We all know the old story : less and less Westerners smoke, so the tobacco corporations increase their actions in the Third World and Vietnam is becoming one of the promissing markets. Tobacco consumption has trebled in less than 10 years. For example in the average village more money is spent on cigarettes than on scolarization for elementary pupils. The comparison isn’t that futile … the less one went to school the more one smokes.

We have been campaigning for quite a long time ; the first efforts barged into heavy smokers among officials of the district who didn’t want to hear about anything. Are attitudes changing ? A sport event has been organized for three years on the 31st of May . This time more than 20.000 people have participated, mostly young people, but all with a young spirit! In Hàm Tuân where we started a new program scarcely one month ago, we estimated it to difficult to organize the event so quickly but they protested … and more than 2000 people finally ran ! In Long My, in the Mekong Delta, the women were a party to boat-races : wonderful experiment and huge succes among the public. In Thánh Linh they opted for theatre shows : young people from each commune staged a play and played it before a jury and an impressive audience : up to 1000 people attended the play each evening. The action in Dúc Linh was the most impressive : 14.000 participants to two 20km cycle-races.

No doubt it won’t stop heavy smokers … We do what we can and good ideas are welcome. Anyway it’s a great opportunity to have fun.

Bernard KERVYN, 11th June 2006.
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