Matthew Beasley
Blog #9
With tobacco taking over in many
places throughout the world, it is not surprising that many of these
countries are relying more and more on their land and their people to
be dedicated to the process of tobacco. Sibare Sibare, is just one
of the many people that lost his job at a clothing factory, once the
tobacco industry became so prominent in Zimbabwe. For the last 5
years Sibare has been unpacking and individually selling cigarettes
as a vendor in order to make ends meet. Increasingly though, this
has been tougher to do. The government in Zimbabwe has banned the
sale of individual cigarettes that are not labeled with the mark that
smoking can harm you. This doesn't seem like to big an issue, except
that recently police have been cracking down on these types of
vendors and forcing them to both fear and hide out from officers.
The article basically makes it seem like police officers are viewing
these vendors likes common drug dealers, and it is making it
impossible for people like Simbare to make a living.
The reason behind this, is that in
Zimbabwe 1 in 10 students use tobacco and also it is a major
healthcare concern. In 2008 alone, there were more deaths related to
respiratory problems than there were deaths by viral diseases. That
is a serious in a country that is riddled with Aids. It would seem
like the government that wanted to ban people from selling tobacco,
would not invest so much of its land and resources into the making of
the product. I hate it for people like Simbare and wish the
government would invest in its people half as much as it does in the
industry that health experts agree kills so many people. The article
says that for every cigarette that a person smokes, they remove 5 and
½ minutes from their lives. Out of the 300 known chemicals that go
into the production of a cigarette, 40 of those are known to be
poisonous and even after a person quits smoking the effects linger in
them for more than 10 years. All around it seems that cigarettes are
a nasty business that ruins lives.
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