- I'm doing it every day
after 10 minutes, after five minutes.
If I quit that, I feel headache very badly.
- I was feeling very bad about myself,
that what am I doing to myself?
- I feel like hell.
I feel like hell.
My mind will not work.
(gentle music)
- I started smoking when I was at a youth club.
(♪ Lost from the start)
- I was eight years old.
- Six.
(♪ But I'll fight til the end)
(♪ Ignite the spark)
- I'm not able to quit.
(♪ Stitch up the ends)
It has bound me to smoking.
(♪ Light up the dark)
- It's hard to continue to try.
(♪ Fight til the end)
- There are health issues, but they can be controlled.
A friend of mine once told me that
if in case you're smoking five cigarettes a day,
drink one glass of pineapple juice.
- It's having a lot of water, and then puking it out.
So I purify my body every day.
That's why I think I haven't faced any problem.
- I used to smoke a hard cigarette.
Then now I'm smoking a light cigarette.
- You should do running every day
so it will not affect your lungs a lot.
- It's not actually the cigarette
that gives you what they say the disease.
- No consistency between the two medical institutions.
One place is really proud of you
and acknowledges that vaping is healthier.
And the other place treated it
just like it was still tobacco.
There's just a lot of confusion.
(dramatic music)
- What we've found globally is that you can see very clearly
a very high lack of knowledge that needs to be addressed.
- One of the challenges that you have is
a population that is not informed.
This is what the nicotine does.
It's a stimulant.
It excites you.
What are the side effects?
We don't even know that, even as doctors.
And part of the problem is where the scientific community
thinks the general population is too dumb,
and instead of giving them the information
they give them instructions of what to do, what not to do.
- And we still do this in public health.
We exaggerate the harms or the risks or the effects
because we're trying to get people to change their behavior,
but I've learned that's not the right way to do it.
We need to stick to the truth,
and we need to give people true and accurate information.
- Whether it's Diet Pepsi, an e-cigarette,
a combustible cigarette, a piece of meat,
let us get into the habit of people being informed
about what they put into their bodies
and how their body interacts with it.
So we now need to deal with it, dismantle it,
and talk about raw data, scientific information,
and evidence.
- If you're going to encourage somebody
to either go into a nicotine replacement therapy,
a medicated solution, or to a wide range
of harm-reduction options, they clearly are going to have
to feel comfortable that their risk
is going to really come down and not just leave them
at the same state they would be if they were smoking.
They know how dangerous it is, generally,
but they don't know what are the best solutions.
Putting those in their hands
will actually be a big step forward.
- I know about the risk.
Just a few years ago in South Africa they started
putting it on the cigarette packs.
When you buy your packet of cigarettes,
it's in front of you,
but we just don't stop.
We just go on smoking (laughs).
- While the focus probably rightly, initially,
was on the higher level policy interventions
that government can take and that have mass-based impact,
there wasn't much consideration given to cessation
and virtually none to harm-reduction.
- The ideal life is nobody eats too much,
nobody drives a dangerous car, nobody drinks,
and nobody smokes, but that's not gonna happen
because there's always gonna be people who will be,
who love smoking, who love drinking, and who love eating.
- Never tried quitting it.
I've heard of my friend that tried quitting,
went on programs.
Six months later they're just back on the cigarettes again.
- And if we cannot eliminate the drinking,
eating, and smoking, then the realistic alternative
is to look for measures to reduce the risk of those habits.
- If I'm alone in the house cleaning,
I will look where's my cigarette?
That's my companion.
It's a friend of mine, yeah.
And if I don't have, I will do anything to go get one,
or ask the neighbor for one, or go buy me one.
- I don't think there was a day went by
when I didn't miss smoking for some reason.
And it wasn't the nicotine.
A lot of people think, well, it's because you're addicted
and all that sort of thing, but it wasn't.
It was all the other things around it.
The fact that it was a social thing.
The fact that all my friends were still smoking.
And I kind of missed the whole thing about it.
It was something that I enjoyed,
and I think for every day that I was giving up,
it felt like a loss.
- In many parts of the world, high associations with coffee
or the first meal or drinking
or socializing or being with friends.
Those things give context to what we're doing,
but I think the assumption that we often make
that there's going to be one solution
that can be determined by, let's say,
WHO sitting in Geneva and saying what is best for the world,
is simply not going to work.
- We can't go in, especially if you come
from a different culture, go in and tell them what to do.
We must develop the capacity for them to apply
their worldview to the problem in an ecological way.
To understand all of the influences,
and then they will then tell us what they would do.
How would they fix it?
That's what's fascinating.
That's what we need to find out.
- A lot of it has to do with
what has culturally been acceptable over the years.
What's been on the market?
What have people grown up with?
What do they know the most about?
And you've got a long history of
how people have associated with certain products.
- In order to be worshiping your gods,
you must do what gods do.
Many of them did use tobacco or related forms, smoking.
- The whole world of tobacco control needs to actually
start taking a more segmented approach
to what we're trying to do,
moving towards what matters for them as an individual.
And where do they get their identity from?
And the more we start doing that,
we're going to start finding that
the simple one-size-fits-all notion,
applying it not just to one country but to all countries,
needs to be broken down quite dramatically
if we want to make progress.
(♪ Ignite the spark)
(♪ Stitch up the ends)
(♪ Light up the dark)
(♪ Fight til the end)
- I thought even I will not get addicted,
but it becomes an addiction at the end of the day.
- I don't want to smoke.
If I had another substitute of smoking it,
I would not smoke.
- And once you've found those tools,
and they may not be the same as everyone else's,
but look for a tool that works for you.
And basically continue to try.
Never give up.
(♪ Fight til the end)