THURSDAY will be a historic day when the Tobacco Control Bill of 2017, geared at protecting future generations from the detriments of tobacco smoke, will be read for the first time in the National Assembly.
The bill was initially conceptualised during the time of former Health Minister, Dr Leslie Ramsammy, but when he departed the then Ministry of Health, for some strange reason work on the legislation got lost in the proverbial smoke. Though suspicions exist, the real reason(s) for the neglect of this revolutionary, forward-looking and progressive piece of legislation remains unknown. Whatever the reason(s) simply put, by virtue of not addressing a serious problem head-on, it can be seen as adopting a casual approach to decisively tackling some very serious non-communicable diseases in Guyana.

Non-communicable diseases account for a sizeable chunk of the health budget. The destruction of smoking, both to the smoker and inhalers (second-hand smoke) is relatively well known. Among others, smoking is the cause for coughs, colds, asthma, pneumonia, stroke, heart diseases and lung cancer.
And according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), second-hand smoke accounts for about 600,000 deaths every year. Globally, smoking accounts for more than five million deaths annually and has been identified by the WHO as the world’s single greatest preventable cause of death.

In fact, WHO estimates put the number of deaths due to smoking and second-hand smoke at over 100 million over the course of the 20th Century. Staggeringly, this is more than the total number of deaths (estimate 97 million) in World Wars 1 and 11 combined. In Guyana, no data has been made public on how many persons die from smoking every year, but according to the WHO, tobacco kills more than half of its users.

According to the Global Youth Tobacco Survey, 21 per cent of students aged 13-15 smoke or had smoked in Guyana. PAHO Country Representative, Dr William Adu-Krow, speaking at the observance of Wellness Week held under the theme, “Smoking Kills: Pass the Tobacco Law for Healthy Parks and Healthy People,” two years ago made a stunning observation.
He pointed out that some 50 per cent of the local population are smokers and about 30 per cent of the homes here have smokers. Some observers have also pointed out that while men in Guyana smoke much more than women, the gap in recent years appears to be narrowing. These observations cannot be dismissed out of hand when cancer, diabetes and heart diseases though not due to smoking or smoke inhalation entirely, are the leading causes of death in Guyana.

In Guyana, many things that are wrong still pass as accepted norms. There are still cases of minors purchasing and selling cigarettes. This happens mostly in the countryside. There are still cases of persons smoking in public transportation and even officials smoking in public spaces. The legislation before the House seeks to right these wrongs and institutes a meagre fine of $20,000 for persons found guilty of smoking in public. And importantly, it also seeks in a very direct way to quell the billowing of tobacco smoke in public by prohibiting advertisement, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco products and delivery systems.

There is nothing fashionable about smoking when it is a slow, silent killer and a destroyer of homes, families and causes an unnecessary financial burden on government which has limited resources to deal with preventable health issues. The government must be commended for taking this landmark legislation to the House. Hopefully, it receives the full support of both sides of the divide.