To smoke or not to smoke, that is the question

M.V.MUHSIN (writing in the Daily News under the Column Global Miscellany)

 

SMOKING: Believe it or not! The Supreme Court in the United Sates confirmed last week the award of damages of US Dollars 50 million (equivalent to an astronomical Rs. 5,000 million – Rs. 5 billion!) to the family of a two-pack-a-day smoker who died in 2002 of lung cancer.

 

The charge against the tobacco company was one of negligence, misrepresentation, fraud and selling a defective product. The family was presumably disappointed as they could have got more! The award was initially US dollars 3 billion by a jury, reduced to US dollars 100 million by a high court, and then cut in half by an appeals court. Against this backdrop, today’s column focuses on smoking trends.

 

Rules against smoking, and the effects of secondary smoke, are being tightened in many parts of the world. The winter in the US and Europe is particularly nasty to smokers.

 

Tough anti-smoking laws forces smokers to huddle outside buildings in the biting cold. To them it’s a perpetual Shakespearean winter of discontent! But the manner in which countries handle this health issues varies as regulatory and cultural factors play into the equation.

 

It’s also a very emotional matter among smokers and non smokers. It was only recently that the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it will no longer hire smokers! On its job application form posted on the internet, the organization asks the applicants pointedly whether they smoke.

 

A WHO spokesperson has reportedly declared that “as a matter of principle WHO does not want to recruit smokers, as the organization encourages people to lead a healthy life”.

 

Dr. Leonard Glantz, a professor of health, law and human rights at the Boston University of Public Health is furious about the discriminatory practice. He argues that it’s one thing to ban smoking in the workplace but quite another to ban employees. Based on this, he argues, that if Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Adolf Hitler applied for a job, only Hitler the non-smoker among that grouping will be eligible!

 

Be that as it may, according to a study by the World Bank on global trends in tobacco use, 1.1 billion of the world’s 6 billion people smoke. That is about one in three adults.

 

About 80 per cent are in low and middle income countries where cigarette consumption having risen steadily in the 20 years between 1970 and 1990, has slowed down a bit.

 

About a 100 million people in South Asia smoke cigarettes and about an equal amount smoke bidis. Studies also show that an overwhelming majority of smokers start before the age of 25.

 

The writer of this study also indicates that worldwide there are up to 100,000 young people added daily to the “smokers club”, with 80 per cent in the low and middle income countries.

 

Studies also show that historically, as incomes rose within populations, the number of people who smoked also rose. But this trend reversed over the past several decades where with affluence, smoking incidence has declined. This has not been the case for lower income groups.

The correlation between smoking and cancer is now widely acknowledged as has also the risk to heart diseases and heart attacks. So not surprisingly, the popular refrain in our homes by nagging wives is “quit smoking”. Annoying as this may be, it’s justified.

 

Studies have shown that within a day of quitting, the body’s levels of toxic carbon monoxide and nicotine decrease dramatically; the sense of smell and taste improve and cough tendencies decrease. According to a study by the US Surgeon General, the resting heart rate begins to drop 20 minutes after quitting smoking and remains that way for years. It’s said that a year after quitting, the risk of heart disease is reduced by half, and after 15 years, the risk of heart disease and stroke is close to that of a non smoker.

 

Quitting smoking for 10 years, it is said, reduces the risk of lung cancer to half that of people who continue to smoke. And after 15 years, the risk of heart disease and stroke is said to be close to that of a non-smoker.

 

Quit smoking is easily said than done. For those who constantly battle giving up smoking, a study in the Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences concluded that regular exercise increases the rate of abstinence from cigarettes.

 

Quoting a Norwegian study in the Journal Tobacco Control, Dr. Marc Siegal of the New York University School of Medicine, suggests that even more than the toxins of smoke, it is the associated poor diet, sedentary behaviour and stress that appears to correlate with illness and premature death.

 

The Norwegian study looked at some 43,000 people over a 30-year period and found that for those who console themselves by saying that they are “light smokers”, (like one to four cigarettes a day) they too had poor health outcomes. Siegal says that these light smokers were three times more likely to die of heart disease than non-smokers.

 

Going from zero to four cigarettes a day showed by far the greatest correlation in the study between smoking and associated death rates. Dr. Siegal advocates that exercise is truly a positive force in the fight against the temptations of smoking.

 

While in most parts of the world, people have got more conscious of the maleffects of smoking, there is much greater need to raise awareness.

 

Sri Lanka is no exception. In the United States, where some 25 per cent of adults smoke, there are many organizations that are actively engaged in the fight against smoking and to support those who want to quit.

 

For instance, there is the American Legacy Foundation which offers a range of quit smoking programmes. Nicotine Anonymous, offers support and recovery to achieve abstinence from nicotine. Smokefree.gov offers online step-by-step cessation guide, telephone quit lines and publications.

 

Let’s take a cue from the US as we raise the stakes on a more aggressive anti-smoking campaign.

 

The article “To smoke or not to smoke, that is the question” is written by M.V.Muhsin, a Global Miscellany column for the Daily News. Mohamed Muhsin is a strategic Management consultant based in Washington. Supporting the onset of the anti smoking campaigns and laws in different parts of the world, Mohamed Muhsin has written this article to stir up the people of Sri Lanka. Through the article M.V.Muhsin has provided specifics and the sentiment of people around the world towards the anti-smoking campaign.

 

Beg No More!

M.V.MUHSIN (writing in the Daily News under the Column Global Miscellany)

 

“When I suggested that we will have a credit scheme for beggars, people thought I was crazy.” That was Grameen Bank’s Muhammad Yunus talking when I met him in Bonn, in 2004. He was honored at an international forum for his visionary leadership.

 

At that time there were some 10,000 beggars registered in Bangladesh with the Grameen Programme. Yunus predicted that registration will double at the year end.  He was wrong! Today there are over 50,000 registered with “The Struggling (Beggar) Members Programme”!!
His critics scoffed at him with equal, if not more, vehemence when he proposed two decades ago that a formal bank be formed, owned by poor borrowers, mostly by women. ‘A Bank for the Poor!? Credit for poor women?!! It was a revolting idea at that time. What was more revolting was that the Bank will not require any guarantee nor pledging of assets nor legal instruments.

 

Today there are over four million members, 95 per cent women. The system, as with that for Beggars, works on peer pressure where it is in the interest of other participating members, who operate in small groups, to ensure that each of them, and all together, behave in a responsible manner. The participants know that default on the part of one impacts all others.

 

My interest today is in “The Struggling (Beggar) Members Programme” as it can serve as a role model to help an often helpless segment of our societies. Their domain is the streets, car parks, bus stands, markets, places of worship and the like. Their staple is the emotional reaction of people or the desire of their quarry to get rid of them by dropping a coin or two.

 

Their dilemma is that they have to live by the day if not by the hour. They have no permanent or even temporary shelter. They are haunted by decease and squalor. They have condemned themselves to a style of life of no return. Admittedly, many of them have created this situation for themselves by not being enterprising even in a modest way. That is the norm. Professor Yunus did not accept this “norm”.

 

He believes that creating opportunities for a better life is a sacred duty. He believes that begging is chosen in Bangladesh by many of the poor as a result of death of the earning member in the family, unemployment or disability, laziness and the lack of a “system” that will give them a chance to get their act together. Yunus rightly argues that most of the poverty alleviation programmes do not reach this segment of society who lives on the very margins of life.

 

As he did with larger programmes of Grammeen Bank, he believes that access to credit….. Micro-credit… can pave the way. But he argues against the concept that micro-credit is a good intervention for the poor in the higher layers of the poor but that it’s of no use to the bottom poor.

 

Credit to him is a “human right”. So he got to work on the “Struggling (Beggar) Members Programme”. The programme offers loans exclusively to beggars; particularly to those he calls “Generational Beggars”.

 

They are invited to carry a collection of popular consumer items, financed by Grameen Bank, when they go out to beg from rural households. They are allowed to do both begging and selling at their convenience. If their selling activity picks up, Yunus hopes, they may quit begging and focus on selling. A typical Grameen loan was about Rs. 1,000 in Sri Lankan currency.

 

Beggars, who do not have limbs, cannot go house to house do the begging at a fixed spot with a beggar’s bowl in front.

 

They are helped, through the Grameen credit system, to keep soft drinks, biscuits, flowers etc next to them and offer their patrons an option….. To throw in a coin or buy something, or do both.

And what are the results? Yunus’ face brightened and in his own words: “I am happy to report that beggars are responding to the programme enthusiastically. We see positive results”.

 

And what other innovations are in store? Grameen has a highly successful programme titled Grameen Village Phone. Here, there are close to 75,000 “telephone ladies” as they are called, providing telephone services in some 80 per cent of villages of Bangladesh.

 

The mobile phones are hired out to them and they in turn visit rural areas and offer telephone calls at a fee. The loan repayment rate….. as with other Grameen Loans to the poor…. is an astonishing 99 per cent. Yunus’ vision is that the “Struggling (Beggars) Member Programme” will venture into mobile phones as well.

 

The significant aspect of all this is that the traditional mode of poverty alleviation needs imaginative thinking. And more importantly “vision” and “courage” that Professor Yunus has so ably demonstrated to the global community.

 

 

The article “Beg No More” is written by M.V.Muhsin, a Global Miscellany column for the Daily News. Mohamed Muhsin is a Strategic Management consultant based in Washington. Through this article Mohamed Muhsin has paid his homage to the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Professor Muhammad Yunus. Professor Yunus of Bangladesh, with his visionary leadership had come up with the Grameen Bank micro-credit scheme which helped alleviate the condition of the poor and make them self-sustained individuals.