Why smoking is not cool
abs-cbnNEWS.com | 12/04/2008 7:39 PM
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Cigarette firms’ “replacement smokers” now include girls as young as 13 years old.
The latest Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA) survey shows that 18.7 percent of Filipino females in the 13 to 25 age groups are smokers and three out of 10 of the female smokers are between the ages of 13 and 15.
Sixty percent of the smoking Filipina youths interviewed by SEATCA said they started puffing cigarettes at 18 years old and the rest started at 17.
“The study clearly shows that tobacco companies are enticing youths to take on smoking. In the marketing parlance, the youths are called replacement smokers,” Dr. Maricar Limpin, executive director of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Alliance Philippines (FCAP).
Limpin said cigarette firms’ recent advertisement and marketing tactics, including giving away freebies, usually target the youth.
She said the youth are the cigarette firms’ replacement of their dying or dead clients.
The ill-effects
Limpin’s group outlined in its latest statement the ill-effects of smoking on women as researched by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute.
The deadly effects are the following:
- The risk of heart attack for women who both smoke and use oral contraceptives is greater than for non-smokers.
- Pregnant women who smoke are twice as likely to have a miscarriage during pregnancy.
- Women who smoke are less fertile. Smokers trying to become pregnant are three times more likely to take more than a year to conceive.
- Women who smoke and use IUD (intra-uterine device) are more likely to develop pelvic inflammatory disease than women who don't smoke.
- Women smokers have greater risk of developing cancer of the cervix.
- Women who smoke are likely to reach menopause earlier than women who do not. They are also likely to suffer from osteoporosis and have a hysterectomy.
- The babies of women who smoke during pregnancy are lighter than the babies of women who don't smoke and more likely to have stillborn babies or babies who die during the first few weeks of life.
Limpin said that based on medical studies, smoking has more fatal effects on women than men.
"While smoking is equally harmful to men and women, it is very clear that it poses greater risk to women's reproductive health on top of other illnesses,” she said.
Smoking is in
Limpin said majority of the young Filipinas smokers do it, despite knowing its deadly effects, due to peer pressure.
Based on the SEATCA study, nine of 10 smokers know the ill-effects of smoking but 57.4 percent of them smoke anyway because their friends do.
"The effects of smoking on health are well-established, the evidences overwhelming, even the tobacco industry, such as Philip Morris already admitted. Statistics on girls as young as 13 years becoming addicted to smoking is really alarming and something has to be done," Limpin said.
Limpin, who is a lung doctor, said the government should impose stricter measures to stop cigarette firms from enticing the youth, especially girls, to smoke.
She said among the effective measures that should be imposed by the government is the picture-based warnings on cigarette packs, which would show the effects of smoking.
She also urged the government to increase taxes on tobacco and intensify its information campaign to protect the youth from smoking.
