We are happy that our health minister has a healthy outlook regarding tobacco therefore could embark on a healthy mission to safeguard our nation’s health. His move can be termed unhealthy for tobacco industry and few Bollywood health freaks. Perhaps, people who are passing vitriolic remark against this law are unaware of the implications of tobacco use to our country. Apart from killing 8 lakh Indians every year, tobacco alone is responsible for 1.5 lakh cancers, 4.2 million heart diseases, 3.7 million lung diseases in our countrymen every year. In India, 2,200 persons die every day from tobacco-related diseases. The cost of treating this ailing humanity, as estimated by ICMR in 1999, was 277.61 billion rupees. Unfortunately, tobacco use continues to grow at the rate of about 5-7 percent every year.
The wicked tobacco industry has not spared our innocent children too. Each day 55,000 children in India start using tobacco and about 5 million children under the age of fifteen are addicted to tobacco. Gutka, the Indian avatar of tobacco, is specifically aimed at our young generation. It is projected as a harmless mouth freshener and therefore consumed in larger amount and kept in the mouth for a longer time by the ignorant children. A survey of school children in a coastal village of Kerala showed a 29 % prevalence of tobacco chewing and another survey in Mizoram showed that incidence of 56.5%. The age for initiation for gutka consumption has been reported between 8 – 14 years in India. A survey done by the Indian Dental Association found that 10%-40% of school students and 70% of students in colleges in Mumbai chew gutka and paan masala. I did a survey of 986 school children in a rural part of Madhya Pradesh and found precursor of mouth cancers in 56 children. Therefore, the evidence of early onset of the tobacco habit and reports of increases in oral precursors of cancers among children raise serious concerns of an impending oral cancer epidemic in our country. The age incidence of oral cancer in India is going down and is significantly lower than reported in the rest of the world.
The tobacco industry is harming our children in more than one way. It is well known that beedi industry uses children as bonded labors and makes money by keeping them in most in-human working conditions. What if they were our children! The recent ban on smoking may not have a great impact on this menace but will prompt the young vulnerable people to think several times before being addicted to this killer habit. WHO youth researchers reviewed more than 440 Bollywood films between 1991 to 2002 and found that tobacco portrayal was prevalent in nearly 3 out of four movies. It said in earlier films only the villains smoked, but increasingly most Bollywood films also showed heroes smoking. The famous superstar Shahrukh Khan has been showed to smoke on screen 109 times in last 12 years and legendary south Indian actor Rajnikant has smoked 103 times! Now that Shahrukh Khan is the MTV youth icon, he should exploit his position to educate the youth. Smoking cigarettes forms about only one fifth of India's tobacco market , rest smoke beedis. The multi-national tobacco companies have launched an aggressive campaign to capture and convert India's 250 million tobacco users to cigarette smokers, particularly the young.
India has 184 million tobacco consumers (17% of world tobacco users) of which 112 million smoke and 96 million chew tobacco. Ironically, tobacco chewing is socially acceptable form of tobacco. Several movies of Amitabh and Govinda have given tremendous popularity to this killer habit. This curiosity that movie stars create amongst children may eventually make them addicts. It gives the youngsters a false impression as if the stars chewed tobacco in real life too. It legitimizes this evil habit. I have deepest regards for people in Bollywood. I would urge them to help fight this preventable menace.
First time we have a health minister who has shown the courage to resist the tobacco mafia. I hope the doctor in him remains alive. There are several ways his powerful office can save our children from this misery. He will go down in the history of India as a “sensible” minister who worked for people.
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