Don’t wait for dangers of smoking to ‘retire you’

To start is easy, to quit is the problem. That’s the bitter sweet of every addictive habit we undertake in life. For smoking, it is even worse. Today, despite several policies in the country to curtail public smoking, he dangers cannot be underestimated.Public smoking affects the one smoking and those in the smokers reach when tobacco smoke and scent directly affects the lungs.Emma, who battled to victory against the addiction six years a go, says having smoked cigarettes for more than 10 years, he believed he could not go with out it.With his health battered, Emma set out to quit. It would be a gruelling task but he won the fight. “I believed that it could revive me whenever I was bothered. This forced me to smoke a lot whenever something went wrong with me,” he recalls. Emma says although he stopped smoking, he regrets the time he used to smoke adding that past six years now, the effects of smoking have not stopped showing.“Chest pain due to persistent coughing although when I concentrate on the treatment it slows; it makes a follow-up after some time. I have reported to the doctor several times, but he (doctor) said smoking affected my lungs,” he said.He says effects of smoking take time to show although coughing starts after a short time. When a person still smokes, what he realises is not enough to convince them to quit, he adds.“I have felt the effects that can make me firm to permanently avoid smoking and I have taken the initiative to warn my colleagues to avoid it,” Emma says. “They are ever urging and resisting the advice to stop smoking, instead they offend me, claiming that I am a retired member. That for the long time I smoked, I achieved the aim and I am against their ‘achievements’.” According to Paul McDonald a health studies professor and public health expert on smoking cessation, banning cigarette displays will have a potentially huge impact on the health of children. McDonald says restricting points of purchase is an important and positive policy to improve health among the youth. Samuel Hakizimana, a businessman and parent of three children, says care for children is necessary to prevent them from health problems at an old age.“Its true and right to work which makes us busy, but the reason for hard work is to make-up a good and health family that will make-up our grandsons and daughters. For that matter, some time should be allocated to our families for the better or else our children will always blame their groups and parents for having failed to take care of them,” he stressed.