The Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on Emerging Infectious Diseases planned to impose a nationwide smoking ban amid the Covid-19 pandemic but this was nixed by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello on Thursday said a smoking ban would “severely affect” tobacco businesses and cause unemployment.
“We can’t ban smoking because it will adversely affect the tobacco industry,” Bello said during the “Covid-19 Coordinated Operations to Defeat Epidemic Team Visit” in Gen. Trias, Cavite.
Bello said tobacco businesses remitted about P145 billion in excise taxes annually.
Such businesses also employ some 2.5 million Filipino workers.
“[The tobacco industry] contributes heavily to the universal health fund of the government… If we ban smoking, those figures will be severely affected,” he said.
Bello added it was his job as labor chief to protect and preserve employment. “To achieve that, I help shops to stay in business.”
Smoking however should only be done in designated smoking areas, he said.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are no studies that have evaluated the risk of Covid-19 infection associated with smoking.
“However, tobacco smokers may be more vulnerable to contracting Covid-19, as the act of smoking involves contact of fingers (and possibly contaminated cigarettes) with the lips, which increases the possibility of transmission of viruses from hand to mouth,” it said in its website.
The WHO also said that smoking impairs lung function, making it harder for the body to fight off coronaviruses and other respiratory diseases.
Available research, it added, suggested that smokers were at higher risk of developing severe Covid-19 outcomes and death. John Ezekiel J. Hirro