Just another levy?

Mmegi Editor | Tuesday November 12, 2013 15:37

Tobacco consumption results in lung cancer, high blood pressure, pneumonia and stroke, otherwise known as Cerebrovascular accident, whose growing incidence is adding to the list of several chronic and fatal illnesses in Botswana.  Second-hand smoking has also been found to be a serious health risk, especially to non-smokers. In addition to the real and present health hazard that tobacco consumption poses, it also contributes to poor nutrition and impoverishment at family level because addicts will take - by any means necessary - the last pula to satisfy their craving.  The tobacco levy comes five years after introduction of the alcohol levy which, it was announced last week, has collected P1,2 billion over the last 12 months. When it was introduced, the alcohol levy, we were told, was intended to curb alcohol consumption and abuse by making it difficult for people to access the toxic beverages.

However, it has turned out that the excessive - even extortionate - alcohol prices have not acted as a deterrent as had been hoped. As a matter of fact, all indications are that the situation has worsened.

In the lopsided, top-heavy manner in which the surcharge on booze was introduced, Batswana were also told that the funds so collected would be used to establish rehabilitation centres for addicts and educate the public about the dangers of alcohol abuse. Instead, evidence points to unbridled abuse of the 'loot' that is curiously viewed as a godsend by the powers that be without a qualm of conscience as to the stated purposes. Sadly, keeping apace with this misuse of the alcohol levy is the abuse of alcohol that it was intended to restrain and growing experimentation with more toxic substances that further pervert those on the brink, especially the youth, even more.  The truth is that because a craving for alcohol and other toxins must be satisfied ahead of anything else, there is less nutrition for the body and a greater predisposition to loss of appetite in the vicious cycle of abuse. As a matter of fact, we did sound the warning that prohibition has never worked anywhere it has been tried, and stories of this are legend in the United States where it resulted in a spate in organised crime and in Australia where studies are conducted regularly.

Even so, as we call for a more enlightened approach to the ills of alcoholism and tobacco addiction - including a more sociological appreciation of conditions that turn people to toxins - we hope that laws against vitiating the air will be observed because the globe cannot be treated as though it was a free smoking zone. Afterall, pollution has a deleterious effect on the Ozone layer.

 It is thus incumbent upon those among us who smoke to treat those who do not with respect, and those who enjoy a tipple to spare a thought for the nutritional standards of the family.

                                                     Today's thought

'Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart'.

 

                                           - Henri Frederic Amiel