Smokers Kicking The Butt
Reported August 24, 2008
With statistics coming in from all around, there is an encouraging piece of good news for the anti-smoking groups, thanks to whose campaigns, the smoking rates for adult smokers has dropped down a teeny bit, this year, to 21.9% from the earlier 23%.
In a survey conducted by the Gallup Korea on behalf of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs, it has come to the fore that the smoking rates of men came down to 40.2 percent from the previous 42percent and those for women dropped to 3.7 percent from the earlier 4.6 percent.
Despite the fact that the decline in smoking is very minimal over the last one year, but the ministry is not overlooking the decreasing numbers that have come over the past one decade. When looked at cumu7latively, they do sound encouraging.
With numerous anti-smoking campaigns, public awareness efforts through advertisements, taxes on cigarettes, increasing the non smoking areas and zones in the country and similar such efforts the government has been able to help people get rid of this bad habit, even if the numbers are small as of now.
Anti smoking clinics and tighter government regulations too has helped make the difference and encouraged by the statistics the government plans to continue with its efforts.
Similar results have been seen in other parts of the globe too. According to surveys it was seen that eight people are quitting the bad habit every day in Gloucestershire.
Over 3000 people quit smoking in the county last year, which was a tremendous feat. Overall in South West 33,138 people quit smoking, making it a startling 9% fall than the previous years.
The survey published in the NHS Information Centre last week, showed that over 5000 people pledged to quit smoking this year in Gloucestershire.
Dr Gabriel Scally, regional director of public health at NHS South West, said: “It is encouraging that so many people in the South West have gone smoke free in the past year.Quitting is not easy, but the support of family and friends can make a real difference to help people to quit smoking for good.”
With pressures from friends and family mounting, research says it becomes necessary for smokers to quit as family pressure plays a vital role. Many women are said to quit smoking when asked to do so by their kids.
According to the research, one in six people quit smoking because they were scared of harming their children, while family pressure, love and support helped a one in five people to give it up for good.
With NHS launching the IOU help books for family members offering tips on how to help family members quit smoking and also opening NHS stop smoking services around the residential areas, the group plans to take its anti smoking efforts to higher levels now.
While the numbers are encouraging at one end, it is also surprising at the other end to think how, knowing the ill effects of smoking way too well many people still are reluctant giving it up.
With second hand smoking being as dangerous as first hand smoking and cigarette smoking being the main cause of lung cancerdefine world over and lung cancer itself being the most common form of cancer around the globe, it is surprising how so many people are still smoking.
It most difficult for authorities today to make teenagers leave this bad habit. Not only this, cigarette sales see a four to six percent increase in most of the countries, every year.
With such kind of inputs coming from around the world a slight decline in smoking rates might be encouraging, but not satisfying enough. This indicates we are way too far still, from creating a smoke free world, asking for stringent rules, regulations and if need be stricter anti-smoking government policies, lest it gets too late to mend the problem.