Health minister of Indian Government declared that all places of work in the country will be tobacco free. All the government offices are already non-smoking areas. One really wonders what is happening in the world today! Some of the titles seen in the Indian news papers are given below:
1. Smoking may help to ward off Parkinson’s disease
2. No puffs in offices soon
3. Anti-smoking pill curbs drinking
4. Smokers lose more muscle in old age.
5. Cancers such as lung cancer, throat cancer, breast cancer s in humans could
be related to the consumption of tobacco.
6. Smoking may bring on early menopause with increased risk of heart disease.
7. Smoking affects sex life, bad for good sex.
The same news paper also gives Indian statistics on Tobacco such as:
1. India is the second largest producer of tobacco in the world.
2. Tobacco kills 9,00,000 people per year.
3. 14 Crore (140 million) men and 4 Crore (40 million) women in India are
regular tobacco users.
4. Tobacco is consumed as cigarettes, bidi, chewing tobacco, ghutka and snuff.
5. One out of 10 Indian adults is dying of tobacco related diseases
6. Tobacco worth Rs 24,000 Crore is sold annually. The total tobacco
consumption is 4,300 lakh (430 million) kg.
The past experience on the prohibition on alcohol consumption is not very encouraging. In addition to the loss of revenues to the government, the alcohol was sold illegally in black market without any control and quality assurance of the products. Many fatalities occurred due to consumption of adulterated alcohol.
May be, the only way to control is not half-hearted prohibition on tobacco consumption, but spend the money earned for the education of the masses and bring-in awareness about its ill-effects on health, starting at school level. Television can serve as a powerful medium for such purposes.
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