Ghana cracking down on shisha

The people of Ghana have been advised not to use of shisha, according to a story by Mildred Europa Taylor for Pulse Ghana.

Speaking at a World No Tobacco Day event in Kumasi organized by a coalition of health NGOs and the Ghana Health Service (GHS), the GHS’ Dr. Kyei Faried said the public must abstain from the use of shisha.

Shisha equipment was flooding into the country, Faried said, and students, especially schoolgirls, thought it was fun to puff on these devices.

The sad thing was, he added, that one puff was equivalent to consuming a pack of cigarettes, though elsewhere in the story it was suggested that one puff of shisha was the equivalent of consuming one cigarette.

“The industry is now trying to flavor tobacco products by putting menthol and other things in it to give it a fine flavor and to tell consumers that it is now better,” Faried said.

Pulse Ghana said that Shisha was becoming ‘the new craze in town’ and that Ghana’s Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) had pull down some billboard advertisements for Shisha devices.

The FDA was said to be planning to have heavy taxes imposed on the importation of Shisha devices.