24 Feb 2014

Her soft lips smudged in red lipstick, are depleted every time she takes a puff. At least she would fit in perfectly into the “supposedly cool” society.

For the crowd she attracts, she is the epitome of a cool modern young lady. It is startling how she is not the only young woman, huffing and puffing the black cloud full of carbon monoxide, tar and nicotine at sight.

There are thousands of young people in Botswana who are addicted to smoking, despite the various health hazards associated with it.The girl child is not an exception.Once more, the media has a role to play in the acceleration of this social ill, cigarettes advertisements target young women with the notion of actresses being thin and beautiful, so one has the social pressure to look as good as the woman holding a Camel light cigarette in a Cosmopolitan Magazine.

“The ‘over-romanticising’ of TV characters in movies and popular culture music also added some pressure for the girl child to smoke. They would often depict a powerful fallacy of a rich, beautiful woman smoking,” commented Mrs Olemme Lekgoko, a psychologist.

Further, it is an overwhelming revelation that 2012 Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) indicated that tobacco-use prevalence among girls increased by 4.4 percent in 2008. According to the survey, there is an overall 14.3 per cent smoking prevalence among 13-15 year-old upper primary (Standard Seven) and lower secondary (Forms one and two).

About 21 per cent of persons aged 15 and above are smoking in Botswana.Mrs Lekgoko also alluded that parental negligence is also one of the major contributions to this social cry.She said some studies are conclusive to show that lack of supervision by parents, too much freedom of children leads them astray and as a result adopting bad habits.

Smoking is fustily becoming a fashion trend amongst Batswana youth. Of recent, the girl child gives the loudest cry. In every corner of a nightclub, bar or even a restaurant they are smoking without shame or of being watched by an elder. Take Ms Aliandro De Klerck for example, from a popular suburban area of Kgale View in Gaborone.

Her life took a drastic turn the day she learned to light a “ciggie”, as she refers to it.She was once an obedient child who was adorned by every parent in their neighborhood. For her part, she stated smoking after high school, when she was desperate to “fit in” the social crowd.

Her hunger to be seen, attracted the wrong crowed which eventually taught her how to smoke. “It is so easy to smoke nowadays because everyone minds their own business and most young women smoke for fun and social status”, she said. She stated that cigarettes are everywhere, easily accessible and cheap.

According to medical experts, cigarette smoking affects many organs, including the brain, nervous system, eyes, blood, lungs and heart and even causes death. In addition, Mrs Lekgoko also alluded that, young women’s brain are also in the development stages therefore harmful chemicals found in a cigarettes like butane, cadmium, stearic acid, toluene, ammonia, acetic acid and methanol among others  may hinder brain development.

She said that smoking increases the livelihood of other addictions and promotes other social ills like inter-generational relationships that these young women engage in with men twice their ages, they meet in clubs and bars, which in return accelerates the high risk of infections like HIV/AIDS.

She said government and other Non-governmental Organisations should put in strong measures to curb smoking of both young women and men. She stated that it also goes back to our cultural practices as Batswana on dealing with such social concerns. “This is a cry by the girl child, and it is high time we sit down as parents and take responsibility of our children’s actions and engage uncles and elders in trying to curb this social phenomenon as it was done in the past”, she said.

Ms Joy Phumamphi, Anti-Tobacco Network (ATN) Celebrity Endorser stated that, smoking has claimed more than 100 million people worldwide in the past century. She added that what makes tobacco more dangerous is that we have lived with it for so long.

“We have become so comfortable with smoking, that despite the overwhelming, irrefutable evidence; we do not make the link between smoking, or other tobacco use, with heart disease, lung disease, and the alarming incidence of cancer in our families and communities”, she said.

With the ever praises of dangerous effects of smoking, it is also inherently proven by studies that young women who smoke, may have defects when trying to conceive children because it affects the reproduction system. Ends