It goes without saying that there is a definite link between smoking and disease. Smoking engenders self-inflicted disease and life is too precious to be wasted in smoke. By coating the throat and lungs with tar, smoking is alleged to cause cancer, respiratory diseases, heart failure and blood pressure, due to the hardening of the arteries.

Many people die young because of smoking. Over the years, we have become more concerned about our health through the relentless efforts of the anti-smoking lobby across the world. Aggressive campaigns are launched to counteract the insidious efforts of the tobacco industry so as to sensitise people especially the youth. Advertisements for cigarettes are banned totally, no-smoking signs are posted everywhere in public buildings and tobacconists are liable to criminal proceedings if they are found guilty of selling cigarettes to minors.

In bygone years, the authorities have taken timid measures as cigarettes generated colossal revenues to the exchequer. Tobacco smoking became the order of the day: smoking was a way of life. Shocking as it may appear to be, some unscrupulous teachers dared in the past to offer cigarettes to our youngsters – this is a sheer crime against our youth.

Film-shows were carried out amidst a smoky atmosphere: clothes of cine goers stank with the foul smell of tobacco at the end of the day. What a tragedy for the non-smokers who were coerced into becoming passive smokers.

The tobacco industry spent staggering sums on advertising to distort reality: ‘If we smoke, we can get the whole world in our hands.’ We were shown virile, clean-shaven young men with beautiful girls in bikinis handing around cigarettes.

What utter nonsense! We were never shown pictures of real smokers coughing up their lungs, early in the morning. In those days, smoking was glorified and most countries heard no evil, saw no evil and smelt no evil. The conscience of the nation was appeased, while the population continued to puff its way to smoky, cancerous death

The first puff for our youngsters among the peer group may generate an addiction. They may turn into chain smokers. The whole world may crumble to pieces. Worse is when we find pregnant women smoking – what harm they are causing to the baby in their womb!

Countless valuable lives are lost through ignorance. Money obtained in the form of taxes on cigarettes on the one hand is squandered in building hospitals crammed with innocent victims of tobacco smoking on the other. The treatment of such health victims is an exorbitant burden on the country’s budget.

<B>Philip LI CHING HUM</B>