The Culture of Smoking

Africa is expected to double its tobacco consumption in 12 years if current trends continue. The surge in smoking is seen in young people under the age of 20 that constitute the majority of the continents population. In this installment of our series on smoking in Africa, VOA's Henok Fente reports unless governments enact tobacco control laws, Africans who are smoking and those who live with smokers are in great danger.

Homeless street children are selling cigarettes in the streets of the northern Ethiopian town of Mekele. They display cigarette packs on a wooden framed hard paper board and call out the names of local and international cigarette brands.

Here, it may be difficult to find a pack of condoms, but cigarettes are everywhere. From the streets of Mekele, to the city of Abidjan in the West African nation of Cote D'Ivoire; from south to north, throughout the continent of Africa, smoking is on the rise.

For many, smoking starts at a young age. It starts with peer pressure, being exposed to second hand smoking, having parents and best friends who smoke. And for some, just simply to be cool. Dr Adamson Muula is a senior lecturer of public health at the University of Malawi.

"In much of the areas here, it is between 10 percent for low prevalence countries, to 20-25 percent," Dr. Muula says. "Twenty five percent would be rare for our region. Contrast that with Eastern Europe where sometimes 50 percent, 40 percent or even more adults are smoking."

He says in comparison Africa has the lowest rate of smokers, but smoking in general is on the rise on poor continents like Africa, where more than 60 percent of the population is under 18 years of age.

Each year millions of Africans find themselves between a rock and a hard place — between the difficulty of quitting and the suffering that can result from smoking. The World Health Organization estimates tobacco is the second most important risk factor for disease, following malnutrition. According to this report, the number of smoking-attributed deaths worldwide at the turn of the century was more than the number of AIDS-related deaths. Four-point-nine million people died from smoking-related sicknesses. The death rate is even higher in Africa, where treatment options are absent. Despite the figures, Dr. Adamson Muula says, smoking is not a priority in African public health strategies.