Polish smoke out
For 10 years, Ula, a Warsaw professional, was a smoker. That was until last Dec. 6 when she kept her promise to her fiance to stop the habit, which, during her worst moments, saw her smoke a pack a day.
"I feel a kind of satisfaction and I can't believe that it came so easily," said Ula, 31, who had attempted to quit a number of times during her smoking career. "I did not use nicotine plasters, acupuncture or hypnosis. It turned out that all I needed was a strong will.
"I used Nicorette gum for about a week, then several packs of ordinary chewing gum a day until my jaws ached. An additional help was the ban on smoking in the building I work in. It's no pleasure to go out into the cold to smoke."
Each year, more and more Poles are giving up cigarettes, while the number of young people taking up cigarettes is increasing.
Poland's fight to stop people from smoking was highlighted last week when some of Europe's top health officials and politicians from 48 countries descended on Warsaw for the World Health Organization European Ministerial Conference for a Tobacco-free Europe.One outcome was the unanimous adoption of the "Warsaw Declaration" that expresses the commitment of these 48 countries to creating a tobacco-free Europe, to increasing tobacco controls and to working together on these issues in Europe.
"From Poland's point of view, we are very happy because most of the provisions in the declaration already exist in Poland in our 1995 tobacco control legislation," said Professor Witold Zatoński, head of the department of epidemiology and cancer prevention at Warsaw's Maria Skłodowska-Curie Memorial Cancer Center and Institute of Oncology. Zatoński was also the organizer of last week's conference.
In Poland, there is a total ban on cigarette advertising and sponsorship, cigarette packs carry warnings and 0.5% of tobacco taxes are dedicated to funding prevention education and programs. Since 1992, Zatoński has also been instrumental in organizing Poland's annual "Great Polish Smokeout" every November to encourage quitters.
Zatoński says all these measures have seen smoking rates steadily decline in Poland so that 42% of men and 23% of women now smoke. The smoking rate for 15- to 18-year-olds is 30%. Poland stands out as an exception among its poorer Eastern neighbors were male smoking rates generally exceed 50%.
Under communism, says Zatoński, the picture in Poland was very different. In 1982, around 70% of men and 30% of women smoked. In the 1970s, 15 million Poles smoked. Today, the figure is about 9 million."In this old totalitarian time, we were not able to access the population with the results of our science work ... It's not that it was secret, but there was no possibility to work together with the mass media with this information," said Zatoński, who has been researching the effects of tobacco on health for more than 20 years. "Then 10 years ago, as Poland became democratic, it was the first time we were able to analyze carefully and to publicize the state of many fields in Poland."
And information works: Zatoński said research indicates that every year, thanks to the Great Polish Smokeout, up to 300,000 people successfully stub out their smoking habit. That's a total of 2.5 million quitters since the Smokeout's launch in 1992.
The path to becoming tobacco free wasn't so clear for recent quitter Ula. She says she only ever saw minimal information on the dangers of smoking and never received any advice on how to quit. Most of the information she gleaned was from her own research on the Internet.
And it's still tough going, but Ula says she's determined to keep off the cigarettes.
"When I see other young girls smoking, I think it looks awful," Ula said. "I want to tell them that it's not that hard to stop. It's just enough to want it."
"I feel a kind of satisfaction and I can't believe that it came so easily," said Ula, 31, who had attempted to quit a number of times during her smoking career. "I did not use nicotine plasters, acupuncture or hypnosis. It turned out that all I needed was a strong will.
"I used Nicorette gum for about a week, then several packs of ordinary chewing gum a day until my jaws ached. An additional help was the ban on smoking in the building I work in. It's no pleasure to go out into the cold to smoke."
Each year, more and more Poles are giving up cigarettes, while the number of young people taking up cigarettes is increasing.
Poland's fight to stop people from smoking was highlighted last week when some of Europe's top health officials and politicians from 48 countries descended on Warsaw for the World Health Organization European Ministerial Conference for a Tobacco-free Europe.One outcome was the unanimous adoption of the "Warsaw Declaration" that expresses the commitment of these 48 countries to creating a tobacco-free Europe, to increasing tobacco controls and to working together on these issues in Europe.
"From Poland's point of view, we are very happy because most of the provisions in the declaration already exist in Poland in our 1995 tobacco control legislation," said Professor Witold Zatoński, head of the department of epidemiology and cancer prevention at Warsaw's Maria Skłodowska-Curie Memorial Cancer Center and Institute of Oncology. Zatoński was also the organizer of last week's conference.
In Poland, there is a total ban on cigarette advertising and sponsorship, cigarette packs carry warnings and 0.5% of tobacco taxes are dedicated to funding prevention education and programs. Since 1992, Zatoński has also been instrumental in organizing Poland's annual "Great Polish Smokeout" every November to encourage quitters.
Zatoński says all these measures have seen smoking rates steadily decline in Poland so that 42% of men and 23% of women now smoke. The smoking rate for 15- to 18-year-olds is 30%. Poland stands out as an exception among its poorer Eastern neighbors were male smoking rates generally exceed 50%.
Under communism, says Zatoński, the picture in Poland was very different. In 1982, around 70% of men and 30% of women smoked. In the 1970s, 15 million Poles smoked. Today, the figure is about 9 million."In this old totalitarian time, we were not able to access the population with the results of our science work ... It's not that it was secret, but there was no possibility to work together with the mass media with this information," said Zatoński, who has been researching the effects of tobacco on health for more than 20 years. "Then 10 years ago, as Poland became democratic, it was the first time we were able to analyze carefully and to publicize the state of many fields in Poland."
And information works: Zatoński said research indicates that every year, thanks to the Great Polish Smokeout, up to 300,000 people successfully stub out their smoking habit. That's a total of 2.5 million quitters since the Smokeout's launch in 1992.
The path to becoming tobacco free wasn't so clear for recent quitter Ula. She says she only ever saw minimal information on the dangers of smoking and never received any advice on how to quit. Most of the information she gleaned was from her own research on the Internet.
And it's still tough going, but Ula says she's determined to keep off the cigarettes.
"When I see other young girls smoking, I think it looks awful," Ula said. "I want to tell them that it's not that hard to stop. It's just enough to want it."
