Slow & steadfast: Quit SmokingPhoto by Renee Guzman-Simon
India's Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS), which thirteen other nations participated in, reveals that the tobacco epidemic killed more than 100 million people worldwide during the last century and predicts that one billion people in the world might die due to smoking, the side effects of smoking, exposure to secondhand smoke, and/or from tobacco use during the 21st century.
The GATS report reemphasizes that the epidemic proportions of death, illness and disability related to smoking effects make this one of the most important public health priorities of our lifetime.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) recommend a six-pronged strategy, called MPOWER, to combat the world's smoking epidemic.
MPOWER is an acronym to help facilitate the use of six proven strategies intended to slash tobacco use: M stands for monitoring tobacco use and prevention policies; P stands for protecting people from tobacco smoke; O stands for offering to quit tobacco use; W stands for warning about the dangers of tobacco; E stands for enforcing bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship; and, R stands for raising taxes on tobacco.
Monitor use, protect our people, offer to quit, warn about the side effects of smoking, enforce bans on advertising and raise tobacco taxes. Six simple strategies that could save up to one billion lives.
At the risk of overkill, small in comparison to the massive fatalities that tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke have already caused, this writer will chant the six strategies here again: monitor, protect, offer, warn, enforce and raise. Remember MPOWER!
Until it hits home, breathing is highly underrated. I've watched loved ones gulping at air, hoping for oxygen to reach their lungs, and I've watched them fail. I've seen people hooked to oxygen machines beg for a light in order to smoke. Tobacco is addictive. Let's not kid ourselves. It's hard to quit smoking. And, it's hard to overestimate the joy of breathing freely. It's hard to watch someone you love choke to death on their own nicotine-ridden sputum. And, it's a miracle to see a baby take its first full breath, even if accompanied by the cry of birth. It's hard not to be righteous about how harmful smoking is. And, it's a privilege to be alive and able to share this information.
No comments:
Post a Comment