In the late 1950s, the Philip Morris Tobacco Company created an icon - a smoker who epitomized the fantasy of most smokers at that time. Philip Morris called him the Marlboro Man. This rugged individualist was a cowboy, living a life of freedom under the

This ad campaign worked to make Marlboro the largest-selling brand of cigarettes in the United States. However, those who bought the fantasy and lived the Marlboro life were less successful. At least two actors who played the Marlboro Man died of lung cancer. One of them, Wayne McLaren, began working on an antismoking campaign after he was diagnosed with cancer. He starred in a television commercial that showed him in a hospital bed just before he died. In the commercial, his brother says, "Lying there with all those tubes in you, how independent can you really be?" Tobacco (known in the science world as "Nicotiana tabacum") originated in South America. It was originally used in rituals and ceremonies. When Christopher Columbus and his men returned to Spain after discovering America in 1492, one of the things they brought back with them was tobacco. Today, the habit of smoking has become widespread, and hundreds of millions of people are now using tobacco in various forms. Dr. Domilyn Villareiz, chief of the City Health Office in Davao City, said the smoking population around the world is estimated to reach 1.6 million in 2005 based on the current level of smoking addiction. Currently, there about 1.1 billion smokers in the world. Tobacco Trap In recent years, most people in industrialized countries, like the United States, have recognized the health hazards of smoking. Today, only three out of 10 adults smoke, compared with around six out of 10 forty years ago. Faced with declining markets in their respective countries, the tobacco industry moves to developing countries in Asia. "The tobacco industry is turning to this region to recruit new cigarette consumers through tobacco marketing that characterizes tobacco use as socially acceptable, fashionable, and glamorous," deplored Dr. Shigeru Omi, regional director of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the Western Pacific. The numbers reflect estimates by WHO that deaths due to smoking will jump fourfold in Asia by 2030, compared to a 50 percent increase in developed countries, as developing economies become the key market of tobacco manufacturers. In the Philippines, Filipinos puff a billion sticks of cigarettes every week. According to the Senate committee on health and demography, 50 to 60 percent of Filipino smokers are men while 12 to 20 percent are women. Children, however, are not spared. In fact, more than half of Filipino children, particularly those aged 7 to 15, have been caught in the "tobacco trap" from which there seems to be no escape. A research study by Minja Kin Choe of the East-West Center in Hawaii shows that smoking among Asian teenagers is reaching epidemic proportions: 89 percent of young Indonesian men are smoking before they reach age 20, 81 percent in Thailand, and 70 percent in the Philippines. Health Hazard "A cigarette is the only consumer product which, when used as desired, kills its consumer," commented Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland when she was still the WHO chief. "The tobacco epidemic spares no nation and no people - four million unnecessary deaths per year, 11,000 every day." According to the United Nations health agency, by 2030, smoking will kill one in six people worldwide--a toll that will exceed that from AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), tuberculosis, automobile accidents and homicide combined. In countries where smoking is a long-established habit, about 90 percent of lung cancer, 30 percent of all cancer deaths, 20-25 percent of coronary heart diseases and strokes and over 80 percent of chronic bronchitis and emphysema are attributed to tobacco. "When you start smoking at a young age, say at 15, you develop cancer of the lungs in 25 years," said Senator Juan Flavier when he was still the health secretary. "By that time, you're only 40 and at the peak of your productivity. At a time when you're supposed to be enjoying your life and your family, you're dead." Other smoking-caused health problems include respiratory diseases, peptic ulcers and pregnancy complications, including low birth weight. Among malnourished mothers, low birth weight threatens children's lives. Children born to smoking mothers also risk impaired physical and intellectual development. Women who smoke face an increased risk of dying of breast cancer, according to an American study. The more cigarettes a woman smoked and the longer she had smoke, the greater is her risk, the study noted. Those who smoked two packs or more a day, for instance, were 75 percent more likely to develop fatal breast cancer than were nonsmokers. Recent studies have also shown that smoking causes miscarriages, premature delivery and the delivery of stillborn and small babies. A study of 1,000 newborns conducted in Hungary noted that women who smoked were 1-1/2 times more likely to give birth to babies with limb defects than women who didn't smoke. These birth defects included shortened fingers or toes, missing nails or even an absent arm or leg. Smoking has also been observed to cause slower penile erection among men because excessive nicotine in the bloodstream "causes constriction of the penile artery, the blood vessel necessary in male erection," to quote the words of Dr. Priscilla Tablan, a chest physician at the Lung Center of the Philippines. She also said smoking might seriously hamper a man's potency or ability to sire children. Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit has said studies showed smoking cost the cash-strapped Philippines about 42 billion pesos (US$788 million) last year in medical expenses for tobacco-related diseases like lung cancer and loss of productivity. "We are a poor country," deplored Senator Flavier. "We cannot afford to be spending this much money for hospital care of something which can actually be prevented. As I say over and over again, prevention is better than cure." Poisonous and Addictive "Smoking is as dangerous to human life as addiction to drugs. Drugs at least have a curative function, smoking has none," someone once said. Anti-smoking groups consider cigarettes as poison. So, what's in a cigarette that makes it addictive? Nicotine, a colorless oily liquid, that's what. Health experts say nicotine is one of the most toxic substances known; even the small dose ingested by smoking causes blood vessel constriction, raised blood pressure, nausea, headache, and impaired indigestion. But nicotine is just one of the harmful ingredients that go into the making of every stick of cigarette. In fact, there are more. To mention a few: acetone, ammonia, arsenic, benzene, cadmium, carbon monoxide, DDT, demytelene metrozamine, ethyl-methyl, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen sulfide, hydroxyl, nickel, nitric acid, propylene glycol, plutonium 229, tar, sulfur dioxide, reurythane, and benyl chloride. "Whenever you pump these chemical compounds into your body, it's a slow-motion suicide," said Dr. Rafael R. Castillo, a cardiologist at Manila Doctors' Hospital.

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