PESHAWAR, April 15: Doctors on Tuesday demanded a complete ban on the sale and advertising of tobacco products to save the people from cancer.

“About 70 per cent of the oral and lung cancer is caused by excessive use of tobacco, which can be overcome by controlling its sale and use,” said Dr Sher Mohammad Khan, former director of the Institute of  Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine, at a news conference at the Peshawar Press Club.

He said most of the people in the NWFP were addicted to snuffing tobacco, due to which they could fall prey to oral cancer, which ultimately resulted in death. According to him, the government should ban the cultivation of tobacco and encourage wheat sowing so that the country could become self-sufficient in grain and tobacco use could be controlled.

Dr Mohammad Kabir, Dr Ziaul Hassan, Dr Saeedul Majeed, Dr Tufail and Dr Hakim were also present.

Dr Majeed said tobacco sealed the fate of 4.9 million worldwide per year and if the trend of tobacco use continued, it would be killing 10 million people every year by 2030, with a majority of those occurring in developing countries.

If swift measures were not taken, it would take more lives than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, maternal mortality, automobile accidents and homicide, he said.

Some 100,000 teenage boys took up smoking every year, which was responsible for the death of 560 persons an hour and 13,400 a day, he said. He said there were 1.2 billion tobacco users in the world, including 800 million in the developing countries.

“Over 90 per cent cases of lung cancer are caused by tobacco use. It is the most prevalent type of cancer among men in the country and about 70 per cent of the children are made passive smokers by their elders,” he said.

According to him, Rs500 million was spent daily on tobacco use in the country.

Dr Hassan said a recent report by the United Nations Development Programme had placed Pakistan ahead of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India with respect to tobacco consumption.

The World Health Organization, he said, had a daunting task to adopt  a comprehensive strategy to put brakes on the burgeoning rise in tobacco use globally.

He said that on May 24, 1999, the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the WHO, paved the way for multilateral negotiations to formulate rules to control the global spread of tobacco and its products.

The 191-member assembly unanimously adopted a resolution calling for work to begin on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and 171 members, including Pakistan, approved the text that was mandated to address issues of tobacco advertising and promotion, agricultural diversification, smuggling, taxes and subsidies, he said.

He said 50 countries had pledged financial and political support to the convention. The countries included the permanent members of the United Nations Security  Council and major tobacco growers and exporters.

He said the government should ban all forms of direct and indirect tobacco advertising, sponsorship and promotion.