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Tobacco law modification urgent for survival of young generation

Published : Saturday, 30 July, 2022 at 12:00 AM  Count : 733

Tobacco law modification urgent for survival of young generation

Tobacco law modification urgent for survival of young generation

Tobacco is a terrible poison for the human body. Although cigarette is widely known as the form of tobacco, in Bangladesh tobacco is also known as the tobility, Bidi, Janda, Gul, Sudapita, Hokka and Nazar.
About 7000 chemical substances have been identified in the tobacco, among which about 250 types of chemicals are extremely harmful.
The use of tobacco and tobacco products in the world causes cardiovascular diseases, long-term diseases of lungs, cataracts, pneumonia, stomach cancer, kidney diseases and other preventable diseases and death.
A study shown that more than 8 million deaths in a year of tobacco diseases around the world, in which 7 million people directly and almost 0.9 million people died due to indirect smoking. Half of tobacco users dies with tobacco diseases that is alarming.
For Bangladesh, it is a great concern that tobacco causes great economic loss. Research showed that due to tobacco diseases and death, the productivity of about 22,100 crore has been lost every year.
Earlier, in Jatiya Sangsad of Bangladesh and Inter-Parliamentary Union jointly organized a conference entitled "South Asia Speakers Summit on Achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)" on January 30-31, 2016 at Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel, Dhaka.
The conference was attended by honorable speakers from Bangladesh, India, Afghanistan, Sri-Lanka, Bhutan and Maldives and a significant number of honorable parliamentarians.
At the closing ceremony of the said conference (January 31), Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina announced while delivering the chief guest speech, "We want to completely eliminate the use of tobacco from Bangladesh by 2040."
 Besides, Bangladesh was the first country to sign the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) of the World Health Organization in 2003.  In light of FCTC, Bangladesh enacted a law called "Smoking and Use of Tobacco Products (Control) Act, 2005.
Later in 2013, the law was amended and brought up to date. Smoking restrictions are imposed in public places and public transport. Tobacco advertising is banned and penalties for disobeying the law are tough.
Due to various measures taken by the current government to control tobacco, the consumption of tobacco in Bangladesh has decreased at a significant rate compared to before. According to the "Global Adult Tobacco Survey" conducted in Bangladesh in 2009, the rate of tobacco use among adults was 43.3%, which decreased to 35.3% in the survey conducted in 2017.  Undoubtedly, this is a remarkable achievement of the present government which is presentable to the world.
The existing law does not prohibit retail sale of loose, unwrapped and unwrapped tobacco products, which should be done as early as possible.
If bidi-cigarettes and Gul-Jorda are retailed, children, teenagers and young people can easily and cheaply purchase these tobacco products. So a law should be imposed to restrict that.
 118 countries of the world, including Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, have completely banned the sale of single sticks or small packets of cigarettes. Bangladesh also should come up with such idea to make cigarette extremely expensive so that young generation can't afford to buy it.












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