THE health ministry is developing legislation to enforce tighter restrictions on the use of tobacco in Jamaica.

“The ministry is developing tobacco control legislation that would ban tobacco smoking in most public places including restaurants and eliminate the sale of tobacco products to youths and so on,” Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Grace Allen-Young, said Friday at the launch of the Jamaica Coalition for Tobacco Control.

She added that in order to lay the groundwork for the new law her ministry was working with the Ministry of Finance and the Planning Institute of Jamaica to do a study on the impact of tighter tobacco control measures on the economy.

“We have to look at alternative sources of employment for those who are in the tobacco industry. We also have to see how the proposed legislation will affect revenues. There are also issues such as the medical, lost productivity and other costs caused by tobacco,” she said. Since the tobacco industry pulled in a lot of revenue, Allen-Young said, other options had to be identified to fill that space if revenues declined because of the legislation.

At the same time she highlighted some of the negative effects that smoking had and pointed out Jamaica’s situation.

“The chronic use of tobacco is not only linked to lung cancer but also to oral, oesophageal, larynx, bladder and pancreas cancers. Nicotine from tobacco products is also associated with adverse effects of the cardiovascular system,” she said. In Jamaica the incidence of lung cancer is approximately five times higher for men than women as indicated by the Jamaica Cancer Register from 1978-1997, she added.

“This difference is caused by the higher prevalence of cigarette smoking among men, which results in more than 90 per cent of their lung deaths,” she said.

Allen-Young encouraged the coalition to target efforts at programmes to help smokers stop the habit and to prevent youngsters from initiating smoking.

She also highlighted the need to target adolescents, noting that they often became addicted at an early age.

“Several research studies throughout Jamaica and the world have shown that the average age of new smokers is 13 years and 90 per cent of all smokers initiate smoking before age 18. Smoking cessation becomes more difficult the earlier the initiation of the habit,” she said.

The health ministry, she said, had registered several pharmaceutical products than could be used to help persons stop cigarette smoking — such as chewing gum and transdermal patches.

Meanwhile, country representative for the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) Manuel Pena, stressed the need for more emphasis to be placed on finalising the legislation to ban tobacco promotions. If current smoking trends were not reversed by 2030, he said, 10 million people will die yearly worldwide from tobacco- related illnesses. Certain measures to deal with the worldwide problem were already bearing fruit, he said.

“The main services that have shown a high impact are to increase tobacco patches, to eliminate the advertising of tobacco, the mandatory implementation of smoke-free environment such as the workplace, schools, recreational facilities and public transportation,” he said. “There is also the need to have sound health information on the tobacco industry.”

He also commended the Federation International for Football Association (FIFA) for gaining the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) highest tobacco award.

“The WHO highest tobacco control award will be given to the Federation International for Football Association (FIFA) in recognition of its tobacco control work thereby culminating in its decision to declare the 2002 World Cup tobacco free,” he said.

“This means that there will be no tobacco sales or promotions at World Cup venues and tobacco and its products will not be sold at the games in Korea and Japan. There will be no smoking in public areas. Sports and tobacco do not meet, we have a common goal that all sports are free from tobacco,” Pena said.

FIFA’s move, he added, was a significant step in the right direction. In Jamaica, he said, it is estimated that the prevalence of tobacco smoking is 36 per cent among males and 11 per cent among females. Most of world’s smokers, Pena noted, live in developing countries.

According to WHO estimates, there are about 1.2 billion smokers worldwide.