Monday, May 31, 2010

Offence or opt out...


Great ad...how times change! Should smoking be an offence? Or should we allow an 'opt out'? Passive smoking would suggest the latter to be unworkable. Anyway, today is the World Health Organisation World No Tobacco Day. Tobacco in and of itself is perfectly harmless but like other plants (Erythroxylon coca for example) it can be processed and used for not entirely good purposes, thus is man. The WHO suggests tobacco misuse and addiction (and hence ill health and the all too often fatal consequences) to be the leading preventable cause of death worldwide. Some of the facts are startling, even now: tobacco kills up to half of its users and is directly responsible for an annual death toll of more than five million people. In 'the West' we see constant bans and illegality of smoking and it gives us the impression of progress BUT "total consumption of tobacco products is increasing globally". The theme this year is "Gender and tobacco with an emphasis on marketing to women". Apparently, among the industry's marketing targets, one of the biggest is women because fewer women than men smoke or chew tobacco [Link]. Also, the WHO says that only about 9% of women smoke, compared with 40% of men.

"With women, the industry simply has more room to expand."

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hiya - are you the one and only span from the now defunct BBC 5 live boards? If you are, greetings!

Found you whilst perusing some blogs. Hope you are well.

If you aren't that span - well, hi anyway.

zeldalicious

Span Ows said...

hello Zelda! Yes, it's me...

...and now I'm hurt because after all those years posting you didn't visit my blog (sniff)

:-)

How's things? Posting comments anywhere? I do a few at the Guardian and on a few blogs.

bonnie said...

Stopped ... over 25 years now. Best thing I ever did ...it is imo one of the most ageing things .... your teeth... hair and especially skin..
Bonnie aged ?? but looks 10 years younger ;)

Span Ows said...

hehehe...well done bonnie. My brother stopped about 25 years ago too but my sister and I have never smoked and all my kiddiwinks seem "immune"...touch wood, the eldest two don't smoke and at 20 and 18 years old they have passed the major temptation years!