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The Food and Drug Authority (FDA) has sensitized business owners, drivers, and consumers to the law that prohibits smoking in public places.
The FDA displayed educational materials on the harmful effects of smoking and warning signs against smoking in public places such as shopping malls, truck stations, hospitals, schools, restaurants, and hotels, among others.
Speaking to Ghana News Agency in Wa after the exercise, the Upper West FDA regional director stated that they would also visit restaurants and hotels to educate managers on the law and display educational materials at their facilities.
Albert Ankomah said that the awareness was to inform the public about the harmful effects of smoking.
It also aims to reduce the incidence of public smoking of tobacco and tobacco products among merchants, drivers and their peers, among others, he added.
Section 58 of the Public Health Law, Law 851 (2012) stipulates that “a person may not smoke tobacco or a tobacco product or hold a lit tobacco product in an enclosed area or interior of a workplace, or in any other public place except in a designated area ”.
According to Mr. Ankomah, smoking tobacco and tobacco products were not only harmful to the smoker, but also to the people around him who inhaled the smoke, hence the need to ban smoking in public.
He pointed out that the nativity scenes in those public places must place an inscription indicating that smoking is prohibited in those places.
However, he said hotels and restaurants could have designated smoking spots with clearly posted inscriptions.
Mr. Ankomah stated that smoking tobacco and tobacco products could cause serious health problems, including cancer, heart disease, stomach ulcers, cervical cancer and miscarriage, and deformed sperm, among others.
He advised the general public to report people who smoked in public places to the administrators of those places so that the necessary actions are taken against them.
Ankomah added that people who smoked shisha are also at risk for side effects such as smoking tobacco and its products.
While advising the general public to stop smoking, the FDA Regional Chief pleaded with administrators of public places to beware of the law prohibiting smoking in public and to enforce such laws in their respective places for the latter. .
