‘Don’t fall prey to tobacco manufacturers’
Students have been cautioned not to fall prey to the numerous persuasive advertising by tobacco manufacturing companies because the products have harmful effects on human lives.
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At the launch of this year’s national World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) in Kumasi, the Head of Disease Control and Prevention Department of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Kyei Faried, noted that tobacco manufacturers were now using different kinds of exciting flavours to lure innocent young people to use the products.
“Once you take the first puff, you remain in the pockets of the manufacturers forever”, he said, urging the students to always make informed choices in life.
Dr Faried said manufacturers were now resorting to electronic cigarettes and shisha, a water pipe used for smoking.
Dr Faried reiterated that those flavours were to deceive innocent persons saying that the foundation of all these substances was nicotine which makes users addicted to the substance.
He noted that tobacco was the leading preventable cause of death, killing 6 million people yearly.
“According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), in every 6.5 seconds someone dies from tobacco use,” he pointed out, adding that people who start smoking in their teens (as more than 70 per cent do) and continue for decades or more, will die 20 to 25 years earlier than those who never lit up a cigarette.
Speaking on the theme: “Get Ready for Plain Packaging of Tobacco Products”, Dr Faried underscored the need for tobacco products to be labelled with pictures in order to send the right signals to smokers and other second-hand users on its serous health implications.
He said research had shown that pictorial health warnings remained the way forward in the fight against tobacco use, adding that the resort to text in alerting users on its dangers had not met the desired results.
Videos on the horrible effects of drug use were shown to the students. They were later educated with pictorial information to help them protect their health.
