Grim warnings on cigarette smoking

Smoking kills. This is perhaps one of the truest statements of our generation, and yet is also one of the most ignored warnings. Every day, millions continue to light up a cigarette, puffing away their health – and even savings.

In the Philippines, thousands of Filipinos are dying because of smoking-related illnesses. And these slow deaths not only rob affected individuals and their families of large sums of money spent on making their last months of life less painful, they also steal away the dignity of life.

An advanced lung cancer patient, or even one with terminal emphysema, wages a battle for life that makes an hour feel like a year of suffering. Because the lungs, which act as an air filter for our body by releasing poisonous carbon dioxide and imbibing oxygen, fails to function, breathing becomes impaired.

Too late

Prognosis of lung cancer is often at the later stages when the aggressive abnormal cells have spread to a large part of the lung, and even to other parts of the body, most common of which are the adrenal glands, liver, brain, and bone.

Medicine has not been successful yet at being able to detect the existence of lung cancer at its early stage. This is one of the main reasons, aside from the fact that there are lung cancer cells that are able to spread at abnormally fast rates, why the mortality rate of this disease is high.

Most lung cancer victims are given a life term of three months to a year, depending on the severity of the affliction. Since treatment is costly and requires extensive hospital and nursing care, it is the poor that go through a more uncomfortable end of life.

Slow death

Emphysema, on the other hand, is a disease that has no known cure. When the tiny air sacs in the lungs are destroyed, largely because of smoking, there is no replacement or regeneration of lost tissue.

Affliction can last for years, even decades, depending on the stage when it was discovered and the succeeding steps taken by the patient to prolong his life. Definitely, continued smoking after a prognosis of emphysema is tantamount to a death wish.

As emphysema gradually progresses, air passage in the lungs becomes more difficult and forces the body to adapt with increasing breathing rates. Eventually, this is not effective with significantly reduced parts of the lungs affected.

Emphysema is slow death that can be degrading to the victim especially towards his last days when even the tired and enlarged heart, after working so hard to keep oxygen circulating in the body, fails.

Since this is a disease that is long-term, those who have emphysema experience a gradual decline in their productivity. In more severe and terminal cases, even short walks can bring an attack of hyperventilation and fatigue.

Dirty emaciated lungs

Cigarette smoking may give users some momentary pleasures, but the inhalation of some 4,000 documented chemicals, of which 400 of them have been tagged as toxic, has debilitating effects that substantially decrease a person’s life span.

Among the most toxic products found in cigarettes are tar, a carcinogen that is found to cause cancer; nicotine, which has addictive properties; carbon monoxide, a poison that the body normally expels; and components of the gas and particulate phases that cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD).

A look at a lung afflicted by cancer or emphysema is a dirty sight: masses and patches of sticky, black tar from cigarettes; phlegm that continuously builds up, and in turn triggers painful or chronic coughing; and dull, almost lifeless-looking lung tissues.

Filipinos are known as being meticulous with their body cleanliness, at least when it comes to taking a bath and grooming parts of their body. If a Filipino had an internal camera that could show how his lungs collect nicotine and tar with every puff of a cigarette, I’m sure he would quit the habit in an instant.

A vice that needs to be stopped

Despite all the physical evidence that doctors and scientists have accumulated over the decades against the plague that is cigarette smoking, it is saddening to note that more Filipinos, especially the youth, women and those belonging to lower income levels, are being lured to this vice.

Dreaded diseases like cancer and emphysema are not the only debilitating effects of cigarette smoking. Ailments associated with COPD such as chronic asthma and chronic bronchitis, and cardiovascular diseases or the hardening of the arteries – all because of smoking or inhalation of second-hand smoke – have been scientifically proven.

Today, it is recognized that lung problems associated with cigarette smoking can be prevented. The world’s goal should be to bring back the era of the 1930s when lung cancer and emphysema were almost non-existent because smoking was not as prevalent as today.

The Philippines has been successful in passing laws that aimed at discouraging users from continuing with their vice or enticing new users from pursuing it. But the recent statistics showing the growing population of smokers and increasing cigarette sales have shown that these measures are not enough.

This is why there is a need to introduce additional hurdles. Raising the retail prices of cigarettes seems to be the most logical solution today. If taxpayers wish to smoke, let them pay for their eventual healthcare.

The P-Noy administration is pushing for the reform of excise tax on cigarettes to drastically increase taxes to keep this deadly product away from the young and the poor.

However, the monopoly of Phillip Morris and Fortune Tobacco of Lucio Tan is blocking this reform and is strongly lobbying for lower taxes.

Should we allow this monopoly to continue peddling their dangerous products and pay very low taxes? Should we allow them to continue corrupting the health of the young and the poor? This is worse than the non-bailable plunder.

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