Tag - Public health

Zimbabwe’s forests go up in smoke to feed its tobacco habit

Tobacco farmers are responsible for a fifth of the total annual deforestation in Zimbabwe, cutting down trees to burn in their curing barns. While the practice is not permitted, enforcement remains lax, and solutions such as establishing woodlots have not proved fast or scalable enough to address the problem. With Zimbabwe expected to...

Big Tobacco Makes Cancer Inequities Worse

This World Cancer Day, we face a grim reminder: Not all people have equal access to cancer care. It’s called the care gap, and it’s caused by inequity. Inequity, as the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) defines it, means “unjust, avoidable differences in care outcomes.” These differences are often caused by things people don’t choose,...

Can tobacco growing pave way for livelihood crops?

Some authors stress that tobacco firms should be socially responsible by encouraging farmers to save some portion of land to grow staple crops. Scope of tobacco farming in Uganda Article 17 of the WHOFCTC compels parties to promote viable alternative livelihoods for tobacco farmers. It can clearly be noted that fewer governments have done so. Hundreds...

Academia must stop fake science in promoting tobacco products

Tobacco use remains the single largest preventable cause of disease, disability and death in the world. In Summary We remain suspicious of ‘scientific’ reports being used to market emerging and novel products being shipped into the country by the big tobacco companies. The goal is to delay or stop the Ministry of Health’s...

Policy changes needed for tobacco control

Dr Raouf Alebshehy is a public health consultant with a background in medicine and healthcare reform. He works as monitoring coordinator in Tobacco Tactics, part of the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath, which is research partner in the global tobacco industry watchdog STOP. The number of smokers in the UK has been falling since 2011,...

Nollywood: NGO, NFVCB launch campaign against smoking in children’s movies

A Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Smoke-Free Nollywood, and the National Film and Video Censors Board(NFVCB) have launched a digital media campaign to discourage smoking scenes in-home movies watched by children. The Creative Director, Smoke Free Nollywood, Ms. Esther Aghotor, announced this said in a statement on Tuesday, in Abuja. According to her, a visual Public Service Announcement (PSA)...

Study: US Tobacco Tax Increases Could Help Achieve Smokefree Goal by 2030

A recent study published on BMJ’s Tobacco Control, suggests that state cigarette excise tax increases could help achieve the country’s goal of having a 5% cigarette smoking rate. The Healthy People 2030 goal is to reduce US current adult cigarette smoking prevalence to 5% by 2030. In order to determine whether this goal is achievable...

Farmers are better off abandoning tobacco — UoN report

About 55,000 farmers produce tobacco in Nyanza, Western and pockets of Central and Eastern In Summary The Kenya Tobacco Control Alliance, a health promotion lobby with a presence across the country, said there is a wide variety of alternative crops that farmers can grow. “These include cereals, tubers, and vegetables. They have all been proven...

South Africa Considers Increasing Tax On E-Cigarettes

E-cigarettes are increasingly coming under fire world over. Whether it be on health grounds or monetary considerations. Now South Africa’s National Treasury is asking for public comment by 7 February 2022 on its proposals to impose a specific excise tax on both the non-nicotine and nicotine solutions in e-cigarettes. Wesley Grimm, Senior Associate & Rudi...

Guess Who’s Secretly Backing This ‘Anti-Smoking’ Vape Group

The World Vapers’ Alliance has been promoting the health benefits of switching from cigarettes to vaping. Emails reveal the truth of who is behind the effort. A pro-vaping group says it wants to save your life. Cigarettes, they remind us, can kill you. But smokers may be surprised who’s behind that message. “The World Vapers’ Alliance...

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