Nipping it in the butt

Say no to smoking: Tobacco kills more than eight million people every year, and it also appears to be killing our planet.

WORLD No Tobacco Day is observed globally on May 31 annually. This year’s theme – Tobacco is Killing Us and Our Planet – was chosen to raise awareness among governments and the public regarding the environmental impact of a product that kills 50% of its users when it is used exactly as intended by its manufacturers.

A visit to the World Health Organisation’s website will highlight some startling facts – approximately 600 million trees are chopped down every year, as each tree is needed to produce enough paper for 15 packs of cigarettes.

Besides that, the industry emits 84 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and uses 22 billion litres of water, which is approximately 900 times the volume of Tasik Kenyir.

The impact of smoking on the environment should not come as a surprise to most of us.

Secondhand smoke contains more than 4,000 chemicals and leads to the deaths of more than one million non-smokers annually.

Tobacco smoke also contributes to overall higher air pollution levels and has three kinds of greenhouse gases.

More insidiously, one only has to walk along a street or a beach to find cigarette butts littered all over the ground.

There are many campaigns to reduce the use of plastic, but do you know that cigarette butts are the most abundant form of plastic waste in the world, with about 4.5 trillion individual butts polluting our environment?

Cigarette butts may appear innocuous, but are far from it. Approximately 18 billion cigarettes are bought each day – the majority of cigarette butts end up in the environment and end up leaking nicotine, heavy metals and other chemicals such as arsenic and lead into the surroundings.

These cigarette butts clog our drains and end up being mistaken for food by animals such as birds and fish.

A 2011 study published in the journal Tobacco Control demonstrated that one cigarette butt in a litre of water kills half the fish within. The butts also take up to 10 years to degrade – when they eventually do so, they end up in our environment as microplastics which eventually end up in the bloodstream and bodies of animals and humans.

The increasing prevalence of electronic cigarettes, especially the disposable variety, is also adding to the pressure on our environment.

The same can be said for heat-not-burn devices, where the combination of electronic and chemical components add to toxic waste.

The undeniably negative impact of tobacco on our environment makes it all the more important that we do more to protect the resources that we have left and do the necessary to preserve our children’s future.

Besides helping current smokers quit (see more at jomquit.com), we must also do more to protect our children and youth from becoming nicotine addicts.

The Tobacco and Smoking Control Act that the Health Ministry intends to table in Parliament in July 2022 is one such effort, where we intend to address and update Malaysia’s tobacco control efforts in a holistic manner.

This would not only involve improving healthcare literacy and providing the necessary education, but also restricting access to cigarettes, such as instituting a generational endgame in which youth born after a specific year are not allowed to purchase cigarettes.

We will also be introducing policies to protect people from smoking and enforce new regulations for the electronic cigarette/vaping industry.

Beyond the upcoming legislation, there are other environmental policy proposals that have been advocated and merit further consideration.

These include imposing the Extended Producer Responsibility principle on the tobacco industry to hold them accountable for environmental costs, and imposing an environmental tax levy on tobacco manufacturers for carbon emissions and air pollution, as well as promoting divestment from the tobacco industry on the basis that environmental, social and governance commitments are not being met.

Tobacco kills more than eight million people every year, and it also appears to be killing our planet, slowly but surely.

Governments across the globe, including ours, are increasingly aware of the need to implement better policies, but it is only by working together will we be able to make tough but necessary decisions to secure a brighter future for our children.

Comment by Khairy Jamaluddin, who is the Health Minister and Dr Helmy Haja Mydin, the technical advisor to the Health Ministry on tobacco control.