World No Tobacco Day, celebrated yesterday, is an annual event established by the World Healtth Organisation to promote a tobacco-free environment. It provides an opportunity to reflect on the human and economic burden of tobacco and to encourage smokers to consider quitting. According to WHO, every day about 10,000 people die as a result of tobacco-related illness.
There are over a billion smokers worldwide, 3.5 million of whom die each year from a smoking-related disease. In the Republic, three out of every 10 adults smoke. Six thousand people die here every year from an illness precipitated by smoking, ten times the number killed in road traffic accidents.
Smoking is irrefutably linked with heart disease, several types of tumour but especially lung cancer and breathing problems such as emphysema and chronic obstructive airways disease. Limbs are amputated in hospitals every day as a direct result of arteries being blocked by the effects of smoking.
The benefits of giving up the habit are well proven. In a matter of days, taste and smell improve; within a year wheezing and breathing problems diminish. The risk of heart attack is halved within five years of giving up; that of lung cancer falls by 50 per cent after ten years by which time the risk of heart attack is equal to that of someone who has never smoked,
The theme of World No Tobacco Day this year is Tobacco Free Sport - Play it Clean. With the World Cup starting this weekend, WHO and FIFA have agreed that there will be no advertising, promotion or selling of tobacco at World Cup venues. In keeping with the sports theme the Irish Cancer Society commisioned research which shows that two-thirds of smokers in the Republic who actively participate in sport feel that their habit significantly affects their performance.
The Minister for Health has taken a firm line on tobacco control. But more must be done, especially in the area of passive smoking, which affects all of us. Research published this week clearly demonstrated the high levels of nicotine which non-smoking workers in bars and restaurants are exposed to and the risks to their health posed by this exposure.