Victor, 42, grew up in his hometown in Ilaje, a local government area in Ondo State.
He got exposed to packs of cigarettes quite early in life when adults from his village used to import it from neighbouring countries alongside other wares like used clothes and shoes.
Ordinarily, they were meant to sell the cigarettes to adults, but where they could not exhaust selling them, they took to smoking them. Decades after, he is yet to quit the habit, and this has continued to gulp substantial part of his income.
Advertising and addiction keep many trapped in a habit they wish they could break. That was the experience of Biodun, who, apart from growing up seeing her father indulge in the act, met with peers in secondary school who also saw nothing wrong in taking a stick or two per day. She readily joined them. It took her 15 years before she could quit the habit.
In Nigeria, tobacco is one of the most commonly used addictive substances that contain several chemicals, which are injurious to health. The most dangerous chemicals in tobacco are nicotine and carbon-monoxide.
Smoking is a relentless killer.
According to World Health Organisation (WHO), tobacco use kills more than five million people per year worldwide. It is responsible for one in 10 adult deaths. Among the five greatest risk factors for mortality, it is the single most preventable cause of death. It killed 100 million people during the last century. On average, it kills a person every six seconds. If current patterns continue, tobacco use will kill more than eight million people per year by 2030. Up to half of the world’s more than one billion smokers will die prematurely of a tobacco-related disease.
Environmental Rights Action (ERA) Director of Corporate Accountability, Akinbode Oluwafemi, says between five to six million Nigerians smoke, and over three million people in the country are currently on death row as a result of tobacco-related diseases now common in Nigeria. Oluwafemi said tobacco statistics is taken per number of persons it kills.
The economic cost of tobacco use is equally devastating. In addition to the high public health costs of treating tobacco-related diseases, tobacco users are also less productive due to increased sickness, and those who die prematurely deprive their families of much-needed income.
Tobacco use and poverty are inextricably linked. Many studies have shown that in the poorest households in some low- and middle-income countries, more than 10 per cent of total household expenditure is on tobacco. This means that these families have less money to spend on such basic items as food, education and healthcare.
In addition to its direct health effects, tobacco use leads to increased healthcare costs. It contributes to higher malnutrition and illiteracy rates, since money that could have been used for food and education is spent on tobacco. The role of tobacco use in exacerbating poverty and hindering economic development needs to be fully recognised.
According to Mnena Lan of Nigeria Academy of Science, the cost of tobacco consumption in Nigeria varies among people of low, middle and high-income earnings. Though the poor is affected the most, the rich also cry.
“For the Nigerian poor, (each of) who live on less than one dollar a day, money spent on tobacco is money not spent on basic necessities such as food, shelter, education and health.
“By lighting 20 cigarettes each day, individuals end up smoking 7,300 cigarettes yearly. Even by choosing low cost brands, they are still investing more than $2,000 (about N324,000) yearly. Therefore, there is not only a risk for various illnesses, but also a toll on the pockets of smokers.
“People, who have just taken up smoking, can save up to $12 (N1,944) every week by quitting the habit.
“The amount of money a smoker spends on cigarettes affects the family’s monthly budget. In addition, reports state that if both the spouses smoke, then 15 per cent of the earnings go up in smoke,” she says.
Apart from the tobacco use having a great link with poverty, the smoker is also disposed to various health hazards. According to WHO, tobacco is responsible for over 25 diseases in man, including hypertension, heart attack, cancer and other conditions such as asthma and emphysema. It is also responsible for some pregnancy-related problems and other conditions such as tuberculosis, blindness, deafness as well as nutritional and psychological disorders.
“Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body, causing many diseases and affecting the health of smokers in general,” affirms Dr. Femi Funsho-Adebayo of BTB Health Consulting.
He added that quitting smoking has immediate as well as long-term benefits for the smoker and the loved ones.
Tobacco’s victims are not just the smokers. Included are the surviving family members who suffer emotional and financial loss, as well as the 600,000 non-smokers who die each year from breathing second-hand smoke. The burden spreads to everyone in the form of rising healthcare costs.
Funsho-Adebayo advised those struggling to quit smoking “to talk with a doctor about nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) to help deal with cravings, identify and avoid triggers, delay giving in to tobacco craving for about 10 more minutes and then do something to distract oneself for that period of time and chewing on sugarless gum or raw carrots.
“You might be tempted to have just one cigarette to satisfy a tobacco craving. But don’t fool yourself into believing that you can stop at just one. More often than not, having just one leads to another – and you may end up using tobacco again,” he stated.
