HEALTH: Brazilian Football Star Joins Anti-smoking Brigade

By Clarinha Glock Reprint | | Print |

Clarinha Glock

PORTE ALEGRE, Jun 14 1996 (IPS) - Gerson de Olivieria Nunes, a member of Brazil’s 1970 world championship side and now a TV personality, puffed his way to fame in advertisements promoting a brand of cigarettes. Now he has joined the ranks of sports stars who have quit smoking.

“It happened all of a sudden. I suppose I got older and thought better of it,” Gerson told reporters this week , prioopr to taping a sports commentary for a Brazilian TV network. Now aged 55, Gerson smoked a pack-and-a-half a day at the height of his sports career.

“It was an addiction. Doctors always tell you that smoking is bad for you, but in most cases this advice is ignored. Everybody just does whatever they like,” he said.

Gerson’s remarks were echoed by others in the Brazilian sports world.

“The smoking habit depends a great deal on the culture of each game”said medical doctor Eduardo de Rose, president of the International Federation for Sports Medicine, and coordinator of drug testing at the forthcoming Olympic Games in Atlanta.

“The athlete belongs to a group and behaves the way those around him do. Neither the dangers of cancer nor consideration of physical form are going to convince people (…) But feeling the weight of social disapproval really makes a big difference in deciding to quit,” he added.

Earlier this month, a world day against the use of tobacco in the sports and the arts was organized at the initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO). Its dominant note was the change of awareness in relation to the mass of arguments against smoking.

The objective was to demonstrate that tobacco-related problems are most noticeable in those individuals whose physical condition is a condition for a good performance. “Imagine how much better Gerson would have been if he hadn’t smoked!” Rose argued.

One of WHO’s main goals is to make cultural and sports activities independent from the financial support of the tobacco companies. Ever since the Seoul Olympiad in 1988, the spaces reserved to the athletes have been smoke-free, following a result of an agreement between the WHO and the Olympic organizers.

Smoking is not allowed in the Olympic villages, in the locker- room, the medical facilities, or the athletes’ busses. Neither is the sale of cigarettes allowed anywhere in the Olympic stadium.

“Funding by tobacco companies is one of the sources of income which has been rejected by the organizers of the Atlanta games,”, says Rose. The Olympic games will take place in July.

“Oxygen is essential to the athletes, for it feeds the muscle fibers. When tobacco smoke mixes with hemoglobin, the latter’s function as a vehicle for oxygen is diminished, and so is aerobic capacity.”

Smoking also affects lung capacity, making it more difficult to inspire large quantities of air and “reduced lung capacity also influences sexual performance,” according to Heitor Hentschel, head of the Dept of Gynecology and Obstetrics of the Federal University in Rio Grande del Sur.

The consumption of tobacco diminishes male testosterone levels, thus reducing libido and orgasmic capacity, he said. Habitual smokers are at increased risks of spontaneous abortion and premature birth, and menopause may occur up to three years earlier. Some people also feel that in many cases, the smoking habit paves the road for other drug uses such as marijuana and cocaine.

Even while the international organizations are mobilizing against athletes’ smoking, new brands of cigarettes are being launched and use the image of soccer teams in their advertising.

For instance Corinthian cigarettes are produced as the result of a contract between the club by that name, one of the great Brazilian clubs, and the tobacco company Sibrasa Industria de Tabacos.

“It is merely a new way of creating income,” says Luis Fabiano Fernandez, financial and marketing manager of the Corinthians. “Fans aren’t going to smoke just because of the brand name.”

The director of the National Cancer Institute, Marcos Moraes, disagrees. “It is absurd. Something must be done about it,”.

Rio Grade del Sur, Santa Catarina and Parana make up 90 percent of the Brasilian production of tobacco (450,000 tons in 1995). From January to April of this year, tobacco exports increased by 75 percent compared to the same period in 1995, from 223.9 million dollars to 391.7 million dollars.

According to WHO, while tobacco consumption per inhabitant has diminished in industrial countries at the rate of 1.5 percent a year, in the developing countries it has grown by 1.7 percent a year.