The 5th Scientific Conference on mitigating the risk of smoking at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation in Athens, Greece, concluded today, Thursday 22/09, in which leading scientists from all over the world participated, such as the internationally renowned cardiologist and researcher Konstantinos Farsalinos and the New Zealand pharmacologist and physician Marewa Glover.
A paper was read on disparities in people smoking in England showing how in every country men smoke more than women and in countries with the highest prevalence the rate was equal to the rate in England 30 years ago in 1992. Greece is first in citizens smoking with 27% of all other countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD.
We are most likely to find people who smoke in England among manual labour professions, and second among the unemployed and those on welfare support, and least among those in business management positions. Also, we are more likely to find British smokers among the unemployed and less among the inactive by including pensioners and even less among members of the workforce.
During the conference it was pointed out that the paternalistic treatment of the state is a harmful factor for the autonomy of the individual and related physical autonomy and for the justice involved and that it is contrary to consistency with the W.H.O. Ottawa Charter signed in 1996 in Canada. It was also emphasised that people are regularly prevented from being autonomous and making choices based on their preferences through informed consent by the reinforcement of misinformation and the spread of misconceptions.
Reiterating from yesterday the question of why people smoke, what exactly they want and why they don’t visit smoking cessation clinics so often, it was emphasised that they do not treat smoking as a disease but as a matter of bad lifestyle choice, however doctors push the diagnosis of smoking as a disease rather than the learning disorder it was. Read more from yesterday’s conference developments by clicking the link here.
Constantine Farsalinos expressed that the end does not sanctify the means and his view that a similar tendency where the existing end sanctifies the means used to achieve it lacks ethics. He went on to state that e-cigarettes and vaping cannot be banned in many countries at the same time as drugs and illicit substances, and that their users are routinely stigmatised and denied equal treatment in health matters. It has been reported that the global smoking rate is 22.3% of the world’s population consisting of 962 million people who smoke.
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