Smoking women may cause lost generation
Debbie A. Lubis, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The widespread smoking of cigarettes by women will not only lead to poor reproductive health, but a lost generation in the country, a medical expert warned on Sunday.
Executive secretary of the Indonesian Heart Foundation Masino said a child born to a smoker would not be as smart as the children of nonsmokers because his brain's development would be disrupted by tobacco toxins transferred through his mother's blood.
He also said that the child could subsequently easily emulate his mother's habit. "He would feel comfortable smoking as the nicotine would already be in his blood," Masino, a medical practitioner, said.
Masino predicted that there would be a lost generation caused by maternal smoking. "This country will experience at least one generation with impaired intelligence if we just sit, watch, and let tobacco poison our people," he said.
Separately, chairman of the National Committee on Tobacco Control Merdias Almatsier told The Jakarta Post on Sunday that smoking had become an ingrained habit for women, as more and more of them were working today.
He said that currently the proportion of males smoking in Indonesia was 61 percent, while it was 5 percent for females.
"Although the incidence of smoking among females may seem relatively low in percentage terms, in absolute terms, these low rates translate into millions of users," Merdias, the president director of state-run Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital in Jakarta, said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that tobacco will put women at greater risk of breast and cervical cancer, with increased liability to premature menopause, unsuccessful pregnancy and impaired fertility.
Cigarettes reduce levels of the hormone estrogen in women's bodies, thanks to their damaging nicotine and carbon monoxide (CO) content, which reduces oxygen and impairs blood circulation. The lack of estrogen will impair women's fertility and make them more susceptible to premature menopause.