I am pleased to see the Government moving ahead, although too slowly for my comfort, to ensure Jamaica's compliance with the strictures of the World Health Organisation Frame-work Convention on Tobacco Control to which we became a signatory in July 2005.

It is hoped the earlier reported promise to have legislation in place by mid-year to restrict smoking in certain public and private business places that provide services to the public will be fulfilled without any undue delay.

The latest reported move is to place graphic health warnings on local tobacco packages. While I welcome this move, I question its effectiveness, given our continued practice of permitting the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products by the stick or without the packaged label.

It is essential that we move to ban the sale of tobacco products in any manner except as packaged, that is, either by the pack or carton. Smokers would, in such an instance, be given actual notice of the inherent dangers of tobacco smoking, and the product would become more unaffordable, causing many to quit or smoke less.

restrict tobacco smoking

Understandably, the National Health Fund (NHF) is funded substantially by the taxes imposed on tobacco products, among other sources, so any decrease in tobacco sales would naturally result in less money for the NHF. The Government cannot afford to miss the point, though.

If we move further to restrict tobacco smoking in Jamaica, our health-care system would become less strained and the NHF less used or required to treat the many serious health conditions caused by smoking or from exposure to tobacco smoke pollution. We would essentially realise a healthier nation.

Further efforts to make Jamaica a healthier nation and to lessen the burden on our health-care system require the Ministry of Health to move with alacrity to reduce the incidence of lifestyle diseases caused by our increasingly unhealthy eating habits.

We must move to ban or heavily restrict the sale and use of certain foods in Jamaica, such as the unhealthy saturated and trans fats, especially in our quick service restaurants. We should seek to prepare less fried foods, taking steps to use healthier fats to the extent we so prepare our foods.

I am, etc.,

KEVIN KO SANGSTER

sangstek@msn.com