ACTIVISTS RAISE CONCERN AS TOBBACCO COMPANIES TARGET UNDERAGED SMOKERS

Anti-tobacco activists have discovered a new tactics employed by the tobacco industry in Nigeria to lure youth especially under-aged into smoking.

According to the activists the tactics involves encouraging point of sale mostly in kiosks sited close to schools where cigarettes and advert posters are displayed.

They mad this known at a tobacco control parliament organized for the civil society, school children and youth corps members in Enugu.

It has been said that tobacco related illness kill about six million people annually and that eighty percent of the deaths are from middle and low income countries including Nigeria.

This is why tobacco activists are worried that if nothing is done to check the excesses of tobacco firms, deaths and sicknesses arising from tobacco will further overstretch the already poor health facilities in the country.

The Deputy Executive Director of a non-governmental organization, the Environmental Rights Action, Mr.AkimbodeOluwafemi said apart from selling cigarettes in shop close to schools, tobacco firms now package cigarettes in flavours such as vanilla and sweet smelling candies, targeting the young ones.

Mr.Oluwafemi also revealed that a popular substance smoked by youths known as shisha is a tobacco product.

He explained that one puff of shisha contained about one hundred sticks of cigarettes.

The Executive Director of another NGO, New Life Community Care, Mrs Florence Ifeanyi Aneka advocated the participation of everyone in the campaign against the excesses of the tobacco industry.

Also speaking at the evemt, the Head, Clinical Psychology Unit at the Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital ESUT Teaching Hospital Enugu, Reverend Father Paul Okoli stated that tobacco was a major gateway to substance or drug abuse.

The Reverend Father Okoli called on youths to stay away from smoking in order to live a healthy, longer and productive life.

NDUBUISI OZOILO