THE World Health Organization observes “World No Tobacco Day” on May 31st of each year to remind people around the globe about the deadly effects on smoking and to inspire smokers to quit the habit as a part of a healthy lifestyle.
The smokers and their family and other people around them are impacted directly and indirectly by this addiction. Globally, there are about 1.25 billion smokers. In the United States, there are about 29 million who smoke tobacco, a reduction from 44 million in 2011.
Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death, killing 7 million persons (about 1.3 million from secondhand smoke) around the globe annually. This is extrapolated to increase to almost 9 million deaths each year by 2030. And the greater tragedy is that this massive loss of lives could be prevented by the pre-emptive option of abstaining from tobacco or quitting the habit.
At least 300 Filipinos die each day – yes, each day – or about 109,500 a year, from smoking-related illnesses like cardiovascular, pulmonary and metabolic diseases, and cancers, especially lung cancer. In Malaysia about 20,000, and in Vietnam at least 40,000, die annually from tobacco-related conditions. Indonesia’s death toll is the worst: 400,000 a year.
The sad fact is that official global tobacco youth survey has revealed that the “smoking prevalence among American high-school students in 2024 is about 10.1 and 5.4 in middle school. In the Philippines, 12.5 percent ages 13-15 are smokers (18.3 percent boys and 6.9 percent girls), and about 28 percent of Filipinos (round 32 million) smoke some forms of tobacco, with about 112,000 deaths each year from tobacco-related diseases.
The figures cited above are from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and National Cancer Institute of the United States and from the Tobacco and Poverty Study in the Philippines conducted by the College of Public Health of the University of the Philippines, National Epidemiology Center of the Department of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO).
Obviously, for political correctness and expediency, majority of our Philippine legislators in Congress (the same with the old U.S. Congress several decades ago) prefer to protect the tobacco industry and allow tobacco to continue to kill our people. What money from the tobacco lobby finding its way to the deep pockets of the legislators can do!
Smoking kills. It is that plain and simple. There is no more doubt today that tobacco (cigarette smoking) is the predominant cause of lung cancer, besides other malignancies and cardiovascular diseases that maim, kill men and women and hurt our society, especially our children. In the United States alone, almost half a million die each year from smoking-related illnesses. Demographic studies have shown that smokers are about 10 times more prone to die premature deaths than non-smokers. This unnecessary loss of lives is at an immense direct cost for non-smokers in terms of increased health risks from passive smoking, in higher health insurance premiums and taxes, not to mention personal and family tragedies in all shapes and forms.
As we have alluded to in a previous column, secondhand smoke is even more dangerous. Innocent bystanders are forced to inhale cigarette smoke at their workplaces or in public places, thus increasing their health risk. The Environmental Protection Agency engineers have shown that even the best available ventilation and air-moving equipment were unable to reduce carcinogenic (cancer-causing) air contamination to a safe level for a non-smoker sharing workspace with a habitual smoker.
If you think about it, our government and those of other nations are enabling drug use (nicotine and other chemicals in cigarettes, and now legalized recreational marijuana) in the name of profit and added revenues, wantonly sacrificing their citizens’ health and future, shortening people’s lives, wasting trillions of dollars or more of expenditures for research as to how to fight the habit, how to cure the tobacco-induced illnesses, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, hypertension, and cancer, etc. Allowing the development of addiction and diseases, and then finding a way to fight the addiction and the diseases it causes, is plain stupidity.
Having said that, I shall defend the right of people to smoke if they so choose, so long as they respect and do not abridge the right of the non-smokers to protect themselves from the more deadly health effects of secondhand smoke. Those who defend smoking are misinformed or are in denial, and doing a great disservice to the public, especially to the youth.
Unfortunately, the senseless global smoke-filled “killing field” protected by governments will continue. It is, indeed, most tragic for the victims.
The other poison in our midst is alcohol. Use to be thought of as providing some health benefits, alcoholic beverages, even wine, has been found to damage our health. It used to be two drinks for men and one for women, but new studies found that there is actually “no safe level of alcohol.” One drink is one too many, health-wise. A colleague suggested a practical compromise: one drink, occasionally. At least 40-45 percent of all cancers can be prevented by abstinence from alcohol and tobacco.
As a cardiac surgeon, I find the solution too obvious to ignore, equally evident to billions of non-medical people (including school graders) with common sense: Eliminate the darn cause, get rid of the poison! Then, you don’t have to do expensive research looking for the “antidote” or finding the cure, etc.
Instead, let us save the trillions of dollars in each country and spend the money to eliminate graft and corruption among government officials and eradicate poverty among the destitute, homeless and hungry.
This way, we can even have these added bonuses: a smokeless and sober society, a healthier citizenry, nobler and more compassionate nations, and a less polluted environment, ecologically friendlier to Mother Earth!
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The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of Asian Journal, its management, editorial board and staff.
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Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS, a Cardiac Surgeon Emeritus based in Northwest Indiana and Las Vegas, Nevada, is an international medical lecturer/author, health advocate, medical missionary, newspaper columnist, and chairman of the Filipino United Network-USA, a 501(c)3 humanitarian foundation in the United States. He is a recipient of the Indiana Sagamore of the Wabash Award in 1995, presented by then Indiana Governor, U.S. senator, and later a presidential candidate, Evan Bayh. Other Sagamore past awardees include President Harry S. Truman, President George HW Bush, pugilist Muhammad Ali, David Letterman, Astronaut Gus Grissom, noted educators, distinguished scientists, etc. (Wikipedia). Websites: PhilipSchua.com, FEUN8888.com, Today.SPSAtoday.com, feunrmfmedicalalumni.org; on Amazon.com, view “Where is My America?”; Email: [email protected].