The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide. –Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
If we see you smoking we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action. –Douglas Adams
GUILIN CITY, China – My sincere apologies to the visionary leaders of the People’s Republic of China, but I sincerely believe that one of the biggest challenges they have yet to confront head-on is the horrendous plague of excessive smoking all over this progressive nation now racing to become the new superpower of the 21st century. If there is going to be hope for an end to the global big business of smoking, a problem that now victimizes 1.2 billion addicts worldwide, I believe it can start in China, with its efficient and strong-willed government.
The unhealthy business of smoking is a serious problem not only in China, for it causes over 400,000 deaths in the US per year, or an average of 1,200 American lives lost per day (more than the shocking casualties caused by Islamic terrorists in Iraq!). Studies have shown that this problem also costs the US economy $50 billion every year in lost productivity and additional medical care expenditures.
Whenever I complain about smokers in China and people ask if there are only a few smokers in the Philippines, I can’t help but be saddened by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s having once so happily welcomed the opening of Asia’s biggest cigarette factory by a top American multinational. I also wish to advise the country’s top cigarette manufacturer, who is now a respected philanthropist and who himself doesn’t smoke, to gradually shift his factories to other businesses. It’s not his fault he’s in this industry, because he was a poor working student whose first job was in a cigarette factory half a century ago, but he can now afford to shift to other industries.
Why am I writing about this topic? It seems that everywhere I travel in China, I observe lots of people smoking, even the educated and fashionable youth in major cities. Is this part of the Western consumerist "spiritual pollution" that shouldn’t be emulated by China as part of modernization? Statistics show that there are now 350 million smokers in China and Big Tobacco grossed 300 billion yuan (US$37 billion) in 2006. I believe that if there’s any country on earth that can decisively put a stop to the multi-zillion dollar cigarette and cigar industry, it is the iron-fisted and no-nonsense Chinese government, but only if its leaders finally decide to do so.
I appeal to China’s leaders to help kick-start a global campaign to stop the nefarious, destructive, wasteful and unhealthy business of smoking. Sacrifice the huge tax revenues. Do not forget the incalculable benefits of less medical expenses for lung diseases, the higher productivity and human efficiency due to the better health of the masses. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently reported that if smoking is not curbed, China will have one million new lung cancer patients every year by 2025.
The WHO also recently reported that smoking is the single largest avoidable cause of death on earth, and that this addictive vice (due to the nicotine in cigarettes) kills an average of 4.9 million people every year! I can’t forget that at the funeral of my late dad’s cousin and close friend, logging tycoon Dy Hian Tat, his famous cardiologist son Dr. Dy Bun Yok told me that the three things most dangerous to the heart are smoking, diabetes and bad cholesterol. The WHO reported that of the world’s current 1.2 billion smokers, an estimated 500 million of them will die because of smoking (the equivalent of 9 percent of the world’s population).
Once, when I complained to a young tycoon in Chengdu City about his heavy smoking, he laughed and imitated the well-known TV gestures of the late Chairman Mao Zedong, who on television would hold a cigarette in his right hand and leisurely puff smoke into the air. He reminded me that the two political titans behind the rise of modern China were well-known smokers – Mao and his reformist successor Deng Xiaoping. In fact, the Western media often reported that Deng’s favorite brand of cigarettes was Panda. Like Hollywood star George Burns, Deng Xiaoping had a remarkably long life that I think was due to his non-stop tea drinking. However, Burns and Deng were exceptions. Cigarette smoke shortens the lives of both smokers and those unfortunate enough to be around them.
Aside from Mao and Deng, two leaders who smoked in public or showed people they were holding or chomping cigars included British statesman Winston Churchill and ex-President Fidel V. Ramos. They have unconsciously depicted smoking as macho. I think ex-President Joseph Estrada also smoked in public. I urge all leaders in politics, showbiz and other high-profile fields to please refrain from smoking in public!
In contrast, I admired Senator Juan "Johnny" Flavier when he was Health Secretary for boldly launching the "Yosi Kadiri" (cigarettes yucky) public information campaign. Whatever happened to this excellent project? Why not continue and even expand it?
Thank goodness, China’s President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, our own President GMA and Vice President Noli de Castro do not smoke. I remember two famous movie stars in Philippine showbiz – a female and a male. They smoked a lot whenever we met socially, but they told me that they specifically requested media never to photograph them or report their unhealthy vice because of their wholesome images. Thanks to these two famous stars for never smoking in public, because many youngsters might imitate them and wrongly think that smoking is cool or hip. On the contrary, smoking is uncool. Smoking is dirty. Smoking messes up the lungs (TV icon Oprah Winfrey once showed a dirty lung x-ray on primetime, in contrast to a clean, non-smoking lung). Smoking makes the teeth yellowish and dirty. Smoking also gives smokers a foul smell. Yosi kadiri!
Two smart entrepreneurs whom I admire had the good sense and the willpower to stop smoking: J. Paul Getty, once the world’s wealthiest tycoon, and our very own John Gokongwei Jr. I recall reading that one night, Getty was at a hotel, it was raining, and the nearest cigarette vendor was a few blocks down the road. He would need to go out of his room and down to the garage to drive out, so he just skipped smoking that night. He happily discovered that he could live without the dirty vice! He just decided to quit.
Ex-President Cory C. Aquino told me she read my interview with Gokongwei last year, when he said he was so shocked by the August 21, 1983 assassination of ex-Senator Ninoy Aquino at the airport that he just didn’t pick up cigarettes the whole day and the next morning happily discovered that he could live without this dangerous vice. He also just decided to quit.
There are millions of starving people on this planet; why do we supposedly sensible and logical human beings allow big businesses to waste our scarce resources on an industry that has been scientifically proven to murder people slowly but surely? Why don’t we have the political will, social conscience and common sense to decisively shift tobacco farms into food-producing farms and cigarette factories into better businesses? Holy smoke, are we collectively nuts?
Not only do I urge all smokers to quit and all cigarette manufacturers to gradually shift their factories to other businesses, I also appeal to government leaders worldwide to help stop the unhealthy, dirty, death-inducing and wasteful business of smoking. I’m sorry, folks, but if you bump into me anywhere, please be forewarned that I am furiously, adamantly allergic and hypersensitive to cigarette smoke!