Enforce laws that protect kids from tobacco use

The government has been called upon to enforce provisions of the law that protect children and the youth from cigarettes and other forms of tobacco products, especially shisha.

Although Ghana has adopted a tobacco control law within the Public Health and Tobacco Control Regulations, it is yet to effectively implement and enforce the law to protect young people from smoking.

Ghana is also party to the World Health Organisation Framework on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC).

According to the Programmes Director of Vision for Alternative Development (VALD), Mr Labram Musah, the upsurge in the consumption of tobacco and tobacco products was not only harmful to consumers and non-consumers but also put a heavy burden on the economic health of Ghanaians.

The tobacco industry, among others, uses the low prices of cigarettes, flashy online and point-of-sale advertisements to lure young people to use tobacco.

Therefore, Mr Musah said young people had to be equipped with knowledge and tools to easily detect tactics employed by the industry in order not to fall prey to the harmful effects of smoking.

He said a research conducted in 2016 by VALD and 10 other civil society organisations in Africa showed that “single sticks of cigarettes are readily available, sold and consumed by children, including the selling of cigarettes to and by minors”.

Another research from Tobacco Atlas revealed that more than 5,000 children within the ages of 10-14 years continued to use tobacco in Ghana, she said.  

The Ghana 2017 Global Youth Tobacco Survey in Junior High Schools showed that 8.9 per cent of boys and 8.2 per cent of girls used any form of tobacco products.

Seven per cent of boys and 5.3 per cent of girls currently smoke tobacco, while 0.4 per cent of boys and 1.7 per cent of girls currently smoke shisha.

Mr Musah said the situation was scary and worrying and called on the government to ban shisha in Ghana because, apart from the harm it caused, its sale contradicted the provisions of the tobacco control measures.

He said the youth were oblivious of the harmful and deadly effects of smoking shisha, adding that the average shisha-smoking session lasted an hour, which was equivalent to smoking 100 to 200 sticks of cigarettes.

He said the government should increase taxes on tobacco to make it expensive and unattractive to the poor and young people who were the primary target.

“Research has shown that tax increment on tobacco products discourage smoking and initiation, especially among the youth, thereby reducing the burden of diseases such as cancers, heart and lung diseases,” he said.

Mr Musah said in this Covid-19 era, evidence confirmed that tobacco smoking increased the risk of contracting the virus due to the effect it had on the human immune system, including being one of the main risk factors for a number of chronic diseases.

The World No Tobacco Day is celebrated on May 31 to raise awareness of the harmful and deadly effects of tobacco use and second-hand smoke exposure.

The day is also used to discourage the use of tobacco in any form.

The theme for this year was: “Protecting youth from industry manipulation and preventing them from tobacco and nicotine use”.