Stinson Pde was declared a tobacco free area yesterday and Health Ministry permanent secretary Dr James Fong said Fiji’s statistics in relation to tobacco use was concerning.
“Statistics so far is quite alarming as a high number of people are smoking each year,” Dr Fong said during the national celebration for World No Tobacco Day in Suva.
“The fine is about $200 for areas that have been designated no smoking areas and when we will look at the total number of public health fines, tobacco fines is one of the highest in the mix.
“In regards to making sure it stays a smoke free area, we’ve got quite a lot of our health inspectors already equipped to enforce the requirements of this initiative.”
He said tobacco users were highly susceptible to suffering from disease outbreaks.
“COVID-19 taught us that the vulnerable are always vulnerable and the thing about smoking is it has an impact on everybody’s life, in the sense that it makes you become vulnerable.
“Whenever there is a pandemic or outbreaks your immune system will become resilient to the disease.
“So whenever we have a small viral illness that goes through the country, the people that die the most are the ones who have suffered NCDs. Smoking is one of the biggest contributors to respiratory diseases and if we can get smoking down to as low a level as possible, if not finish all together then It would actually go a long way in preventing people from being vulnerable to epidemics.”
