In Dumaguete antismoking rally, Aquino becomes ‘poster boy’

DUMAGUETE CITY—President Benigno Aquino III has become a poster boy for antismoking advocates here.

Antismoking groups, mostly students from Negros Oriental State University and the Foundation University, paraded around the city recently to celebrate the World No Tobacco Month while holding tarpaulins that bore the President’s photo holding a cigarette.

The photo’s caption read “What P-Noy can’t do, we can. Stop Smoking.”

Dr. Aparicio Mequi, dean of the Foundation University graduate school, said the message of the day was to tell everyone, including Mr. Aquino, that smoking is bad for the health.

“If US President Obama, who was a smoker, quit smoking when he became President, we should likewise remind President Aquino to stop smoking and in the process protect his health as well as the vote of those people who put him there,” Mequi said.

The President, who has been on the receiving end of a lot of unsolicited advice against smoking, had told reporters that he could not yet quit smoking but he promised not to smoke in public places.

Last month, participants in the Tobacco Control Summit 2011 organized by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Alliance Philippines and the Philippine College of Chest Physicians were one in their call for Mr. Aquino to stop smoking and lead the Philippines into becoming a tobacco-free country.

Two months ago, the President said he would no longer debate about his smoking habit with groups seeking to make him an antismoking poster boy.

Aquino, who could finish a cigarette pack a day, has vowed to stop “at the appropriate time.”