Commissioner Karachi Muhammad Iqbal Memon has said that, City Administration of Karachi Division will take all possible steps to make Karachi a smoke-free city.
Tobacco Control Desk for monitoring the activities for making Smoke Free Karachi will be established in the office of Commissioner and the District Implementation and Monitoring Committees (DIMC) on tobacco control will also be formed for effective monitoring in all the districts under the supervision of deputy commissioners.
He was speaking as a chief guest after inauguration of Smoke Free Karachi Cycling Rally which was started from Empress Market and ended at Mazar e Quaid held in collaboration with the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination (NHSRC).
He further said that steps would be taken to make public service vehicles and restaurants will be smoke-free . Commissioner said that according to the data an economic cost of smoking in Pakistan is Rs 615.07 billion (US$3.85 billion), equal to 1.6% of Pakistan’s GDP.6
According to another report he says In 2019, the economic cost of smoking was about five times greater than the revenue from the tobacco industry.
“Money spent on tobacco reduces households’ spending on food, health, education, housing, and household durables.
In Pakistan, tobacco-consuming households spend on average 2.7% of their monthly budget on tobacco.Poor households spend 3.0% of their budget on tobacco. This is more than they spend on education (1.8%)” he added
He further said according to a report Tobacco kills over 163,600 people each year in Pakistan. Almost 31,000 of these deaths are due to exposure to secondhand smoke.
He also referred a report of WHO that says the tobacco epidemic is one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced, killing more than 8 million people a year around the world.
More than 7 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.
