By Patrick Soko
While countries around the world are seeing a decrease in
smoking, Zambia is one of the outliers where smoking prevalence continues to
increase.
By 2025, the World Health Organization WHO estimates that there will be 300,000 new smokers in the country. Such trends are a reflection of deliberate efforts by multinational tobacco companies to expand their markets outside of high-income countries. Sub-Saharan African countries, such as Zambia, where the population is relatively young and regulation is minimal, provide ample opportunity for the industry to entice new smokers.
Health professionals say the introduction of electronic cigarettes is one of the ways the
tobacco industry is recruiting new smokers’ especially young people into
smoking.
For many young people, it is about style and class to use electronic
cigarettes.
At one of the shopping malls in the central business district of
Lusaka where young people like Martin Mwale 17 of Lusaka’s Jack compound in Kabwata
Constituency prefer to spend their weekends.
Mwale a grade pupil 12 at the Kamwala secondary school could be
seen nodding his head with utmost vaping excitement.
He says the e-cigarette makes him feel good but when a
sked about
the consequences, he could not states any. “Big man what I know is that this
thing makes me feel good and about the dangers and other things I don’t know,
let me just say it is about class and being fancy,” he said..jpg)
Professor Fastone Goma
However Centre for Primary Care Research Director Professor
Fastone contends that there is nothing good about vaping and called on the
Zambian government to ban electronic cigarettes owing to their devastating health
consequences.
Professor Goma who is a practicing Physician, an Associate
Professor of Physiology and Cardiovascular Health, and the Director of the
Centre for Primary Care Research (CPCR) at the University of Zambia, School of Medicine,
Notes that if left unchecked vaping will subject more young people in Zambia to
premature deaths.
“Vaping is a type of smoking all that is there is that, the
tobacco industry has distilled Nicotine into the fluid that vaporizes and so people
breathe in the vapor. And the vapor is actually concentrated nicotine that they
are taking in,” he said.
Electronic cigarettes, also known as vapes and e-cigs, are
battery-powered devices that aim to simulate the experience of regularly
smoking cigarettes. To work, they heat a vape liquid containing nicotine,
solvent carriers, and other chemicals to a specific temperature, which causes
the liquid to turn into a vapor. This vapor is then inhaled and exhaled.
As vapes are relatively new and evolving, there is a lack of
knowledge surrounding long-term health consequences.
Due to a lack of regulation, it can be difficult to establish the
specific chemicals or concentrations users of vapes inhale. Nevertheless,
emerging research proposes several adverse conditions and diseases associated
with vape use.
And professor Goma explains that vaping is a very dangerous habit
to get into and may lead to stroke and high blood pressure.
“It is more injurious to the heart and blood vessels than normal
smocking so it must be controlled it must be discouraged and in my view, it
needed to be banned,” he said.
the Chairman of the Zambia Tobacco Control Consortium (ZTCC)
adds that the damage that is being done to the body due to vaping is the same as the damage that will be done by tobacco the difference is that chemicals in cigarettes such as tar are not contained in vaping.
“Vaping – as a nicotine delivery system – may be causing
nicotine dependency in adults and high school-aged children. Flavorings in vaping
products have also been associated with increased nicotine intake,” he
explained.
Research from The Johns Hopkins University on vape ingredients
published in October 2021 reveals thousands of chemical ingredients in vape
products, most of which are not yet identified. Among those the team could
identify were several potentially harmful substances, including caffeine, three
chemicals never previously found in e-cigarettes, a pesticide, and two
flavorings linked with possible toxic effects and respiratory irritation.
Week legislations coupled with poor enforcement, have made it
difficult for Zambia to control tobacco but activists remain hopeful that the
United Party for National Development administration will enact the tobacco
control bill into law.
