Mark tells gov’t: Help smokers quit

OPPOSITION Senator Wade Mark on Tuesday said the Government should provide help to cigarette smokers to quit, and target a number to quit in a certain period.

The Senate debated the Tobacco Control (Amendment) Regulations 2019. The regulations seek to have a series of graphic photographs, showing the harm done by smoking to the human body, placed on tobacco products such as cigarette boxes.

Mark suggested these measures alone were not enough to curb smoking in Trinidad and Tobago.

"Citizens who would like to quit smoking, the minister needs to tell this Parliament what institutions, what infrastructure, are in place to provide those citizens with an avenue to come out of their smoking habits.

"Do we have counselling services? Where are these counselling services located?

"Do we have cessation programmes in TT? Cessation programmes are in three stages – pre-contemplation, contemplation and then actual quitting. We'd like the minister to indicate where these mechanisms can be located."

Mark reckoned the Government has failed in its education drive to build awareness in TT which he said had Caricom's worst rate of cigarette smoking.

"The minister should come here and tell us, 'This is the reality, and these are the measures we are going to be taking...We intend to bring down smoking by 30 per cent over the next two years or three years, so we know that systemically there will be a reduction in smoking in our country.'

"But the minister comes here and gives the impression that everything is working when nothing is working."

Mark did not think that anti-tobacco health warnings could be done in a vacuum, but needed measures to ensure tobacco vendors complied with the law and help smokers to quit.

"You need human, financial and technical resources to achieve those particular objectives."

He said a 2011 PAHO report had been very critical of smoking in TT.

Mark advised that the ministry's campaign should target children, from primary school to university level.

"The PAHO had estimated that about 40 per cent of students between the age 13 to 15 have experimented with cigarette smoking at one time or another. An equal percentage, 40 per cent, male and female, have also experimented with smoking before the age of ten."

Mark said if the Government was serious about defeating smoking, it must have enough resources to monitor compliance by tobacco vendors.

He asked how the day's measures could affect the illicit cigarette trade.

Mark wants legislation to stop youngsters being exposed to vaping as a gateway to full-fledged smoking.

He reckoned TT has 260,000 cigarette smokers, dubbing it an epidemic.

"Some 21 per cent of the population, from research, is engaged in cigarette smoking."

Mark said smoking affects males, females and children. Saying exposure to smoke generates disease and death, he said the posting of warnings was critical to raising public awareness.

The warning should physically cover 50 per cent of the cigarette pack, noting this ratio was even higher in Canada and Uruguay.

He said cigarettes have had devastating consequences for TT citizens, killing 50 per cent of its users. Smoking causes more deaths than the combined effects of TB, HIV/AIDS and malaria, Mark said.

He said TT should have enacted these health warnings years ago after having signed onto the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Convention on Tobacco Control. He mulled enforcement, asking if the ministry has enough compliance officers to monitor if children are entering bars to buy cigarettes.

"I have been informed the Tobacco Unit in the Ministry of Health is populated by just two persons."

He asked how many smokers could have been saved if these regulations/health warnings were enacted earlier.

"How many who wanted to quit could have, if we had brought these regulations earlier? So I'm saying the Government has been found wanting on this matter. How many lives could have been saved?"