“Smoking kills.”
From an old slogan born of the anti-tobacco campaigns of the ‘80s, the phrase now comes as a warning tagged to every box of cigarettes– a warning many perhaps choose to ignore, before consuming stick after stick of those little white rolls of nicotine, tar, ash, and a generous dose of at least seventy toxic carcinogens in a pattern now so commonplace in this country so as to have made the transition from personal habit to national tradition.
The 2009 Philippine Global Adult Tobacco Survey classifies 17.3 million Filipinos fifteen years old and older as regular tobacco users, with well over thirteen million of them smoking at least a stick a day. The World Health Organization ranks the Philippines among the top 14 countries in the world with populations hooked to the habit.
Smoking kills one in every 10 adults and is the single most preventable cause of death, responsible for 80 to 90 percent of all mortalities from lung cancer, alongside a laundry list of other health problems ranging from respiratory ailments to heart disease to impotence. Faced with what many consider as a looming public health crisis, some lawmakers have proposed to require manufacturers to print more graphic warnings on the health risks of smoking on cigarette packages. Others have called for a hike on “sin tax”, a policy known colloquially as the Bawas Bisyo Bill.
But does smoking a stick or two a day really count as bisyo?
Few, if any, of us are born into this world with a tambutso for lungs. Tobacco, like any drug, enters our lives through more subtle means: a need for relaxation, a need for attention (or pressure from relatives or peers), or just plain curiosity. A reason – or the will power – to drop the habit is more difficult to come by.
For Joe Bernard, 37, smoking is a reward in itself. He started smoking in second year high school. “Pagkatapos ng bawat klase, isa. ‘Pag wala yung teacher, dalawa (After every class, I would smoke one [cigarette]. When the teacher’s away, I smoke two0.” He says this with some nostalgia, for the days when he and his friends would kid one another between smoking sessions, lapping up their collective puffs of smoke in unison. For him, “every smoker is a brother.” It was a symbol of youth, of freedom, of resistance to authority.
That symbol took on a different form in junior year, when even an easy game of soccer would leave him gasping. Come college, shortness of breath was the norm.
Joe is no stranger to failed attempts to “quit the habit”, a struggle familiar to all long-time smokers. He has summoned enough nerve to stop a few times, but each time sees one of his friends light up a cigarette, he is left helpless to resist the urge to light his own.
With stimulant properties similar to cocaine and caffeine, nicotine is inherently addictive. This little substance is what keeps smokers coming back for more sticks. Cutting cold turkey, the way Joe did, is a trigger for major withdrawal symptoms. Deprived of his daily dose of nicotine, he displays all the symptoms of an addict: anxiety, tremors, headaches, shaky lips, loss of concentration, and even constipation.
Joe understands the futility of it all. “Ano bang maitutulong ng yosi sa’kin bukas (It isn’t like smoking is ever going to give me a decent future),” he asks, no, tells himself. Lung cancer took away his uncle, a chain smoker. He has heard of friends, and friends, and friends, succumb to emphysema – their lungs literally collapsing from all the smoke. “Hihintayin ko bang lamunin ako nitong stick na hawak ko (Should I wait for this stick to consume me)?”
There’s a reason why the ancient Greeks used the word “consumption’’ to refer to lung problems like tuberculosis. TB, like diseases that leave smokers with shriveled lungs even decades after they quit the habit, consumes you from the inside out.
While he has yet to stop, Joe has finally convinced his friends of his commitment to end the habit.
So one weekend, with thirteen of his friends, he joined a quitting ceremony. Rolling together 25 packs’ worth of cigarettes, they bound the sticks and wrapped them in paper, carefully lighting one end of the cylinder like a dynamite stick. Passing on the flaming mass of tobacco, they promised each other to quit smoking as each watched the other take a deep breath. It was like the last supper. Or maybe like a slow death by strangling.
It never worked.
It took him five months to taper off the habit, bit by bit, and even now life’s everyday stresses leaves him hankering for another cigarette. To ease those cravings, Joe uses candy. He and his barkada always have a pack of Stork candy ready to suck on to beat the urge. While some have yet to totally kick the habit, many have managed to quit entirely.
For ex-addicts like Joe, sometimes real freedom in life is a choice between a sweet and another stick.
