Government must ban smoking of shisha - VALD Ghana

File photo: Ladies smoking shisha

Female SHS students smoke shisha in viral video

Regulation of shisha use not working – VALD Ghana to FDA

Shisha destroying the lives of the youth in Ghana - VALD Ghana

A Civil Society Organisation (CSO), Vision for Alternative Development (VALD Ghana), has called on the government to ban the smoking of water-pipe tobacco, popularly known as shisha, in Ghana.

In a statement it issued, VALD Ghana said that the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) and Ministry of Health should ban the substance because it has cost a lot of lives and destroyed many others in the country.

The CSO said that it had in the past asked the FDA to take steps to ban shisha but nothing has been done since then which has led to the substance becoming a fashionable product among students in particular. It added that the time has come for the substance to be banned.

“… regulating shisha by the FDA given the recent increase in consumption especially among the youth is certainly not deterrent enough, putting the future of our children at risk.

“Additionally considering the health implications of smoking shisha as research reveals that a session of shisha is equivalent to smoking over 100 sticks of cigarettes, thus it has become more expedient to ban it rather than regulating it. Many of the shisha products are also illegally sold as they do not meet the required standards.

“Research by the Ghana Health Service indicates that most of the country’s youth have ditched the smoking of traditional tobacco cigarettes for e-cigarettes and shisha. Revealing that the rate of smoking shisha and e-cigarettes among young people has shot up to 5.3 percent, higher than the traditional use of tobacco which stands at 2.8 percent,” portions of the statement released by VALD Ghana said.

The government of Ghana should follow the example of several African countries including Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Cameroon, who have already banned shisha because of the destruction it caused in their youth, the CSO further suggested.

VALD Ghana made this call after a viral video on social media showed female students of the Sunyani Senior High School smoking shisha in their dormitories. VALD Ghana further called on the FDA to investigate the incident.

According to reports, the ladies who were captured in the viral video have been suspended by their school.

Watch the video of the students smoking shisha below: