A Poster from the Film No SmokingAzad said today he did not agree with the view that people got influenced by such scenes and imitated them in real life. His predecessor, Anbumani Ramadoss, had earned the ire of sections of the film industry for trying to impose a ban on smoking on screen.
“It is just entertainment. There are so many objectionable things which are shown on screen like murder, arson and so on... such things should be banned first,” Azad told reporters today. The day was observed worldwide as “No Tobacco Day” under a 22-year old initiative by the World Health Organization to draw attention to the negative effects of tobacco use.
“I think we should try to implement whatever we can. We cannot do anything which is not practical. Such things (banning smoking and drinking on screen) are very difficult. Cinema is just to enjoy.”
But public health experts voiced their dismay at Azad’s opinions which, they said, appeared to emerge from a position of ignorance.
“It is unfortunate to hear a health minister say this, ” said Prakash Gupta, director of the Healis Sekhsaria Institute of Public Health, Navi Mumbai, a non-government agency that has long campaigned against tobacco. “There is a lot he needs to understand.”
“No one pays filmmakers to show murder or robbery, but it has been well documented that the tobacco industry paid to place its products in films produced in the US. We have similar suspicions about what’s been happening in India, ” Gupta added.
Health experts also said peer-reviewed medical studies had established an association between depiction of smoking on screen and the adoption of the habit by young people.
“Murder and arson on screen is not glamorised the way as smoking is, ” said Monica Arora, director of Hriday, an organisation that has been educating adolescents about the risks of tobacco. “A sizeable number of young people in India begin to smoke or use tobacco each year. We need policies that would protect them from experimenting with tobacco,” Arora said.
Azad said he himself had never smoked or used tobacco. “I (have) never smoked or taken other tobacco products… I don’t even remember their names. ”
Disclaimer: The news story on this page is the copyright of the cited publication. This has been reproduced here for visitors to review, comment on and discuss. This is in keeping with the principle of ‘Fair dealing’ or ‘Fair use’. Visitors may click on the publication name, in the news story, to visit the original article as it appears on the publication’s website.
Source: The Telegraph
