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Smoking and Smoking Addiction is a Preventable Problem

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Smoking and Smoking Addiction is a Preventable Problem


Istanbul Gelisim University Faculty of Health Sciences Lecturer A. Mücella Soydan shared important information about smoking and smoking addiction.


The most basic and crucial fact that should not be forgotten about smoking, which causes the death of more than 8 million people all over the world every year; “Smoking is harmful to health”. It is a known fact that tobacco kills half of its users. 80% of the one billion people who use tobacco in the world live in low-middle-income countries. According to the World Health Organization Global Tobacco Epidemic 2021 Report, due to 7 million people using tobacco annually; 1.2 million people die from exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke. Smoking is not an individual problem that only concerns smokers. It is a serious psycho-social problem that includes spouses and children living next to smokers, cigarette companies that earn extraordinarily large sums of money and indirectly encourage smoking, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of National Education, as well as many individuals and institutions.

Tobacco control is defined in the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control as “strategies to reduce supply, demand, and harm that aim to improve health levels by preventing or reducing the consumption of tobacco products and exposure to tobacco smoke”. It should not be forgotten that universities are among the priority groups in terms of tobacco control for the tobacco industry, especially since students are a target group.

Once addiction develops, quitting is a very difficult process. Therefore, it is very important to be able to prevent the child or adolescent from starting to use tobacco or nicotine. At the beginning of the things to be done, role models such as parents and teachers should avoid using tobacco and nicotine, especially in a way that the child can see and take as an example. It is important to encourage parents to quit; To achieve this, both family physicians and pediatricians must question the parent's use of tobacco and nicotine at each examination and encourage them to quit.

In addition, advertisements of tobacco and nicotine products and the industry's sponsorship of various social activities should be strictly controlled to protect children and adolescents from harmful effects.
Smoking only benefits cigarette monopolies.
It should not be ignored that smoking and cigarette addiction are preventable problems.
For this reason:

o Prices of cigarettes and tobacco-related products should be removed from being attractive,
o Making regulations that ensure that cigarettes are no longer a sector,
o The cultivation of other products in agricultural areas where tobacco is grown should be encouraged with the re-prepared state support programs,
o Education about smoking and tobacco should start from the earliest possible age,
o Smoking addiction prevention and treatment units should be implemented as a common and public health service in all health institutions, the services provided and the drugs used in the treatment should be within the scope of the social security system and free of charge.


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