Smokers are not the culprits

By GAVIN BENNET
The Nation
August 23 2008 at 16:43

Each day, every day, the average person breathes 22,000 times, inhaling 16 kgs of air and whatever else is in it.

Unless your cheeks are looking a bit puffed and your eyes are popping, shortly after you breathe in, you breathe out, exhaling a daily dose of 16 kgs of air with some additions like water vapour and a few million germs and other micro-organisms.

Then there is the occasional cough and sneeze, and perhaps a digestive burp (and we’re still only counting from one end of the alimentary canal).

In and around greater Nairobi there are about 4 million of us doing this, indoors and out, constantly.

Also, in the same general area, we have about 300,000 vehicles burning (less than efficiently) a couple of million litres of fossil fuels and breathing out five main types of grot: carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, soot, nitrogenous oxides and other chemical junk like sulphur oxides. Thousands of tonnes of these things – daily!

Other and cumulatively larger contributors include any industry that involves mixing, rubbing, grinding or heating anything – paint, solvents, cleaning compounds, printing presses, power stations, trains, planes, pizza ovens, jikos, rubbish burns, grass fires…

Altogether, in greater Nairobi alone we are churning and burning industrial products and processes, wood-based and fossil fuels, rubbish and sewage at a rate of many tens of millions of kilos per day, and a lot of it is hitting the rubbish heaps in steaming, smoking, rotting piles that deliver a non-stop stream of ghastly gases.

There is much that could be done to reduce the volume and toxicity of these outputs by significant amounts. Generally we don’t. Not even where the hazards are greatest and the remedies are simplest. Why, we don’t even bother to measure the problem, never mind solve it. We just keep breathing in and out and in again…

However, if, in this general context, you generate a puff of tobacco smoke on the street, you are committing a crime. Judging by the penalty, this is a crime more serious than assault or theft, worse than being drunk and disorderly, worse than causing an affray or resisting arrest.

It’s up there with breaking and entering, battery causing actual bodily harm, and approaching the level of cattle rustling, arson and doing nasty things with your naughty bits.

The latest laws to protect people from “passive smoking” may be well intentioned. But clearly they have almost nothing to do with passive smoking (one litre of fuel generates as much exhaust as 100 packs of cigarettes. ONE car driving through town = 2,000 chain smokers on the pavement).

If the declared and real objectives of this legislation were the same, and based on a semblance of science, the rules would be very simple. Outdoors – no restrictions, anywhere. Indoors – some restrictions in public buildings where simple designated areas, reasonably ventilated, solve the problem.

For in the full cocktail of outdoor air pollution, the combustion of tobacco is so minuscule that it could not be detected by any known device monitoring the general atmosphere.

Passive smoking warrants attention on genuine “health” grounds only where people are subjected to regular, prolonged and intense exposure – such as staff working at a bar, or in poorly ventilated offices, for many hours, every day.

And the maximum penalty is bizarre. Universally, in no smoking zones there is no penalty – just a polite reminder or, if need be, an insistence to stop, and only if that is not heeded other laws (like breach of the peace) finally take over.

So, the excessive scope and complexity of the new laws (without scientific basis) and the disproportionate penalties only underscore that passive smoking is not, cannot be, the real issue.

The true objective is presumably to demonise direct smoking. If that be the case, why not say so?

And also tell us who we are trying to impress by putting this issue at the top of an agenda in which so many and so much higher priorities are so neglected. And once we’ve impressed this “WHO”, what’s the payback?

Article at: http://www.nation.co.ke/magazines/lifestyle/-/1214/462414/-/9dxn1qz/-/index.html

jan,
very well stated!

i as said earlier: they cannot solve the real problems so the focus on to the tiny ones

pippa

I thought you might appreciate that article Pippa!

Ladies! Ladies! You are doing as I did, any little titbit of information proving that there is no harm in smoking is gladly seized upon!
Smoking harmful??
Huh! Who said that?
Well ! OK! But we'll just brush it under the carpet!

Well that's what I did, anyway!
Any way, it was my democratic right to smoke if I wanted to!

I have always prided myself on being nobodies slave!
Until it was pointed out me that I was a slave to tobacco!

I have not touched a cigarette since!

I should add I was smoking 60 a day but would never have admitted to the amount when I was a smoker 8 or 9 years ago!

Kipper:

I don't think there is one smoker that is proud of the fact they remain smoking. We just haven't been as fortunate as you to have been able to give it up yet for one reason or another.

However, the second-hand smoke has been taken much too far in my opinion. In enclosed buildings, yes, I will agree with the edict then. However, when one is outside with beautiful breezes blowing it is very hard to agree with the rulings. It is the tobacco nazis at work again trying to force everyone to agree with their views.

I don't drink alcohol or coffee. I hate the smell of it. However, I am not going to try to force my view on everyone who enjoys a drink of them. They are adults, and it is their decision, until/unless their possible impaired actions endangers someone else's life.

My main concern is that there should be a safe area for every public building/place where smokers can legally go to have a cigarette. In the case of JKIA in Nairobi, a policeman told me to go into a back alley behind the international terminal. When I did so, I was surrounded by four men and I left very quickly. It then became a safety concern.

As the article states, in third world countries with so many more serious crimes against humanity and nature going on that aren't addressed, it seems too bad they are arresting people for doing something that is legal. If the governments of the world feel so strongly against smoking, they should have the guts to totally ban the growing and sale of tobacco! You know that won't happen because they are deriving so much money from its sale. They are being totally hypocritical.

jan/kipper
just let me add: i don't feel proud of ebing a smoker. but i also don't feel guilty AT ALL!

i still enjoy my cigarette and i won't give a sh.. what others tell me.

sorry - but i get furious when people try to "educate" me on sumething which is absolutely loughable!

in germany for example die 3.500 people each year of passive smoking. 3/4 of these folks are beyonf 85 (!!!) years old.

so what?

first of all it cannot be proven that they died of passive smoking
second: there are many people getting cancer based on chemival stuff in the air and grocery in between 20 and 40 years of age. i am sure they would have loved to get 85 and passive smoke!

div