The World Health Organization (WHO) concluded in 2004 that there is sufficient evidence that points towards the fact that secondhand smoke does cause cancer in humans.[break]
Moreover, “it is estimated that only 15% of cigarette smoke gets inhaled by the smoker. The remaining 85% lingers in the air for everyone to breathe. If a person spends more than two hours in a room where someone is smoking, the nonsmoker inhales the equivalent of four cigarettes,” reports an article from the University of Minnesota.
Medical research has shown time and again that nonsmokers also suffer many of the diseases of active smoking when they breathe secondhand smoke.
So what should a nonsmoker do? Should we give it all up and just smoke, for the harm seems to be impartial towards a smoker and a nonsmoker as well? Perhaps…or perhaps, we should get better-enforced laws to protect us so that we don’t have to suffer the same consequences of someone else’s actions.
Illustration: Sworup Nhasiju
The WHO claims, “More than 94% of people are unprotected by smoke-free laws.”
For example, most places in Nepal don’t allocate clear smokers’ sections. And this would be the bare minimum we would expect that public places could do. If laws were enacted properly, then the ideal scenario would be that all indoor zones would be smoke-free and only designated spots in the outdoors would be smoking zones.
Anti-smoking laws in Nepal clearly ban smoking in public places, including hotels and restaurants and on public transport. But to what extent is it successfully carried out, we can all be the judge of that.
However, this is not to say that our government does all too pathetic jobs of dealing with such social problems – for example, in keeping with the Tobacco Control and Regulation Act 2068.
I’m sure we all remember when smokers were arrested for puffing in public places a few months ago. Various news sources quoted senior Police Officer Jaya Bahadur Chand saying that 130 people were detained for smoking in various public places in the capital. These people were allegedly held for three hours and released only after signing documents promising not to repeat the offense.
So there’s an endeavor worth applauding. Thank you for making nonsmokers’ life a bit easier!
But on a more serious note, I don’t have any problems with smokers, per se. But dare she or he smoke at the expense of my health, and then it can become quite a challenge to repress the urge to give him or her a good long lecture on the importance of being considerate. After all, not only are the ill effects smoke can have on unwilling secondary smokers reason enough to trigger the worst in nonsmokers, but it’s also utterly rude to smoke in the company of nonsmokers. The aforementioned article published by the University of Minnesota reads, “For every eight smokers who die from smoking, one innocent bystander dies from secondhand smoke.”
Having established that passive smoking or secondhand smoke (SHS), or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is essentially destructive, all we can hope for is that it’ll spark the interests of our policymakers to have stronger smoke-free laws endorsed in certain crucial places in the nation.
Taking initiatives to the next level may include making certain cities in Nepal smoke-free. For example, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) stresses that people have the right to be protected from the negative health impacts of secondhand tobacco smoke, and therefore reiterates that providing protection is an obligation.
But whether we have strict rules enforcing smoke-free zones or not, I do hope the humanity within all smokers guides them to be kind enough not to smoke in the presence of nonsmokers.
For remember: Smoking may be good for you, but it isn’t for me.
The writer is student of Political Science at Thammasat University who enjoys exploring life and all that it has to offer.
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