Mamora's bill on Tobacco pandemic - Daily Sun
February 16, 2009
Amos Dunia and James Ojo
Going by the World Health Organisation (WHO) records and estimates, cigarette smoking currently kills about 5.4 million people every year. Worse still, over half of the causality figure is likely to be recorded in developing countries, Nigeria inclusive.
It is against this backdrop that Senator Adeleke Mamora has deemed it fit to sponsor a Bill on National Tobacco Control 2009 with a view to put an effective check on the adverse effects of tobacco products on the Nigerian society particularly the underage.
Taking the professional background of Senator Mamora as a Medical Doctor into consideration, there would be no gain saying the fact that he is well positioned and knowledgeable enough on the subject matter as he stressed that if the government, and indeed, the Nigerian people fold their hands and do nothing, the country may pay dearly from the projected consequence of losing about one billion people to tobacco related diseases this century.
Even though Mamora is concerned about job opportunities that Tobacco companies provide people who may be affected by the outcome of the Bill when passed into law, he is however more concerned that more harm has been meted to Nigerians than opportunities created.
According to him, “In Nigeria, you may be aware of the activities of the British American Tobacco Nigeria (BATN) since the company began full scale manufacturing of cigarettes in Ibadan, Oyo state. While this 'investment' might have provided job opportunities for less than 1000 Nigerians, it is also responsible for the deaths of many thousands more. In 2006, Lagos state government discovered through a survey covering 11 hospitals in the state that two persons die each day from a tobacco related disease. The volume has since gone up. The 'investment' has also targeted our young people.”
Mamora who is the Senate Deputy Minority leader is particularly worried that over the last years, there have been deliberate programmes such as “The Wild & Wet, Rothmans groove, St Moritz fashion & Style, Experience IT promotion, Experience Freshness all night party etc that are directly geared towards the young and vulnerable in addition to attempts to reward youths who smoke cigarettes by the tobacco industry among other promotions.
He presented a more frightening dimension to the Tobacco pandemic saying, “Recent statistics on youth smoking in Nigeria also presents a very sad picture. More of our young people are taking up smoking every day. Not only that, about 100,000 of our young people including school children here in Abuja will pick up one of the over 15 billion cigarettes sold daily worldwide. Once they start, they will get hooked, because the tobacco industry which manufactured the cigarettes has put a potent chemical inside it called nicotine which ensures the smoker is hooked on cigarettes.”
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