Easy To Start, Difficult To Stop

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 12 (Bernama) -- It usually begins when youngsters try out smoking after seeing their peers do it.
Some may feel that if they don't smoke, they may be ridiculed, or that smoking supposedly shows that you are an adult. Peer pressure is a formidable reason why youngsters try smoking.
A civil servant who wants to be known as "DJ" reveals that he started to smoke when he was an undergraduate in university.
"I only smoked for two days, as I remembered my father's words telling me not to smoke," he told Bernama.
DJ's father is a hard-core smoker who puffed some 40 cigarettes a day. He suffered lung damage and had a stroke when he reached his late 60s.

TEENAGE SMOKERS
Some youths start to smoke in their early teenage years, after they begin secondary school. Usually, they will not stop after taking their first puff and this will turn out to a habit -- a grave one.
Smoking is addictive. According to the Health Ministry's "Info Sihat" website, tobacco contains nicotine that initiates a chemical reaction in the body similar to that caused by drugs such as cocaine or heroin.
Many school-age teenagers, after being trapped in the clutches of smoking, resort to paying for cigarettes using their pocket money and, worse, start to play truant in order to smoke, as the habit is prohibited in schools.
If the pocket money is gone, some start to ask for more from their parents, giving false reasons, or resort to stealing from their parents.

DELINQUENT JUVENILES
These juveniles have no qualms about smoking at cybercafes, bus stops, shopping complexes, or food stalls. Many take the plunge into criminal activities and drug abuse.
A former delinquent juvenile, Paul, admits that smoking made him wild and a truant.
Paul's dark episode began when he was in lower secondary school, where he was influenced by his peers to try smoking.
At first, he tried only a few puffs. When smoking became a habit, he started to play truant and cheated his parents before finally ending in jail after being convicted of drug pushing.
He spent five years in prison and this made him vow to return to the correct path after his release.

STATISTICS
The website states that there are some 1.15 billion smokers worldwide. Some 15 billion cigarettes are sold daily. This translates into 10 million cigarettes a minute.
According to "Info Sihat," it is estimated that one out of five youths aged 13 to 15 years smokes. Some 60,000 to 100,000 children start smoking every day, and half of those are in Asia.
"Info Sihat" quotes a study in the United States that shows a smoking child has 13 times more inclination to become a drug addict than a non-smoking child.

MALAYSIAN SMOKERS
The website also states that almost half of the men in Malaysia smoke. Around 45-50 youths under the age of 18 start smoking everyday.
Statistics concerning young women are also alarming.
Studies held in 2000 and 2004 showed that smoking among young women increased from 4.0 to 8.0 per cent. The 2004 showed that one out of five youths was a smoker.
Lung cancer in Malaysia is reported to be on the rise at the rate of 17 per cent a year, and smoking is believed to cause close to half a million coronary cases.
The website also states that, based on the 2nd National Health and Morbidity Study in 1996, smoking causes the death of some 10,000 people in a year. Hardcore smokers spend RM15 million a day to buy cigarettes.

TOBACCO
According to Info "Sihat," the World Health Organisation (WHO) states that tobacco is the number one killer worldwide, with some 1.0 billion people expected to die from smoking during this century.
There are more than 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, 2,000 of them toxic, and 63 are carcinogenic (can cause cancer).
About half of long-term smokers are at risk of lung cancer, chronic lung diseases and other possibly fatal complications.
On average, a smoker's life is shortened by five minutes for every cigarette the person smokes.
"Info Sihat" points out that 30 per cent of cancer-related deaths are due to smoking, as are 90 per cent of deaths caused by lung cancer.

CAMPAIGN
The health hazards of smoking have been so widely discussed that some may regard the issue as nothing new.
The government has spent hundreds of millions of Ringgit to inculcate the anti-smoking message among the society, via the "Tak Nak Merokok" (Say No To Smoking) campaign. In such campaigns, gory snapshots are depicted on cigarette packs in an effort to deter the public from smoking.
What has Fomca (Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations) got to say?
"Such anti-smoking efforts from the authorities have yet to achieve success in curbing smoking.
"However, I hope that the Health Ministry will continue with such campaigns despite the failure to achieve the desired outcome," says Fomca's Communications Director Mohd Yusof Abdul Rahman.
He calls for the anti-smoking campaign to be continued, particularly when cigarette companies are aggressively campaigning to promote their products.
"This is in evidence with the participation of cigarette companies in programmes involving youth," he said, adding that the authorities should enforce no-smoking zones in stipulated public locations.
So far, there are 21 premises named as "No Smoking" spots, among them hospitals/clinics, airports, education institutions, public lifts and toilets, air-conditioned restaurants, public transport vehicles, shopping centres and any premises with centralised air-conditioning.

JOINT RESPONSIBILITY
Mohd Yusof said the task of reminding the public of the dangers of smoking lies not only on the shoulders of the government but with all parties.
He said Fomca carried out such a programme in the 1990s.
"Even though we no longer hold such campaigns, we still call for healthy-living practices and this includes saying no to smoking," he said.
He called for schools to monitor students outside school hours with the help of local authorities and enforcement agencies, apart from the government imposing stringent rules on the permissible age of those who can smoke.