Cigarettes are Injurious to Your Health

Published on November 17, 2008 9:03 AM

Tobacco Control from Ghana Health Service (GHS) has appealed to the government for to approve the new smoking legislation which will ban the sale of cigarettes to minors. Mrs. Edith Wellington, a focal person on Tobacco Control Ghana, said: "Currently there is no law banning the sale of cigarette to children so they are able to buy it easily. However, if there is such a law, the commodity would not be sold to them and they will have difficulty getting one to use."

Such a law, she added, would affect the sale of cigarettes so traders would not be encouraged to sell them. A survey, which was conducted among 9,990 students, stated that 55.9 percent of those who bought cigarettes from stores were not refused purchase, despite their ages.

The study also found out that approximately one in seven students used a form of tobacco, while 4 percent of the students smoked cigarette and 12.5 percent used tobacco products other than cigarette. Another cause which gives children the chance for to smoke is the cigarettes prices. Cigarettes are so cheap that’s why young people can easily purchase them, thereby the cigarettes prices must be rise, said Mrs. Wellington.

She appealed to those who sold cigarettes to stop selling them to minors, since they were "selling death to children". "So all children who have not started smoking should not go near it at all and those who have already started need to be helped to stop because it will shorten their life span," she reported.

Mrs. Wellington said the GHS and the Ministry of Health had distributed 21,000 posters showing how the bodies of smokers looked to basic schools in the country to educate the pupils on the effects of smoking and discourage those who had not started from doing so.