For this reason, former Minister of Health Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in 1998 created a law requiring cigarettes to be sold in packs.

‘€œIf [children] have to make a choice in the end between buying a DVD or going to the movies or buying tobacco, and tobacco is too expensive, they will dump it and go on to other things,’€ said Dlamini-Zuma who now chairs the African Union Commission, at the recent Governance of Tobacco in the 21st Century conference held at the Harvard School of Public Health in the United States.

Although smoking is on the decline in the developing work, it is increasing rapidly in developing nations where tobacco companies have increased their marketing efforts, experts said. Currently about 900 million smokers live in developing nations, accounting for 70 percent of the global consumption of tobacco.

‘€œTobacco companies are working very to hard to make sure that what they lose in developed countries they gain in undeveloped ones,’€ Dlamini-Zuma said. ‘€œThey are targeting the young, and also women.’€

Dlamini-Zuma,  has been at the centre of the fight to stop the spread of tobacco on the African continent, pioneering legislation to stop tobacco sports-sponsorships, passing a groundbreaking law making it illegal to smoke in public places, and even asking the then South African deputy president Thabo Mbeki to stop smoking his pipe in public.

It is ‘€œstrong leaders’€ like Dlamini-Zuma, said Matthew Myers’€”who runs The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a non-profit that advocates policies to keep children from smoking’€”who are going to make the difference in fighting ‘€œBig Tobacco’€ at the highest level of government. Tobacco is not primarily a problem that is going to be solved in our medical healthcare systems, he added, but a problem of political will and social-norm change.

‘€œWe have a good news story, which is we know how to reduce tobacco use’€¦we have no excuse for not succeeding, because we have models of success,’€ he said.

‘€œRaising the tobacco tax not only saves lives, but’€”where a small portion of that money is dedicated to reducing tobacco use and helping people avoid disease’€”we are able to sustain those programmes not for one day, not for the limited period of donor interest or global funds, but on an ongoing and continuous basis.’€

Although Director-General of the World Health Organisation, Margaret Chan, praised recent developments in Russia where tough new tobacco legislation has been proposed, and Japan, where the government has sold some of its tobacco holdings, she also warned of a dark future if there is no immediate action. During the past 10 years, she said, smoking has decreased by about 10 percent in wealthy countries, but increased by around 18 percent in the developing world. She added: ‘€œDeadly products are being dumped on the poor.’€

Source: Harvard Magazine