It's No Tobacco Day Tomorrow

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor GUILLERMO TEJIDA III Desk Editor NANETTE L. GUADALQUIVER Busines Editor CEDELF P. TUPAS Sports Editor (On Leave) RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

All over the country, in large cities, in highways and in places where people converge, one can see giant billboards advertising various brands of cigarets, to entice smokers to choose their products. In Metro Manila, especially, such advertising medium use the most attractive and most expensive ways to win more attention from more people and sustain their multi-billion industry.

Today all such advertising gimmicks are required by governments to state prominently: "SMOKING IS DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH". The stark statement is supposed to remind everyone about the effects of smoking on one's health, especially the strong possibility that one could fall victim to cancer, or other diseases of the respiratory system from which hope of survival are generally slim.

Sadly, smoking seems to gain more and more adherents among the young, and few, if any, among old users who give it up, despite statistics showing how truly dangerous it could be to one's well-being. Tomorrow, May 31, has been declared by the World Health Organization as "WORLD NO TOBACCO DAY". The purpose of dedicating such a day, according to the WHO, is to encourage countries and governments to work toward strict regulation of tobacco products, as well as to raise awareness of the seriousness of the effects of tobacco on life.

The WHO figures show that about 1.1 billion people in the world smoke. At the same time it also shows that the use of tobacco kills 3.5 million people around the world yearly. It also predicts that in about ten years time, tobacco will become the leading cause of death worldwide.

What the figures have not yet emphasized is the horror of the sufferings that a person stricken with lung cancer, for instance, goes through. Since this is what World No Tobacco Day is warning us about, let us heed it by passing it on to our loved ones who have been caught under the deadly spell of tobacco.*