonesia and Russia make up 4.8 per cent and 4.6 per cent respectively. Developing nations make up 70 per cent of smokers. China has 320 million smokers or 12 times our population. India has 120 million smokers.

In the industrialised West, the number of smokers is declining. In 1955, 56 per cent of American men smoked but by 2001 it was down to 25.5 per cent. Similarly in Britain, in 1974, 51 per cent of the men smoked. It was down to 28 per cent in 2001. But there is an addendum to that: more women are smoking in developed countries.

While fewer Chinese women smoke, the numbers for the US and Britain are much higher. In the US, women made up 21 per cent of smokers whereas in Britain it is almost 25 per cent. Hardly 3.7 per cent of smokers in China are women; in India the figure is slightly less.

We have done almost everything to deter smoking. We have banned cigarette advertisement that had brought billions in advertisement money. We launched anti-smoking campaigns overzealously. We have made it a point to raise the price of cigarettes in almost every Budget. We love to call them “sin taxes”. Today, the price of the most popular cigarette brand is RM9 or 7.5 times the price of this newspaper.

On April 1, the American government spiked the federal tax rate on cigarettes from 39 cents to US$1.01 per pack, a record increase. Supporters say the move will stop at least a million teenagers from starting the habit and cause another million to stop smoking. It will save an estimated 900,000 lives. The tax was signed by President Barack Obama, who is trying hard to quit smoking himself.

We should think out of the box. The answer does not lie only in campaigns to deter people from smoking. We should now harp on people changing their lifestyles. Modern life dictates certain conventions. A hectic lifestyle is unavoidable. Eating habits, too, have a major bearing on our people’s health. Lifestyles have changed but our eating habits have not. We spend many hours in the office, hardly allowing ourselves to exercise. We eat like our forefathers, yet they toiled and sweated in the sun. We live and work in the comfort of our air-conditioned homes and offices.

Encourage our people to exercise. Engage them in sports. Get them to work out in gyms. Let them jog or brisk-walk. Make sports compulsory in schools. Start our children to love sports early. At the same time, we cannot blame our young for wasting their hours when we fail to provide sporting avenues for them. Even in the villages where space is plentiful, football fields are nowhere to be seen these days. Football has a massive following. If we can get the young to play, onlookers will assemble. In a faraway village, a football field is everyone’s idea of a meeting place free from political encumbrances.

In the cities, spaces for sports are fast diminishing. Even schools are compromising what’s left of open fields for buildings. In the name of progress we turn empty spaces into concrete structures. How are we to ensure our young are healthy? What kind of recreational and sports activities are we offering them? Yet we blame the young for becoming Mat Rempit.

Learn from Adnan Osman, the 67-year-old sportsman extraordinaire. He quit smoking only when he was 50. The decision changed his life. He has since run 12 marathons, climbed all 12 mountains above 2,100 metres in this country, reached the peak of Gunung Tahan 15 times and Mount Kinabalu thrice. He attempted to cycle all the way to Beijing for the last Olympics, only to be turned away at the border. He has just completed the most gruelling foot race in the world, the Marathon of the Sands in Morocco.

Adnan did not quit because of the frightening images on the packets of cigarettes. He did it because he wanted to change his lifestyle for the better. There are lessons to be learnt here. It takes more than warnings, campaigns and sin taxes to make people quit smoking. The determination to turn a new leaf and to be healthy made Adnan quit his 33-year old habit.

He should appear on the packets of cigarettes, not those hideous images.

tobacco5

Tags: cigarette packets, smoking inside

This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 6:44 am and is filed under Cigarette package. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.