The theme of World No Tobacco Day today speaks not only to reduction in the use of tobacco, but to growing food security concerns.

“We Need Food, Not Tobacco” is this year’s theme, which speaks to the deforestation of millions of hectares of forest land and the conversion of agricultural land to tobacco production according to clinical pharmacist Dr. Leslie Philips who runs Memorial University’s Medication Therapy smoking cessation clinic.

Philips says her overriding goal is getting smokers to quit successfully.

She says Newfoundland and Labrador has some of the highest smoking rates and the highest rate of deaths from lung cancer and heart disease “of which smoking is the primary cause.”