Much is written about smoking being unhealthy and harmful, but it is also a highly expensive habit. Spending on tobacco drives out critical expenditures that cover basic needs. This is most significant in low-income families, affecting the smoker and his or her family.
According to a report that was recently published in the International Resource Center, a study conducted in Indonesia found that children living with a smoker are more malnourished than those children that live with non-smokers. Malnutrition amongst children remains one of the world’s leading public health challenges and is associated directly or indirectly with more than 50 percent of the 11 million estimated preventable child deaths, annually.
According to Dr. Zuhdi Al-Imam, a consultant in Pediatric pulmonary medicine, smoking increases the chance of children getting chronic pulmonary diseases such as asthma. Moreover, it worsens the symptoms of an existing pulmonary disease, and worryingly, affects younger children more than older ones.
“It is not enough to smoke in the bathroom since the smoke sticks to your clothes and can harm children just as much as smoking in front of them,” he stated in an interview with saudi Gazette. “If smoking is so necessary, at least smoke outside the house and change clothes when back inside.
It is increasingly evident that secondhand smoke exposure poses a significant health risk to children and this also suggests that there is really, no safe level of exposure.”
The Kingdom is a member of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and according to a report recently published in Saudi Gazette, new anti-smoking laws are being set in place to ban smoking in public places and will include fines of up to 200 Saudi riyals.
The executive director of the Non Smoking Association, Abdullah Srouji, has said that using warning pictures on cigarette boxes is an effective deterrent and has already been implemented in 25 countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Djibouti and Iran.
“When we see such pictures on cigarette boxes, it works psychologically,” he explained. “This image has a significant impact on smokers and in helping them to either reduce smoking or quitting altogether. He added that the packets will retain their effectiveness when the pictures will be changed from time to time.
According to a variety of studies conducted on this subject, such warning photos are supported by the majority of people, and they seem to affect the majority of smokers as well. – SGAccording to a report published in WebMD, researchers from Finland’s University of Turku measured levels of the nicotine marker cotinine in the blood of children between the ages of eight and 11 to determine their exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. The study involved more than 33,000 households from rural Java in Indonesia, and explored the association between tobacco and food expenditures and its impact on the level of nutrition in children under the age of five.
The study found that households with smokers spend money on tobacco instead of necessities such as food, and that reducing tobacco use will improve children’s health as money spent on cigarettes can be diverted to buying food. It was proposed that implementing strong tobacco control policies will reduce tobacco consumption.
Study results:
Poor households with at least one smoker spend up to 10 percent of their income on cigarettes.
- Households with smokers spend less of their income on food (68 percent) than households with nonsmokers (75 percent).
- 70 percent of cigarette expenditure in poor households is financed by the household food budget rather than the non-food budget.
- Smoking households spend more of their food budget on cheaper, less nutritious foods – such as rice – rather than micronutrient-rich foods.
- Reduced consumption of food and micronutrient-rich food among children in smoking households is associated with decreased child height—a symptom of malnutrition in children. – SG
By Fouzia Khan
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