Tobacco.org

Baaba Maal’s new album and his causes 

late into the Kensington townhouse headquarters of Palm Pictures, his long-time record label, quibbling with Suzette Newman, Palm’s London chief, over whether Africans or Jamaicans are more unpunctual, is very different. He is wearing a safari suit in minute checks and toying with an iPhone. For the first time in nearly a decade he is releasing a new album, Television. . . .

The title track expresses Maal’s unease about the spread of television throughout Africa. But he also sees benefits, not least for his own campaigns. He made a programme for Senegalese TV, lobbying against smoking. “In small villages, kids who finish work in the fields or fishing don’t have much to do. The traditions have all gone, but nothing modern has come to replace them yet. They’re stuck in the middle, and all they have to do is smoke. I just said, ‘I’m not doing it any more.’ And my fans copy me, and find that it’s very good for them.”

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Outsourcing ... death  

It appears that the tried and true aggressive marketing tactics of American owned multi-national tobacco companies are working in developing nations. For the past few years, Philip Morris and its cohorts have stepped up the aggressive marketing of their deadly products to African youth and young women.

The billboard in Senegal shown in the photo entices the young to smoke and send in their proof of purchase seals to enter into a drawing to �win a trip to America.� Unfortunately, few if any would be granted an appointment to even request a visa to the U.S. if they were ever lucky enough to �win� the contest.

But the true winner in this scenario is of course big tobacco; they are simply playing a numbers game knowing that for every hundred youth who are enticed to smoke, a certain percentage will become addicted to cigarettes and thus lifelong contributors to their billion dollar coffers. . . .

As Africa deals with economic development, the crisis of AIDS and the specter of war and civil strife, it does not need the added burden of the death and sickness of tobacco related diseases. Our brothers and sisters in Africa need the protection of a strong framework. To find out how you and your organizations can help support the FCTC contact, email me at cmcgruder@usa.net.

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Million Muslim pilgrims flock to Senegal's Mecca 

More than a million Muslim pilgrims packed Senegal's remote northeastern city of Touba on Thursday as members of the powerful Mouride brotherhood flocked to "Africa's Mecca" from across the world. . . .

Lines of pilgrims waited hours in the dust and blistering heat to enter the vast mosque, whose 87-metre (287-foot) tower dominates the skyline of Touba, a holy city controlled by religious authorities where drinking and smoking are forbidden.

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• Experts plot battle against cancer in Africa 

In November, the Fifth International Conference of the African Organisation for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC) met in Dakar, Senegal, to examine how to combaat the scourge of cancer on the continent. . . .

Finally, one major concern to some of the participants was that despite the strong word against tobacco consumption at the opening of the conference by President Wade, Senegal is enmeshed in smoke. The participants struggled to breathe fresh air throughout the period of the conference because the lobby of the hotel, Sofitel Teranaga in Dakar, Senegal, where most of them were lodged was always subsumed in thick cigarette smoke.

In fact, Thomas Glynn, director, Cancer Science and Trends and International Tobacco Programmes of the American Cancer Society, had to call the attention of the conference to this ironic situation. He wondered why at a conference where the threat of cancer and tobacco were being discussed, a tobacco multinational had to bring its van emblazoned with a brand of cigarette to the venue. He said this was a challenge participants had to deal with and call the attention of their various governments to it.

This was not the only case, it was surprising that a country whose president could speak so trenchantly against tobacco addiction and which was one of the first countries on the continent to pass a major legislation against advertising tobacco could allow this brazen mockery of its law by a tobacco manufacturer.

On June 19, 2003 Senegal signed the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and ratified it on January 27, 2005. . . .

Cigarettes are being sold at every street corner without hindrance thus making it available to youths and the under-aged and thereby contravening the underlying principles of the FCTC!

The challenge before AORTIC therefore, is how to make governments on the continent to look beyond making declarations but rather implement results of their researches.

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Usage abusif de Tabac-Vingt cinq maladies recensées [Improper use of Tobacco-Twenty five listed diseases] 

The fight against the improper use of the tobacco is one of the largest combat than carries out the world Organization of Santé (OMS). It is for this purpose that it instituted: " the world Day without tobacco " which is celebrated each year, in all the countries of the world. If the objective of this day is to sensitize all the smokers of planet on the consequences of the tobacco, the combat is far from being gained, because of the enormous means available to manufacturing tobacco. The publicity of the marks of cigarettes which floods the radios and televisions is the brightest proof of this situation. The smokers met are unanimous to recognize that the tobacco is harmful for health and to express their wish to drop the cigarette.

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Tobacco Firms Busily Enticing New African Smokers 

Khady is not a football fan but she attends weekend football league matches at Dakar's Leopold Sedar Senghor stadium, where she distributes free cigarettes made by her tobacco company.

Interestingly, most of those who accept the ''poisoned'' present are youths. These would likely have seen the cigarette brand's advertisements which abound in the Senegalese dailies and elsewhere.

Lately, tobacco firms have also erected beautiful retail selling stations at busy strategically located bus stops and other places in the seaside Senegalese capital.

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