A six-month campaign, aimed at helping people under the age of 18 kick the habit, was launched last Friday to coincide with International Anti-tobacco Day.

Initiated by the Bulgarian Association of School and Health (BASH), the campaign aims at stopping kids from lighting up, and uses the slogan “Let’s Give it a Thought.”

As part of the initiative, BASH has prepared a regulation, which will be proposed to the Ministry of Health, suggesting the places where smoking should be allowed.

About 40 schools from 25 municipalities gathered around the initiative leading up to a long-term anti-tobacco campaign and the preventive actions accompanying it. What BASH has done so far, and will continue to do in the coming months, centres on two things. First, the association will introduce an official proposal for the launch of a public fund to finance preventive programs and campaigns, to the ministries of finance, health and education.

“The media is also necessary and its help could be quite important for our cause, promoting health and anti-smoking,” said Metodi Metodiev, chairman of BASH.

It is also important for adults to set a good example for the younger generation. “When youths see their idols – parents, teachers and leaders – smoke they consider it fashionable and cool,” Metodiev said. According to the chairman, it is even harder to set a positive example, when Minister of Health Bozhidar Finkov himself smokes.

“A healthy and economically efficient decision has to be taken for preventing children from smoking,” Metodiev said, adding that one of the reasons this has been delayed is the lack of financing.

However, statistics reveal that the country’s budget is filled up with 10 million leva from the excise of cigarettes bought by children. “It is a moral obligation that the sum granted by the illegal sale of cigarettes to children is used for preventive programs and campaigns,” Metodiev said.

The other main goal of BASH is to organize a network of effective control over the sale of cigarettes to children under the age of 18. “Smoking around schools and selling cigarettes less than 200m from the schools is forbidden and abusers of this law will be fined by a certain body, which will be launched by us,” Metodiev added.

BASH is also trying to decrease the number of tobacco commercials and ads on television and in the media. “Children are flooded every day with tones of attractive advertisements pushing them into holding a cigarette,” Metodiev said.

The association will raise awareness through discussions organized in schools and flier distribution to children of all ages. Posters and short televised anti-smoking commercials will be on the air for the duration of the campaign.

Metodiev explained that the target group of the campaign is not smokers and those dependent on cigarettes, but rather those who have not started the addictive habit yet. “Our priority is the creation of a fund with an annual budget,” Metodiev said.

Momchil Vassilev, a doctor at the National Drug Centre, revealed data from the National Statistics Institute, which shows that Bulgaria’s children occupy second place in the number of smoking addicts in Europe, after Russia. About 250,000 students have tried a cigarette at least once in their lives, and those who have tried over the last year number 200,000. The research, carried out in April, also showed that 180,000 children are every day smokers.

“The average norm of the addicted smokers is a pack a day,” Vassilev said. The research made it easy to estimate the amount of cigarettes consumed by children – 37-50 million packs of cigarettes a month. A calculation of all the figures estimates a sale of 600 million cigarettes a month to children.

“This whole estimation is extremely worrying and we are positive about taking some measures to prevent the expansion of the addiction-forming habit,” Vassilev said. According to him, this data results in health and economic consequences and must be interpreted in a larger context.

“It is easy to get addicted to nicotine and to give up cigarettes is harder than giving up heroine or cocaine,” Metodiev said. Another concern Metodiev mentioned was that tobacco was the sole factor causing 25 serious diseases. “What mostly troubles the associates of BASH, and parents, is the fact that 90 per cent of addicted smokers have lit their first cigarette before the age of 18,” he said, quoting statistics from the NSI.

Georgi Kotarov, health education officer with the National Centre for Public Health, said that health is what they are trying to promote amongst the future of the nation. “Cigarettes must become difficult to be bought and too expensive for children to afford,” he said.

Research done by various polling agencies and health centres in Bulgaria and abroad show that if a child does not start smoking by the age of 18, he never does, Kotarov noted. “We need to prevent them until they become 18, and later on they will be wise enough to take decisions for themselves,” he added.

Protecting children from cigarettes also protects them from the use of drugs and marijuana, Kotarov explained.

National Statistics Institute data (April 2001)

• In 1998-99, 33% of the population smoked
• In 2001, 45% of the population smoked
• Female smokers outnumber male smokers
• The heaviest smokers in the country are doctors, teachers, journalists and lawyers
• 47% of doctors smoke (23% at work)
• 44% of teachers smoke

MBMD research, conducted from November 2000 to April 2001

• 41.3% of people aged between 15-24 smoke
• 40% of 18-year-olds smoke 16 cigarettes a day
• Between the ages of 18-29, 58% of men smoke and 43% of women smoke
• Over 150,000 children under 18 have smoked at least one cigarette today
• 120,000 children smoke over a pack a day
• 30 million packs of cigarettes a month are smoked by school children under 18