The World Health Organisation (WHO) in a press statement released on Friday urged nations to compel ban on all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, as the world marks the World No Tobacco Day, 31 May.
As tobacco companies are now attracting on young people through advertising and promotion the United Nations organisation called on all governments and policy makers to impose a complete ban on tobacco promotions in order to protect the 1.8 billion youth.
Recent study shows that tobacco companies spend a large amount of money in their sophisticated promotion to attract young people into the addictive phase. Globally being the fourth most common cause for diseases and second largest cause of death, tobacco kills almost half of its consumers and hence countries are trying to take more and more measures that can have a significant impact on tobacco consumption.
Governments are trying to discourage tobacco product by imposing ban, increasing tax and price, putting large and clear graphic health messages, making public places smoke-free and educating people about health hazards in a sense to curb tobacco use.
WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan in a statement said: ‘In order to survive, the tobacco industry needs to replace those who quit or die with new young consumers; it does by falsely associating use of tobacco products with qualities such as glamour, energy and sex appeal through high-end promotion, with potentially devastating health consequences.’
Keeping in mind the vulnerability of young people to advertising and its influence, it is now the utmost need to ban the advertising or promotion of tobacco product, and the sponsorship by the tobacco industry of any events or activities as an effective tool to protect over a billion of young people living in the world with 85 percent of them living in developing countries.
As per a recent study, tobacco related diseases are responsible for killing one in 10 adults worldwide and if it continues with the same pace, it would cause around 10 million deaths each year by 2020. Extensive marketing through movies, internet, fashion magazine and at music and sports venues the use of tobacco or smoking appears as normal and as a result it becomes difficult for young ones to understand the evil part.
"The tobacco industry employs predatory marketing strategies to get young people hooked to their addictive drug," said Dr Douglas Bettcher, Director of WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative. "But comprehensive advertising bans do work, reducing tobacco consumption by up to 16% in countries that have already taken this legislative step."
"Half measures are not enough," added Dr Bettcher. "When one form of advertising is banned, the tobacco industry simply shifts its vast resources to another channel. We urge governments to impose a complete ban to break the tobacco marketing net," he said.
null
|
|
Comments:
