“Assess reflect and change your habits for a better lifestyle”

Dentists are required daily to advise their patients regarding their oral hygiene and how that impacts on their general health. Patients should be aware how their general health and medication impacts on their oral environment and vice versa. Selecting just the female population of our practice, one should discuss problems from the mundane to the potentially life-threatening. We should take into account the diversity of this group of patients regarding their habits, lifestyle and medication. The risk factors we need to discuss would involve smoking, oral contraception hypertension and the age of the patient. This is always in the domain of the patient’s medical general practitioner but the d

Right to Reply: "Who benefits from illicit trade of cigarettes?"

On the 21 of August, the Independent Online carried an article about a BATSA campaign in which BATSA used a burning billboard to launch a campaign against illicit cigarettes. BATSA claimed that South Africa loses R6 billion in taxes because of the illicit trade in cigarettes. In sweeping statements, the company representative showed concern for this financial loss and for its impact on ordinary South Africans. This concern rings hollow when the health harm of cigarettes is considered given that 44 000 South Africans die every year from the harm caused by the use of both legal and illicit cigarettes. In his book, ROGUE, Johan van Loggerenberg described the surveillance conducted by SARS of a

"Smoking legal and illegal cigarettes burns homes"

Although the City of Johannesburg's emergency services has assured drivers there is nothing to worry about when they see this burning billboard, there is indeed something to worry about. This burning billboard‚ part of a campaign by British American Tobacco South Africa (BATSA), purports to raise awareness about the illicit trade of cigarettes. The National Council Against Smoking regards this as opportunistic advertising. In the light of laws preventing advertising by cigarette companies, any promotion of cigarettes is illegal and we question if this billboard is about preventing illicit trade or promoting BATSA. With 44 000 South Africans dying a year from smoking, we need to ask ourselves

Stompies are litter! And they damage the environment.

What is it about smokers that they think they can just drop butts and they don't constitute littering? It infuriates me when I see stompies being dropped out of cars at traffic lights. It saddens me when I find them in between my toes was I walk along a beautiful beach. It terrifies me to read the damage that stompies cause to the ocean. And it horrifies me to read that more than a tonne of cigarette butts were collected as litter in Cape Town last year. To read more, click here https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2017-06-05-no-butts-about-it-stompies-destroy-ocean-life/