Smoking fire on one end, a fool on the other

At long last, the local and national government is doing something to reduce the hazards caused by smoking both to smokers and non-smokers. Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay has taken steps to minimize the unhealthy practice of smoking in public places. And now, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is reportedly set to sign into law the Anti-Smoking Act of 2003 passed by both Chambers of Congress before adjourning sine die.

Smoking is the native American Indians’ contribution to world culture. Christopher Columbus was surprised when he saw the Indians in the Caribbean inhaling smoke not thru their mouths, but their nostrils in Y-shaped pipes called tabaca. It was the French Ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot, who introduced it to France. His name is where the word "nicotine" comes from.

The very first attempt to ban the use of tobacco was when King James I forbade its use in England. He disliked the smell of the "sot-weed." He called it "a custom loathsome to the eye, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs". He failed, of course.

There are statistics that show that the majority of all male Filipinos smoke (53 percent) and 18 percent of Filipino women also are tobacco users. As a result, 20,000 Filipinos die annually from diseases resulting from the use of tobacco. Yet, we show more concern for the few SARS victims than the thousands who die from inhaling cigarette smoke.

In the United States, a California jury awarded a smoker with terminal cancer $20 million in positive damages. And in Florida, a class action filed by a group of smokers afflicted by different smoke diseases were awarded $145 billion! We can’t help wondering why we have not had similar suits filed here. This would undoubtedly be a healthier world when the time comes that smoking will be a thing of the past.

For sometime now, Western cigarette companies have been targeting the underdeveloped nations as the outlet for their unhealthy product. This is at a time when the World Health Organization has officially proclaimed cigarette-smoking as a health timebomb. The truth is that when smokers blow tobacco smoke out of their mouths in public, what they actually do is blow it into other people’s mouths, eyes and noses. That is why Philip Freneau remarked that "tobacco was surely designed to poison and destroy mankind". And Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that the first illusion of tobacco was that it made the smoker believe he was doing something when in actuality he was doing nothing good.

The government must do much more than just putting warning signs that smoking is detrimental to a person’s health. It should totally ban smoking from all public places.

To the smoker, we say, the best thing you can do for yourself and your family is to stop smoking. Tobacco is consumed by only two creatures – a green worm and man. The worm has no choice.