Tobacco – The Emerging Crisis in the Developing World

The World Health Organization estimates that 3,5 million people die annually from causes related to tobacco use, with more than half of these deaths occurring in industrial countries. By the 2020s, however, when the death toll is likely to reach 10 million each year, 70% of tobacco-related deaths will be in developing countries.

Smoking is the primary cause of lung cancer. It is associated with heart disease, stroke, emphysema and lung diseases. Children who are regularly exposed to second-hand smoke are prone to respiratory illnesses. Smoking during pregnancy can increase the risk of miscarriage, result in low infant birth-weight and impede child development. Tobacco consumption is the leading cause of preventable death in many countries. In both industrial and developing countries half of regular smokers die from causes related to their tobacco use. Smokers are three times as likely to die between the ages of 35 and 69 as are non-smokers.

Since 1970s vigorous antismoking campaigns have been mounted in most industrial countries banning tobacco in the media, increasing cigarette taxes, requiring health warnings on cigarette packages, banning cigarette sales to minors and disseminating information.

But in most developing countries information campaigns lag far behind, while marketing and advertising campaigns have intensified. Per capita cigarette consumption fell by 10% between the early 1970s and early 1990s in industrial countries. But in the same period consumption increased by 64% in developing countries. Per capita consumption more than doubled in Haiti, Indonesia, Nepal, Senegal and Syria, and tripled in Cameroon and China.

Answer the following questions about the text.

1. What do the statistics of the WHO indicate?

2. What diseases is smoking associated with?

3. What antismoking measures have been introduced in most industrial countries since 1970s?

4. What statistics prove that tobacco is the emerging crisis in the developing countries?

5. How do you estimate the situation in our country? Is the number of young people smoking on an increase?

Text C

Smoking Role Models Girls must look at themselves for a cure

For the first time in a quarter of a century the number of women smoking is on the increase. According to the results of the General Household Survey released this week, after a steady decline since 1972, cigarette smoking among women has risen by two per cent in the past two years. Look at the figures more closely and it’s the youngest women who are increasingly taking up the habit, with a 5 per cent increase among the 16-19 age group, compared with a 2 per cent fall in the number of smokers among men of the same age.

Among 15-year-old schoolgirls, a third now say they smoke regularly (compared with 28 per cent of boys) and the trend is not exclusively British. The rise in teenage girls smoking is also seen elsewhere in Western Europe and the US. Sadly so are the consequences. Today five women die every hour in the UK from a smoking related disease, and health experts have warned that lung cancer deaths are set to overtake breast cancer as the most common cancer killer in women.

So why now, when we know more than we ever knew before about the risks, are girls in particular starting to smoke? There are many possible explanations: young women have a greater disposable income: with women out at work, they are more likely to go for a drink (and cigarette) at the end of the day; as women increasingly adopt male working patterns the more they adopt male patterns of behaviour (hence the increase in drinking which was highlighted in the report). There is also the heavy marketing by the tobacco industry which spends £100-million a year on promoting its brands – many of them targeted particularly at women – compared with the £10-million spent on health education. One key area of concern is the way young women are influenced by media images of glamorous women who smoke – not just in advertising, but in editorial pictures of models like Kate Moss, with cigarette in hand or Julia Roberts, who is seen puffing her way through her latest film, My Best Friend’s Wedding. Smoking makes you look glamorous. It also makes you thin, or so most teenage girls believe. Once you’re hooked you can’t give it up because you’ll put on weight.

Women become hooked on smoking for the same reasons they become anorexic. Girls are taught to be concerned about their body image from an early age – they learn very quickly that their looks are their currency. Yes, cigarette advertising should be banned; yes, we need more health education in schools, and more careful use of images in the media. But perhaps we also need to tackle something more fundamental – the forces which make young girls worry to an unhealthy degree about the way they look.

Text D