Published: March 14, 2008 12:59 pm            

Barron Mills: March 12, 2008

Certainly this guy is well aware of the fact that tobacco is an evil critter and can cause death or make life miserable for millions of people. I smoked a few times in high school, but against the wishes of my mother and my father. Mother gave me a couple of whippings when she discovered that I had some cigarettes and puffed them. They came from my father's chest of drawers. He was a smoker, but never a slave to nicotine. He smoked his first cigarette each day after finishing his lunch and didn't smoke again until after his evening meal. A pack of cigarettes during those depression days of the 1930s would last my dad a week or perhaps more. He was engaged in the men's clothing businesses and he didn't' want cigarette smoke to linger in his suits and other garments he had for sale.

As for me, I have a hole in my throat – the results of smoking. I am now a laryngectomy. And when this surgery became my fate, I hadn't touched a cigarette for five or more years. I suppose it's hard to get cigarette smoke out of your system. I started smoking when I was in college. A good friend of mine was the campus representative of Phillip Morris. He didn't smoke – just gave away mini packs of smokes to students on campus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

I address this subject of cigarette smoking because of a recent headline in The New York Times warning everyone that "The Tobacco epidemic" could kill a billion people, the report says. And why do governments overlook this health hazard?

It's simple. Governments around the world collect more than $200 billion in tobacco taxes every year. On the flip side: governments spend less than one-fifth of one percent of that revenue on tobacco control.

WHO, the World Health Organization, gave a recent report which calls on all countries to dramatically increase efforts to prevent young people from beginning to smoke, help smokers quit and protect nonsmokers from exposure to second-hand smoke.

This organization urges governments to adopt six "tobacco control policies: raise taxes and prices of tobacco; ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship; protect people from second-hand smoke; warn people about the dangers of tobacco; help those who want to quit smoking; and monitor tobacco use to understand and reverse the epidemic. This program was announced recently at a news conference with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloombergs' Philanthropies help fund the program with a $2 million grant. The report examines the tobacco policies of 179 countries for the first time.

According to the report nearly two-thirds of the world's smokers live in 10 countries. China alone accounts for nearly 30 percent and India about 10 percent. Others with at least 10 percent include Indonesia, Russia, the United States, Japan, Brazil, Bangladesh, Germany and Turkey.

Dr. Douglas Bettcher, director of WHO's Tobacco Free Initiative, said WHO estimates 5.4 million smoke-related deaths a year, rising to more than eight million a year by 2030 if nothing is done. That adds up to 175 million smoking-related deaths between 2005 and 2030. Beyond that, according to Bettcher, deaths will continue to rise and statistical projections put the death toll at near one billion by the end of this century.

Tobacco use is growing the fastest in low-income countries, according to the report, because of a steady population growth and the fact that the tobacco industry is focusing its sales efforts on those countries. And millions of people become addicted to tobacco and the tobacco industry continues to grow. And people continue to die from smoke-related deaths.



Barron Mills came to Asheboro in March 1955 when he bought The Randolph Guide and became its editor and publisher. He sold the paper in 1991 but still lives in Asheboro.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.