RAJSHAHI: Speakers at a meeting have stressed for strict enforcement of the amended Tobacco Control Act (TCA) in public places and public transports to save thousands of non-smokers from passive smoking and human lives, reports BSS. They put special emphasis on creating public awareness about harms of using smoking and non-smoking tobacco products and tobacco-related diseases those have been killing millions of people in the globe annually posing a real threat to human civilisation.
The observations came a meeting titled "Strengthening Tobacco Control in Rajshahi and Rangpur divisions" held at the conference hall of Association for Community Development (ACD) in the city yesterday. ACD and Rajshahi Tobacco Control Coalition (RTCC) jointly organised the meeting for preparing annual plan on controlling smoking and using tobacco products in association with Bloomberg Philanthropies and Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids. Acting Mayor of Rajshahi City Corporation Nizam-Ul Azim and Executive Director of BCDP Altaf Hossain addressed the discussion as chief and special guests respectively with Salima Sarwar, Executive Director of ACD, in the chair.
During his keynote presentation, Ehsanul Amin, programme coordinator of ACD, said 57,000 people are dying in Bangladesh annually consuming tobacco products and 1.2m suffering from lung cancer, cerebra-vascular, coronary artery, chronic obstructive pulmonary and other tobacco-attributable diseases.
Currently, 43 per cent of the adult people including 58 per cent male and 29 per cent female are consuming cigarettes, bidi, smokeless or other tobacco products, creating grave concern for public health, he said.
Besides, tobacco use has become a grievous concern for the whole nation as seven per cent of the younger generations, aged between 13 and 15 years, have been consuming tobacco products and the trend increases consistently, Amin said.
Frequent and indiscriminate smoking in the public places and transports affects the non-smokers more than the direct smokers. So, there should be a strong civil society to stop this practice. Mayor Azim alleged that some tobacco companies are expanding their market promotional activities in the name of corporate social responsibilities, which must be resisted. In this context, he said the tobacco control law was enacted in May, 2013 but its enforcement is not visible as yet and so violation of the law is taking place randomly. He expressed grave concern over gross violation of tobacco control law in the region and urged the authorities to take punitive measures to resist the violation. Azim suggested for direct taxation at an extremely higher rate on cigarettes and all other tobacco products so that the maximum retail price of tobacco products included 70 per cent tax to force many people leaving consumption of tobacco products.