‘Lung changes in those who use vapes on CT look like a snowstorm’
The popularity of trendy ways of smoking is growing among the youth
Key Tatarstan experts in the fight against smoking are unhappy with the anti-tobacco campaign’s pace. Though the number of smokers anyway falls, noted vice chief doctor for medical affairs of the Republican Drug Clinic, chief narcologist of the Tatarstan Ministry of Health Care Rezeda Khayeva.
At the same time, the popularity of vapes and other trendy ways of smoking seriously increased. Some health workers spreading fakes about the benefit of smoking in the fight against coronavirus complicate the fight too. According to Kazan’s chief pulmonologist Rustem Khamitov, some doctors in red zones of COVID-19 hospitals of the republic believe: “We don’t fall ill because we smoke!”
The chief narcologist of the Tatarstan Ministry of Health Care cited the WHO’s data and claimed that up to 7 million people still die from tobacco smoking a year. 6 million of them are smokers and former tobacco consumers, another nearly a million are passive smokers. Apart from the direct threat to the life of the Russian population, this is a huge burden for the health care system.
To prevent this, Russia joined the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control as early as 2008, took a set of measures to protect its citizens from tobacco in 2010. In 2013, the basic law on the protection of citizens from the impact of tobacco smoke was created. As a consequence, of a third of Russians (30,9%) officially consumed tobacco in 2016, in 2019, their number fell to 24,2% (Editor’s note: or almost 30 million people).
Realnoe Vremya – 2021-11-22.
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