I’m sure Arbet wrote his latest contribution for Filipino Voices in jest, but he writes on a subject that is very, very close to my mind, my heart, my mouth, my fingers, and my lungs.
It’s a dated presentation, but Dr. Marina Miguel-Baquilod, who was the coordinator of Phase I of the Global Youth Tobacco Survey, conducted a self-administered multiple choice survey (I cringe at the thought, but I’m not a scientist), on 11,630 respondents ranging from 12 to 18 years. The GYTS for the Philippines back then had some rather interesting findings:
- Four in 10 students, or 43% of the respondents, answered yes to having tried smoking. For purposes of comparison: back then, the proportion of students who smoked in the Western Pacific region was 21.5% in Singapore, 22.4% in China, 32.8% in Fiji, 61.4% in Palau, and 79.8% in the Marianas.
- For the proportion of respondents who currently smoke, we rank second to the Marianas, where 39.4% of the respondents answered in the affirmative. In 2000, Dr. Miguel-Baquilod’s study showed that 22% of the respondents currently smoke.
- More interesting statistics: 72% of the respondents believe that smoking is harmful, the same percentage believe that smoking makes one ugly, and 85% of current smokers want to stop smoking.
Because there’s a fascist inside of me who savors the sweet smell of power, let’s talk about our nation’s addiction to cigarettes. Now there’s an issue more important that the Presidency!
(Deep drag of cigarette) Ah, yes… wanna bum one? Here you go.
I know it’s flawed logic, but it is true: there is no one-to-one correspondence between the incidence of smoking and smoking-related diseases. The reason why lung cancer and emphysema, among other diseases, are called smoking-related diseases is because the relationship is not direct; it is proportional. You can get the same diseases a smoker gets from pollution or genetics. Yet health is not the real danger of smoking. Remember: smoking is not a personal issue, but a social one.
I wrote an entry on my blog before about smoking and the call center generation, but I would like to highlight a passage from that entry:
Tobacco is the quintessential American product. It fulfills no appetite but the one it creates. Predicting a throwaway culture, it is rendered useful only by being destroyed. Along with autos, movies, jazz and striptease, it remains our abiding gift to world mass culture.
- “A Letter to Granddad, the Tobacco Farmer”
Allan Gurganus, New York Times
August 18, 1995
The truth to the matter is simple: the prevalence of smoking in the Philippines is not because of strictly personal choices. Cigarettes exist, and are consumed, in a very social nature and manner, so much so that where you’ll find cigarettes, there will always be smokers. The challenge that confronts our public health system, among other things, is to reduce the admittedly alarming incidences of smoking in the Philippines.
Back in May, Dr. Martin Bautista points it out in a very expert way:
From my perspective as a physician, there can be no filthier habit than smoking. Lung cancer, obstructive lung disease, coronary artery disease, osteoporosis, respiratory infections, oropharyngeal cancers are all directly related to smoking. While there are many who smoke in order to avail of the anorexiant properties of nicotine especially during these days of ridiculously high food prices and there quite a few who smoke to ward away the multitudes of hemorrhagic-fever-bearing mosquitoes, the adverse effects overwhelmingly negate whatever salutary benefits that smoking brings.
My view is that if we keep on treating smoking as something strictly personal, we can never get to a solution that embraces society’s smoking problems as a whole. Addiction is not a personal problem; if it were, we wouldn’t have a problem and we could chalk up cigarette smoking to a grand scale of emo. If a smoker gets addicted or dependent on nicotine, then society has a problem; it has at least one person who cannot function properly without a) committing a slow death, and b) an imagined fuel that his or her body has become dependent on.
If it were a personal problem, then it’s easy to quit; it’s like… hmmm… your-ex-was-in-a-room-with-your-best-friend-while-they-were-both-drunk-and-then-they-started-kissing-and-then-you-get-to-know-about-it-three-weeks-later-from-your-friend-and-then-you-start-smoking-more-cigarettes-from-your-usual-couple-of-sticks-a-day-habit-to-numb-yourself-from-the-pain. Somehow, that’s not exactly how people start smoking. People start smoking because of many reasons, the lot of which are social in nature:
- The relative cheapness of cigarettes
- The placebo/panacea quality of cigarettes
- The omnipresence (yes, more than even God Himself) of tobacco advertising
- The positive social stigma associated with tobacco products
So no, it’s not easy to quit when everyone else is smoking. As a social problem, smoking must be addressed in terms not only of smokers, but of everyone.
To give due credit to The Government (OK, shoot me next time you see me), there have been many measures employed to keep people from the bad habit: taxation, importation tariffs, regulation, banning ads, et cetera, et cetera. But therein lies your problem: as long as there are cigarettes, there will always be smokers. To fully enact a legitimate no-smoking law, you’ll have to either take away the smokers (OK, kill them), or take out the revenue-generating economy-floating cigarette.
Somehow, that won’t sit too well with too many people. In the meantime, let me think this over… with a few cigarettes.
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smoking also causes urinary bladder cancer and kidney cancer.
…if peeing blood will help you quit smoking, so be it.
One way to keep watchdogs’ tails always up for vigilance is to agitate them with their dreaded enemy.
Secondhand smoke is always more effective to cause irritation to the people around a smoker than simply offering them a pack of cigarettes.
Alak, babae, sugal – mga bisyo na peste sa lipunan.
Pero peste lamang sila kapag hinde nagbibigay ng tamang buwis sa gobyerno. Hinde na kailangan banggitin, pero ang SMB, Sauna (spa na ngayon) at Casino ay ilan lamang sa halimbawa.
Siguro, kung ang shabu manufacturer ay nagbabayad lamang ng “legal fees to operate in the Philippines”, hinde malayong magiging world-class tayo sa industriyang ito.
Henrico,
ABS as cliched initials, even, are passe. The accurate and politically-correct term is Alak, Prostitution,at Sugal with gambling being state-sanctioned through PAGCOR. But in all three, lives are destroyed, dignity diminished, and the future pawned.
everyone,
whatever you say about smoking, for me, it’s okey. I mean, it’s my ecstacy.
now, debating on all of you in this site is unhealthy for me. i have’nt even puffed one cigarette since i started commenting on this site.
HP:
Open challenge. You name the place, the time, I’ll show up and debate with you.
Marocharim,
Never debate with a fanatic, are you crazy?
BrianB:
Yes, I am.
my young jeddai,
hahaha! such boasts from a young smoker(?). how lovely! Nah. your bile is worst than your bite (or so mr. djb says).
by the way mr. marocharim,
what better venue than the web, the most open site for every person with brains.
I’m serious.
I want it face to face. Where nobody has have the privilege of anonymity. Where you can back up your blasts and I can back up my bite. Where you can face up to the challenge of at least one “young jeddai.” I’m not afraid.
What better venue than where you can either put up, or shut up? The real world, where these issues REALLY count?
please, it’s jedi (not ‘jeddai’).
sounds like an open challenge — and fun to watch, to boot. in one corner, we have a presumed government lawyer in a position of power; in the other a self-avowed anarchist (whatever the eff he means by that).
what say you fellows meet and we webcast it live? (paging azrael for the tech to livestream this over the web for everyone to see.) US presidential debate rules, a two-hour match-up?
of course, i’m assuming that both have balls and neither will back down from the challenge.
or if not face to face, at least via webcam.
still using web-based tech… and streamed for everyone to see.
teleconferenced debate, anyone?
as what they say…in the end, he’ll pick his shattered pieces of gray matter everywhere…hahaha!
or…will just see tiny, itsy bitsy pieces of inconsequential muck on the floor? much like ash from my fine Slims?
let’s get it on!
after reading all the bad things about smoking, gary lising said he has stopped reading. maybe HP would do the same.
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re: debate venue…the smoking lounge at narita airport???
Ding,
Thanks for pointing out…the correct term, politically.
To smoke or not to smoke?? hellow its not the issue anymore..It’s your choice, to kill your self slowly and surely or preserving your life..Its our individual preference..
But to me as mom and wife…sugal, babae, alak, sigarilyo..parepareho lang yan bisyo..Lhat ng sobra masama ..alam naman natin yan for God’s sake..
And what is the issue now to me.., if you are a family woman and a member of your family is practicing this kind of addiction, this would terribly affect the members of the family in all aspects of our lives Physically, mentally , emotionally, financially etc..etc…and the worst of all sigarilyo to the max till they drop..the bottom line, still the family will still be the one that would cater them..pagmaysakit na sila or even pag mamamatay na sila because of this addiction…pano pag wala kang pampagamot at isangkahig isang tuka ka…nakakalungkot ang realidad na mas may pambili pa ang ilan ng sigarilyo kaysa sa ilalaman ng sikmura nila…
God bless them…
let’s get it on na daw, jes. Name the place.