Last Day of May: World No Tobacco Day

May 31 marks the United Nations World Health Organization’s designation as “World No Tobacco Day.” The main objective of this event is not only to educate the public about the lethality of individual tobacco use, but to provide productive and proactive means to substitute tobacco agriculture with that of other crops in conjunction with its “Grow Food, Not Tobacco” campaign.
On a global sustainability basis, tobacco as a cash crop endangers nutrition and food security, therefore contributing at least indirectly to climate change. Governments should continue to raise taxes on tobacco and ban advertising of the product, but should also end subsidies to encourage growers to switch to crops that actually benefit humanity.
Yet, the tobacco industry continues to interfere with attempts at such substitution, through “greenwashing,” much like the global oil and financial sectors have deceived the public about their true commitment to transitioning toward green technology. In addition, these corporate responsibility schemes are not designed to provide farmers with an alternative to tobacco, but to grow other crops alongside this culprit responsible for environmental degradation and poverty.
On a national scale, 2023 data indicate that just under 15% of Moroccan adults smoke (29% of males and 1% of females). However, self-reporting bias (i.e., female smokers shy to report the habit) most likely taints these numbers, at least from what most passersby in the major cities would consider to be an observational perspective of under-reporting.
Nauru (a tiny South Pacific nation) has the world’s highest prevalence of smoking, where over 50% of adults indulge. In France, 34.6% of adults partake in the habit, while 25.1% of Americans and 17% of Canadians light up. According to the report, only Danish, Swedish, Serbian, and Nauruan females smoke with higher prevalence than their do male counterparts, while Ghana experiences the lowest smoking rate in the world, at 3.7%.
Dr. Jarbas Barbosa, a Brazilian public health expert and Director of the Pan American Health Organization–which works with the countries of the Americas to improve the health and quality of life of their populations–notes that tobacco use directly results in 8 million deaths annually.
Yet, second-hand smoke kills as well, with passive intake of tobacco smoke contributing to a 30% higher incidence of stroke relative to those not exposed.
Though Morocco’s parliament in 2008 unanimously approved smoking bans in restaurants and coffee shops, this goes unenforced. When it is enforced, fines for violations range from 10 to 50 dirhams. Nationwide smoking rates have not budged appreciably since the turn of the millennium.