31 May 2021
Tobacco causes 8 million deaths worldwide every year.
When evidence was released this year that smokers were more likely to develop severe disease with COVID-19 compared to non-smokers, it triggered millions of smokers to want to quit tobacco, says the World Health Organization (WHO).
Quitting can be challenging, especially with the added social and economic stress that have come as a result of the pandemic, but, aside from a premature and often very painful death, there are a lot of reasons to quit - socially, financially and family-related.
In fact the WHO has listed a staggering
104 reasons to quit - ranging from tobacco’s very negative impact on your physical appearance and wellbeing, the threat it poses to family and friends (over 1 million people die every year from exposure to second-hand smoke), negative social and financial consequences (in Australia a single pack of cigarettes can exceed $50), reduction in fertility, erectile dysfunction, a magnet for all sorts of cancers, loss of vision and hearing, heart disease, et al. You name it, tobacco use is fraught with disastrous consequences on so many levels.
Not only that, when you buy tobacco you are supporting an industry that exploits farmers and children and pedals sickness and death.
Today is World No Tobacco Day (May 31), an annual day in which to inform the public about the devastation wrought by tobacco use. Tobacco use burdens the global economy with an estimated $US1.4 trillion in health care costs for treating the diseases caused by tobacco and lost human capital from tobacco-attributable sickness and death.
World No Tobacco Day is also very pertinent to National Reconciliation Week (May 27 to June 3) as statistics sadly reveal Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are almost three times more likely to smoke compared to non-Indigenous Australians.
According to the Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet, tobacco use is the leading contributor to the burden of disease for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and is both an issue of great concern and an area for considerable health gains.
Reducing tobacco use, InfoNet says, is achievable. Substantial progress has already been made, with a 9.8 percentage point reduction in the prevalence of daily smoking for Indigenous people aged 18 years and over from 2004-05 to 2018-19, from 50.0% to 40.2%.
Further reductions in tobacco use will continue to enhance the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
The benefits of quitting tobacco are almost immediate. After just 20 minutes of quitting smoking, your heart rate drops. Within 12 hours, the carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal. Within 2-12 weeks, your circulation improves and lung function increases. Within 1-9 months, coughing and shortness of breath decrease. Within 5-15 years, your stroke risk is reduced to that of a non-smoker. Within 10 years, your lung cancer death rate is about half that of a smoker. Within 15 years, your risk of heart disease is that of a non-smoker.
The Member States of the World Health Organization created World No Tobacco Day in 1987 to draw global attention to the tobacco epidemic and the preventable death and disease it causes. The day is used to outline what the WHO is doing to fight the tobacco epidemic, and what people around the world can do to claim their right to health and healthy living and to protect future generations.
This year’s theme is ‘Commit to Quit’. The campaign aims to empower 100 million tobacco users to make a quit attempt by creating networks of support and increasing access to services proven to help tobacco users quit successfully.
It is the policy of the ANMF that governments should assist employers to support nurses, midwives, assistants in nursing and patients/residents/clients to cease smoking, and that hospitals and health agencies encourage and offer assistance to employees by sponsoring attendance at courses which assist smokers to cease smoking with paid time off, and provide facilities and resources for health promotion activities related to smoking cessation and the effects of passive smoking.
See the WHO’s toolkits and resources for quitting
here.