Tobacco.org

EDITORIAL: The cigarette scandal 

It is scandalous. Women the world over should be outraged. A study conducted by Harvard University's School of Public Health has found that the tobacco industry deliberately set out to get women addicted to smoking and considered using appetite suppressants and chocolate-flavoured cigarettes as a means of doing so. . . .

World No-Tobacco Day was observed this week, on May 31. At the end of February, WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control came into force, making tobacco control legally binding on the 40 countries that had signed on prior to November 2004. Guyana, strangely, was not among those countries. And stranger still it has not yet signed on despite all the recent rhetoric about smoke-free zones. When he announced Guyana's intention to adopt the treaty last week Saturday, the Minister of Health also mentioned plans to implement a programme for people desirous of quitting. Given the revelations of the Harvard research, one would hope that a special effort would be made to target women. One would also hope that this could come on stream almost immediately, since it will be an internal health initiative, which will not require a treaty.

Jump to full article »