The New Straits Times, May 29, 1998
This Sunday is World No-Tobacco Day, with the theme "Growing Up Without Tobacco." It implies that we must protect our children from being lured into tobacco use and from exposure to tobacco smoke.
This is an important theme, but also one difficult to achieve given the prevailing fragmented approach and apathy in many sectors towards tobacco control.
Much of the recent development we read in the Press seems to indicate that the tobacco industry is making itself even more prominent in this country. It began with the announcement by BAT to shift its operations from Hong Kong to Malaysia come September.
In the same breath, Rothmans of Pall Mall said it was installing state-of-the-art facilities in anticipation of what it called a "better year."
This was followed by RJ Reynolds with its plans to increase production from five billion sticks to 12 billion in its new factory in Shah Alam. The three companies account for more that 90 per cent of the market in Malaysia as of last July.
Ironically, while most companies are adopting cost-cutting strategies owing to the economic slowdown, the tobacco firms will be "puffing up profits." As the tobacco industry becomes more and more visible in our socioeconomic structure, what would be the chances of our children growing up without tobacco?
The truth, of course, is that foreign tobacco companies are finding a growing portion of their profits coming from markets abroad like Malaysia.
Pitted against such profit-motivated moves, the question that begs to be answered is, how can we protect our children from such a perserve industry if its ever-expanding presence seems to signal a growing acceptance of its "deadly" products?
How can we better protect our children from tobacco if there is no significant change in policy, even when the industry has been forced to admit to its "dirty" and "deceitful" tactics in perverting children to tobacco use?
Why are we in the "business-as usual" mode and being very complacent in combating this menace? We as a nation have been very vocal when our children are abused and perverted. But as to the insidious effects of tobacco use on them, we seem to be oblivious!
Let's review three important studies and ask ourselves why are we not acting.
A study published in a recent scientific journal, Circulation, shows that cigarette smoke indirectly inhaled by children (passive smoke) lowers their "good" cholesterol thereby increasing their risk of heart disease. The study, the first of its kind to look at blood fats and passive smoking in children with elevated cholesterol (ages two to 18), found passive smoking lowers by 10 per cent the level of the child's HDL (the "good" cholesterol). Twenty-seven per cent of the 103 children came from households with cigarette smokers.
The California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) review on passive smoker - the first comprehensive governmental analysis in the US since the 1986 Surgeon-General's Report confirming that exposure to passive smoke has been linked to a variety of adverse health outcomes - says it causally associates with respiratory tract infections.
Scientific knowledge of passive smoke-related effects has expanded to implicate perinatal and postnatal manifestations of developmental toxicity, and adverse impacts on male and female reproduction. There is also sufficient evidence of a causal relationship between passive smoke and sudden infant death (SID) syndrome, and suggestive evidence of association in cases like spontaneous abortion.
A US study published last July claimed that 6,200 children die each year from lung infections and burns caused by parents' smoking. In addition, some 5.4 million youngsters each year are affected by ear infections and asthma, also triggered by their parents through passive smoke.
Yes, we will be shocked to find out that parents can kill their children through cigarette smoke. Increasingly the household is becoming a "killing field" for children.
There is now enough evidence to step up control and devise tough new measures to safe guard the rights of children to grow up without tobacco. After all, according to the latest estimation by Oxford epidemiologist Richard Peto, smoking will kill more than 100 million people over the next 20 years based on new data.
The question confronting us now is whether we are truly committed to protecting our children from all forms of abuse, including insidious ones like the use of tobacco. Only then can we ensure that our children can grow up without tobacco. - National Poison Centre.
