Step up, make a move, chose life, not tobacco!
Media Release from the Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA)
Be smart, never start. This is the message from the Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA) for its anti-tobacco campaign in May leading up to World No Tobacco Day on 31 May. This year’s theme is Youth Against Tobacco, so CANSA encourages all young people to be smart and never start this deadly habit in any shape or form. Avoid cigarettes, snuff, hookah pipes and hubbly bubbly.
Smoking is not cool. It makes you stink and feel sick.
Smoking puts so many poisons in your body that you could get these nasty diseases:
- Many cancers (eg lung, throat, mouth, tongue, bladder, cervix, pancreas, kidney, stomach)
- Heart attacks
- Strokes
- Blood vessel disease
- Emphysema
- Chronic bronchitis
- Peptic ulcers
- Impotence
If you don’t die from tobacco, you are likely to be very ill for many years, fighting for your breath.
Stop second-hand smoke!!
- Even if you don’t smoke, breathing in someone else’s smoke is dangerous too.
- A non-smoker sitting in a smoke filled room for 8 hours will breathe as many cancer-causing chemicals as if he or she had smoked 36 cigarettes.
- Tobacco and second-hand smoke contain over 4 500 chemicals.
- Smoke from the burning end of a cigarette has more poisons than smoke inhaled by the smoker. Some of these poisons include acetone (in paint stripper), naphthalene (in mothballs), butane (in lighter fluid), arsenic (in ant poison), ammonia (in toilet cleaner), phenol (in disinfectant) and carbon monoxide (in exhaust fumes).
- Children who breathe second-hand smoke are more likely to get colds, allergies, asthma, middle ear infections, and "glue ear", which is the most common cause of deafness in children.
- Exposure to second-hand smoke and smoking while pregnant are both linked to miscarriage, low birth weight and stillborn births. Babies who breathe in second-hand smoke have a higher risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
- Push for a smoke-free South Africa!
- Strive to make your home, school, workplace and community smoke-free.
- Get a group of friends together to sign a pledge that you will never smoke.
- Support the Anti-Tobacco Laws and report those who break them.
- Don’t allow smokers to smoke around you or in your home.
- If you live with smokers, set up a place outside where they can smoke, and help them quit.
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KEY MESSAGES
* Stop smoking for the sake of your heart
* Push for a tobacco free South Africa
* Smoke causes cancer
* Smoking can kill you
* Smoking cause heart disease
* Tobacco is addictive
* I’m addicted to life, not tobacco
* Smoking damages your lungs
* Stop second-hand smoke
* We are 100% behind anti-tobacco laws
* Give your child a smoke free childhood
* Second hand smoke is a health hazard for you and your family!!
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World No Tobacco Day – Information from the World Health Organization
Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death in th world. Approximately 1.8 billion young people (aged 10-24) live in our world today with more than 85% found in developing countries. As the tobacco industry intensifies its efforts to hook new, young and potentially life-long tobacco users, the health of a significant percentage of the world’s youth is seriously threatened by their deadly products. Nicotine is a highly addictive substance and child and adolescent experimentation can easily lead to a lifetime of tobacco dependence.
Globally, most people start smoking before the age of 18, and almost a quarter of these individuals begin using tobacco before the age of 10. The younger children are when they first try smoking, the more likely they are to become regular tobacco users and the less likely they are to quit.
In response to this threat to young people, this year’s World No Tobacco Day campaign focuses on the following main message:
TOBACCO FREE YOUTH!!
For more information contact:
SANCA - 011 781 6410
sanca@sancanational.org.za
CANSA
For more information call toll free on 0800 22 66 22 or see www.cansa.org.za
or
Liziwe Rwentela 041 373 5157 email lrwentela@cansa.org.za for enquiries locally.