Smoking women may cause lost generation

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.