TOBACCO CANCER LINK

Government’s lagging behind in ratifying the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, described as an international legal instrument to circumscribe the global spread of tobacco and tobacco products whose link to cancer has long been established, has resulted in the Trinidad and Tobago Cancer Society lobbying public support to get Government to ratify the Convention.

The Trinidad and Tobago Government has long recognised this link and several years ago took steps by way of insisting on all advertisements promoting the sale of tobacco in the domestic market to carry the warning that the Minister of Health had advised that cigarette smoking could be dangerous to health. Today, 50 years after it the first link was established between regular cigarette smoking and cancer as well as heart disease, and 40 years after the United States Surgeon General officially accepted the link, Government is dragging its feet on an issue of crucial concern. And while the determined link is with respect to heavy smoking, nonetheless Government should embrace positions that seek to minimise any risk.

People do not become heavy smokers literally overnight, but begin with the odd cigarette or so convinced by direct and/or subliminal messages that it is the fashionable thing to do. It is Government’s responsibility to take steps to seek to reduce not simply the volume of messages, but their extent. We wish to make clear that we are in no way stating that local cigarette producers and/or distributors are deliberately seeking to encourage tobacco smoking in the face of evidence of its cancer link. And we also acknowledge that people who want to smoke, despite the evidence of the ill health it causes have the right to do so as long as it does not affect others.

We have already indicated that all cigarette advertisements carry the warning message of the Minister of Health. Ratifying of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control would automatically require Government to go many steps further, and restrict tobacco companies, even where they may be foreign and conducting advertising campaigns through local agents, from using billboards, giveaways and sponsorship of sporting events to promote their products. This may affect the ability of the local cigarette producer to sponsor the Sportsman and Sportswoman of the Year Awards, which clearly although it recognises the best in sporting talent in Trinidad and Tobago, subliminally promotes the use of tobacco and tobacco products. And while we do not readily dismiss the contribution of the West Indian Tobacco Company to sports, we cannot ignore the indirect appeal and impact of the same contribution, however unintentionally, to and on the nation’s youth. It is an irony that should not be lost on us. Each day that Government tarries the ratifying of the Convention may mean that many more of the nation’s impressionable young running the real risk of lung cancer and heart disease and ipso facto shortened lives and careers. Do we really want this?