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Curbing a silent killer

The slow, silent killer, tobacco, is once again in the news, with some 191 countries meeting in Geneva shortly to devise tighter legal curbs on the use of this addictive substance. The international community has been battling hard over the years to de-escalate and control the use of tobacco worldwide but the lure of this perennial killer seems to be persisting particularly among the young and the impressionable. It is estimated that one billion persons will die from tobacco use during this century, with the first two decades accounting for about 150 million of the victims. What is particularly disturbing is that seven out of 10 tobacco-related deaths will be from the Third World.

Such are the "bleeding statistics" produced by the tobacco epidemic.

The world has certainly not sat idly by while the use of tobacco spread stealthily. As a result of the relentless campaigning down the decades by anti-tobacco lobbyists and other concerned citizens' groups, governments have been acting individually and collectively to control the consumption of tobacco. These efforts have been yielding some positive results with no-smoking bans coming into force in numerous public places, in the West in particular. It is encouraging to learn that smoking doesn't take place any longer in public meeting places and even in restaurants in some Western countries.

These are the fruits of decades of awareness - raising on the ill-effects of tobacco.

Governments too seem to have got their acts together in these countries and are bringing in the necessary legislative enactments to reduce tobacco-linked damage.

The fact that tobacco is continuing to exact a heavy toll in the Third World, points to a relative incapacity and reluctance on the part of these governments to impose the necessary curbs on the tobacco industry. May be the indirect revenue states derive from the tobacco industry is getting in the way of determined and consistent regulatory and controlling action on the part of these governments.

However, the alarming statistics on the damage deriving from the use of tobacco should alert these governments into coming down hard on the sources of the tobacco malaise. We in Sri Lanka have done well to ban tobacco advertising in the media but the promotion of tobacco continues in the most sophisticated of guises. Today it is common knowledge that the tobacco industry even resorts to sports activities and the arts to peddle their deadly wares. How effective would awareness - raising prove in this situation where the tobacco industry is lovingly patronised by those who should know better?

Experience has proved the ineffectiveness of the policy of relying on the tobacco multinationals to voluntarily impose curbs on themselves. Monetary profit is an unshakable lure that undermines all attempts at controlling rampant evils. The international community has no choice but to create an effective legal framework which would keep under tight control all parasitic enterprises.

• Editorial of  The Observer - 21.11.2001: Seeing stars

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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