Durban -
Seven percent of pupils start smoking tobacco when they are younger than 10, statistics have revealed.
And one in five Grade 8 to 11 pupils (21 percent of the total numbers of pupils in the country) is smoking, said Dr Vash Mungal-Singh, chief executive of the Heart and Stroke Foundation South Africa.
Even children who have not developed the habit are affected as “three out of four are exposed to harmful second-hand smoke”, he said.
Mungal-Singh was speaking before Saturday’s yearly World No Tobacco Day.
The special day, designated in 1987 by member states of the World Health Organisation (WHO), draws global attention to the tobacco epidemic and the preventable deaths and diseases it causes.
This year countries have been encouraged to raise their taxes on tobacco to levels that reduce consumption.
While smokers in this country may huff and puff about higher taxes – this went up 68c for a pack of 20 in the Budget in February – the Heart and Stroke Foundation SA says that compared with other countries, South Africa “has some catching up to do.”
Cigarette excise taxes in South Africa account for 52 percent of the retail price.
This is well below the 70 percent recommended by the WHO and the 66 to 80 percent recommended by the World Bank.
The best way to reduce the use of tobacco among children was to increase the price of products through tax hikes, said Dr Yussuf Saloojee of the National Council Against Smoking.
As prices went up, fewer and fewer children started smoking, he said.
Research showed that a tax that increased tobacco prices by 10 percent decreased tobacco consumption among adults by about 4 percent in high-income countries and by up to 8 percent in most low- and middle-income countries.
While it was not going to lobby the new Minister of Finance to increase taxes on cigarettes at the moment, the foundation said “it could become one of our focus areas in the future”.
Statistics on the effects of smoking are scary, but even knowing these doesn’t seem to deter people.
“To put it into perspective, tobacco use is the single most preventable cause of death globally and is responsible for killing one in 10 adults, or one person every six seconds,” the foundation says.
“Smoking almost triples the risk of heart disease, more than doubles the risk of having a stroke and can lead to numerous forms of cancer.”
As well as having “many other negative effects” on health, it causes blood vessels to narrow, leading to raised blood pressure and more chance of blood clots forming. This reduces the flow of blood to the heart and brain.
“Quitting smoking almost immediately improves your health”, Mungal-Singh said.
“Within one year, the risk of a heart attacks falls to about half that of a smoker.”