http://www.nst.com.my/news/2017/01/204184/smoking-kills-so-stop-protecting-it
JAMES Bond isn’t the only one with a licence to kill. The World Health Organisation reports that smoking costs the global economy RM4.5 trillion a year, and will take eight million lives annually by 2030.
For a species that has invented fire, travelled to space and split the atom, we are still paying an industry to kill us. Mankind is indeed strange.
Decades of research have shown that smoking can be fatal. So, we are often asked: if cigarettes cause such harm, why are they allowed to exist?
One challenge is the separation of the problem — the health industry sees tobacco as a health issue, while businesses and governments see it as an economic driver.
But the same WHO report also states that the cost of smoking far outweighs the revenue from tobacco taxes.
Treating smoking-related diseases drives up the cost of healthcare. In 2005, Malaysia’s Health Ministry spent 26 per cent of its budget to treat those diseases, which accounted for 0.74 per cent of its gross domestic product.
There are also the environment, productivity and human development — smoking pollutes our air and water, and smokers are 30 per cent more likely to miss work (for longer periods, too). In some families, money for cigarettes is taken from household essentials.
No other industry causes as much damage to its users and non-users alike — and remains legal.
Instead of protecting this industry, we urge the nation to support tobacco control efforts in Malaysia.
Tobacco control can work. A study published in the United States this month reports that efforts since 1964 had resulted in eight million fewer smoking deaths.
We should want the same for our fellow Malaysians.
MANDY THOO
National Cancer Society Malaysia