Smoking being unlawful, ARMM health officer urges Dilangalen to support graphic health warning bill on tobacco products
 

MANILA - The health chief of the Muslim region is urging House Deputy Minority Leader Didagen Dilangalen to support the proposal in Congress to replace with photographs of health hazards the text warnings on cigarette packages.

In a letter to the House minority leader last month, Health Secretary Dr. Tahir Sulaik of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) cited a “fatwa” or religious ruling that smoking is “haram” or unlawful.

He asked Dilangalen, who represents Shariff Kabunsuan with Cotabato City, to consider this as Congress deliberates on long-pending Graphic Health Warning Bill or House Bill 3364. Allies of the tobacco industry have been blocking the approval of the bill, fearing that photos of ill effects of smoking appearing on cigarette packages would lead to the decline of tobacco sales.

“Picture warnings serve as one of the fundamental strategies employed in tobacco control [of countries like] Canada, Thailand, Singapore. [They] are effectively implementing it, and considerable decrease in consumption of tobacco use is being documented,” Sulaik said in his letter to Dilangalen.

Sulaik said that HB 3364 has not progressed from the level of the House health committee, making the Philippines miss the international deadline it had committed to. The country is a signatory to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which mandates the Philippines to implement picture-based warnings by September 2008.

International Muslim scholars declared smoking, as well as cultivating and trading of tobacco products, as “haram” or unlawful in Islam. The Qur’an tells Muslims that they should not make their hands a cause of their own destruction. Moreover, it also prevents them from doing anything that could harm others.

Muslim research organizations—like the Islamic Research Academe, Permanent Committee of Academic Research and Fatwa in Saudi Arabia, and Hadith Studies Department and Faculty of Theology in Al-Azhar University—agreed with the World Health Organization (WHO) on the ill effects of smoking and second-hand smoke on health.

WHO reports identified heart diseases, stroke, chronic lung disease, and cancer as preventable diseases related to direct smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke. It estimates that four million people around the world die from tobacco-related diseases every year.

The Department of Health (DOH) reported that close to 90,000 of these deaths are in the Philippines.

In response to this, the Supreme Council of Dar’ul Ifta based in Cotabato City issued a “fatwa” or religious ruling that smoking is against the teachings of Islam.

Though the “fatwa” is nonbinding, it guides Muslims in obtaining a healthy lifestyle acceptable to Allah, said Dr. Tato Usman of DOH-ARMM.

“The ‘fatwa’ has no corresponding punishment. It may not have punishment here since it’s only an opinion, but the punishment could be in the next life,” added Usman, who is also a member of the Dar’ul Ifta or house of opinion in Central Mindanao. (Newsbreak)