The World No Tobacco Day falls on May 31 and the theme this year is ‘Tobacco- a threat to development’.
Every year, on May 31, WHO and partners mark World No Tobacco Day (WNTD), highlighting the health and additional risks associated with tobacco use, and advocating for effective policies to reduce tobacco consumption.
This message was well elaborated by the Swarna Hansa Foundation poster, in the 2009 World No Tobacco Day. It questioned whether cigarettes which kill more than 30,000 people are legal.
Trying to establish a status of legality on cigarettes, has been a well manoeuvred tactic of the Tobacco Industry ever since it was challenged by tobacco victims. In Sri Lanka, when the Swarna Hansa Foundation got the Industry to change its wavering health warning that ‘smoking may cause cancer’, into a more meaningful warning, stating,’ smoking causes cancer’, the Tobacco Industry began to use that change as well to promote cigarettes by another well worded tobacco promoting message. It began to say, “We recognize that with the pleasures of smoking come the real risk of some serious diseases”.
At the same time, they initiated another tactic to hide the real nature and risk of smoking, that is, by way of distorting the cause of tobacco related diseases. The Industry started saying, everywhere and every time that ‘it is illegal, illicit and unauthorized manufactured cigarettes’ that cause diseases. Surprisingly, in one of their annual reports, it was seen they have used the terms ‘illegal, legal, illicit’, more than nine times, on one page.
It has been revealed world over, that illicit cigarettes are bought to and sent to countries by none other than the established Tobacco Industry. Accordingly, they cannot be more illicit and more illegal than other cigarettes. On the other hand, if those are illegal and harmful then all cigarettes are illegal and harmful. That is why the Swarna Hansa Foundation questioned on World No Tobacco Day 2009, whether the cigarettes that kill people are legal? It was intended as an eye opener for the government and others who are interested in tobacco control, to take necessary action.
Today, at a time when the World Health Organization has put forward that ‘Tobacco threatens development’, as this year’s theme, Swarna Hansa believes, its poster questioning the legality of cigarettes which kills many people all over the world will be more appropriate. It is an impressive poster. In addition to pasting the poster on permitted places in the city Swarna Hansa will be using the social media extensively to take the message, across the world. The time has come to question the status of the legality of cigarettes. (Swarna Hansa Foundation, Sri Lanka)