The vicious smoke ring

KOCHI: A recent study published in The Lancet points out that 5,56,400 people in India died due to cancer in 2010. And out of this,  42 percent of the deaths among males and 18.3% among females was attributed to tobacco smoking.Tobacco consumption, which includes smoking and chewing, is something that is widespread in the country, as well as in the state. Everyone in the country would have been exposed to it one way or the other- if you are not a smoker then you would have surely been exposed to secondhand smoke.Although smoking has been banned in public areas, people still do smoke with scant fear of the enforcement agencies. The younger generations is still at a greater risks from its ill effects. Studies have pointed out, that although the levels of secondhand smoke has decreased in the general population,  the sub group of children is the one that is seeing the least decline.“Almost all the cases of lung infection among children that I receive is found to have a smoker in the family,” says Dr Zakkariya P P, pediatrician. He further adds that the health of the child vastly improves when the person quits smoking.Lung infection is just the tip of the iceberg. Prolonged exposure to secondhand smoke results in recurrent respiratory diseases and other viral diseases. The 2006 US Surgeon General’s Report , 'The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Secondhand Smoke' has concluded that there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke and that, on an average, children are exposed to more secondhand smoke than adults.The report points out that children are adversely affected by secondhand smoke. Children’s bodies are in the developing stage, and exposure to the poisons of secondhand smoke puts them at risk of severe respiratory diseases and can hinder the growth of their lungs.Secondhand smoke is a known cause for low birth weight, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, middle ear infection, and other diseases.People in the country know that tobacco is not good for their health. No parent wants their child to pick up habit, neither will any child smoke or consume tobacco in front of their parents. Yet somehow youngsters get drawn in.“Smoking causes cancer, the public knows this. All cigarette cartons carry the warning. Yet people smoke. The problem here is that smokers do not realise the gravity of what they are doing. People do not understand the health risks they are exposing themselves to,” says Dr Shameer V K, physician at KMCT, Calicut.The only way to reverse this trend would be to educate everyone about the seriousness of the situation. The Lancet study points out that those with secondary and higher education had lower rates of death.  In illiterate men the death rate was 106 per 1,00,000; for women it was 107 per 1,00,000. In the educated, the death rates are 46 per 1,00,000 in men and 43 per 1,00,000 in women.­In this regard the steps taken by the state government to educate the children at schools is commendable. But more is required to safeguard a child from the harmful effects of smoking- what is the point in a public ban if they are going to be exposed to secondhand smoke in their very homes?Wizard’s first rule states that all people are stupid. They are ready to believe a lie either because they are afraid of the truth or they want to believe the lie itself. Cigarettes were known to cause lung cancer in the 1930s, demonstrated by German scientists, and probably ignored due to the study’s association with the Nazis then. In 1953, the Sloan-Kettering Institute had shown that cigarette tar painted on the skin of mice caused fatal cancers, which was even carried by The Readers Digest entitled “Cancer by the Carton”. Even half a century later, the risks posed by tobacco isn’t taken seriously which brings out the question- are we really stupid?