By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
On May 31 every year, 'World No Tobacco Day' (WNTD) is marked across the world. The theme for the 2015 campaign is: “Stop Illicit Trade Of Tobacco Products.”
First observed in 1987 following a motion passed by a cabinet of the World Health Assembly (WHA) which received the tacit support of the World Health Organisation (WHO), May 31 has since then been devoted to global campaigns and efforts to significantly reduce (which, I believe, will eventually lead to the total elimination of) the production, distribution and consumption of tobacco which not only ruins the health of its users, but also exposes every other person to serious harm by polluting the air we all breathe.
This is most worrisome given, for instance, a recent study published in the British medical journal, Lancet, which contains the chilling discovery that second-hand smoking (that is, passive smoking by people who are in the same environment with smokers) claims about 600,000 lives annually.
More disturbing is the revelation that a third of these unfortunate victims are hapless children who inhale poisonous cigarette fumes from their parents or other family members who are smokers. Even much more disturbing is the discovery that as much as six million people die every year from what is regarded as the “global tobacco epidemic.”
