A smoker

By Daniels Ekugo

A pro-choice coalition group on the auspices of Liberty Forum Initiative (LFI), has called on the Federal Government to henceforth advise ministers of the federal republic on making selfish comments on sensitive issues bothering the country.

Making this call in a statement by the coalition is Deputy Liason Officer of the group Mr Waheed Ademola, who faulted a statement made by the Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewale, when some anti-tobacco groups paid him a courtesy visit.

According to Ademola “The office of the Minister of Health is an exalted position and never a position to inflict injuries on any firm because of a ‘personal hatred’. It is either you are there for the Federal Republic of Nigeria or you are at home with your problems. The Minister should be concerned that in Edo State, about 12,000 people have been certified positive of HIV/AIDs by W.H.O, and he is busy chasing tobacco firms. Do we need whistle blowers to increase your tax incentive? All our leaders are supposed to be pro-active.”

This was sequel to the Minister’s response to anti-tobacco group’s visit when the minister said ‘I have a personal and official reason for fighting tobacco and will do anything to make our people stop smoking.’

In his own response, Mr Wakama Nnanna, said “Well, the problem is there are lots of things in life that are potentially not good for us. Now smoking may come quite high up that bar but drinking too much alcohol, drinking too many sugary drinks, eating too much fatty food and dairy products, there are lots and lots of things that are potentially bad for our health and we can’t go around banning all these things.

“The exciting thing about these emerging products is that they give control back to the consumer. I mean we have got to put this in perspective. Smoking rates in the UK have fallen dramatically over the last 30 or 40 years and if you go back to the Fifties half of the adult population smoked. Now the figure is about 16 per cent. So that’s been a pretty dramatic drop but of course the really dramatic drop actually happened between the mid Seventies and the early Nineties when there were very few restrictions on smoking and most people absorbed the health messages and they chose either not to start smoking or they decided they’re going to quit.”

For Damilola Harrison “prohibition doesn’t work. I think everybody knows the example of America where they tried to prohibit alcohol and they had to give up that experiment after 12 years because it was a terrible failure because the people who took over the market were the criminal gangs and the bootleggers.

“So from that experience I think the tobacco control lobby has understood that prohibition never works and over the last few decades globally, we’ve seen an attempt to wean people off tobacco, trying to get them to give up completely, and again that hasn’t worked as well as the tobacco control lobby would have liked because, simply, there are millions of people who enjoy smoking.”

“I hink the health message has got across to most people and in many cases that has discouraged people from taking up smoking in the first place. It has also encouraged some people to give up, but many people are prepared to take the risk because they enjoy smoking and because they enjoy it they’re not going to give it up until a product comes along that gives them the same pleasure that smoking tobacco does.”