World No Tobacco Day is an effort of NGOs and government to keep people healthy and drawing attention to the health problems that tobacco use can cause.
World No Tobacco Day is observed around the world every year on May 31.
It is meant to encourage a 24-hour period of abstinence from all forms of tobacco consumption across the globe.
The day is further intended to draw global attention to the widespread prevalence of tobacco use and to negative health effects, which currently lead to 5.4 million deaths worldwide annually.
The member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) created World No Tobacco Day in 1987. In the past twenty years, the day has been met with both enthusiasm and resistance across the globe from governments, public health organizations, smokers, growers, and the tobacco industry. World No Tobacco Day is a day for people, non-governmental organizations and governments organize various activities to make people aware of the health problems that tobacco use can cause. These activities include:
- Public marches and demonstrations, often with vivid banners.
- Advertising campaigns and educational programs.
- People going into public places to encourage people to stop smoking.
- The introduction of bans on smoking in particular places or types of advertising.
- Meetings for anti-tobacco campaigners.
Medical research made it clear during the 1900s that tobacco use increased the likelihood of many illnesses including heart attacks, strokes, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), emphysema and many forms of cancer. This is true for all ways in which tobacco is used which including:
- Cigarettes and cigars.
- Hand rolling tobacco.
- Bidis and kreteks (cigarettes containing tobacco with herbs or spices).
- Pipes and water pipes.
- Chewing tobacco.
- Snus (a moist version of snuff popular in some countries such as Sweden).
- Creamy snuff (a paste consisting of tobacco, clove oil, glycerin, spearmint, menthol, and camphor sold in a toothpaste tube popular in India).
- Gutkha (a version of chewing tobacco mixed with areca nut, catechu, slaked lime and other condiments popular in India and South-East Asia).
Wishing all readers World No Tobacco Day 2017 !
Send World No Tobacco Day Day Messages and Greetings to all to encourage them to keep away from Tobacco.