Ex-AFP officials as illegal mining coddlers
| BLURBAL THRUSTS |
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| Louie Logarta |
Sad to say, tobacco use in the Philippines is actually on the rise despite efforts to curb it. This much has been reportedly admitted by Dr. Armando Peruga, manager of the World Health Organization’s Tobacco Free Initiative Program.
Aggravating matters is the fact that cigarettes here in the Philippines can be bought dirt-cheap and piecemeal, at P1.00-P3.00 per stick, unlike in other Asean countries where purchases are on a per pack basis that go for up to three times the cost of local brands, which is why the Philippines, with an estimated 20 million people hooked on the habit, is among the top-ranked cigarette-consuming nations in the world.
To counter the “smoking epidemic” which the Philippines is going to have to contend with in the foreseeable future — thanks in great part to the efforts of the formidable tobacco lobby and the huge war chest it has to splurge and bribe its way around to get what it wants — the Department of Health has been pushing for the adoption of certain novel methods, as it were, to dampen demand for cigarettes in a bid to lessen the (as per WHO estimates) approximately 87, 000 Filipinos who die each year due to tobacco-related diseases like emphysema, cancer, heart attack, etc..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110526com4.html
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