09 July 2011
By, Kounteya Sinha
New Delhi, India
Now, more adults in India are chewing tobacco than smoking it.
The World Health Organization's latest figures, released on Friday, said while 33% adult Indian males and 18.4% adult Indian females use smokeless tobacco, the corresponding figure for those taking a puff stands at 24.3% and 2.9% males and females, respectively. Among the youth, 19% males and 8.3% females use some form of tobacco.
The WHO's report on the “global tobacco epidemic“ finds that tobacco will kill nearly six million people this year worldwide. More than five million will be users and those addicted to tobacco but have since given up. And, the rest will perish for being exposed to tobacco smoke.
WHO says tobacco could kill eight million a year by 2030. Tobacco use is one of the biggest contributors to the non-communicable diseases epidemic, including heart disease, stroke, cancers and respiratory diseases, and accounts for 63% of all deaths.
At present, more than half the world's population, or 3.8 billion, live in countries with at least some form of anti-smoking measures such as health warnings on cigarette packs, cigarette taxes and anti-tobacco mass-media campaigns.
The WHO report says there are 425 million people in 19 nations – about 6% of the world's population – where bans on tobacco marketing are in place, and nearly all of them are low or middle-income countries.
WHO says, the tobacco epidemic continues to expand because of marketing, population growth in countries, where tobacco use is increasing and also due to the “extreme addictiveness“ of nicotine.
According to WHO, large, graphic health warning labels on tobacco packages are an essential component of a national strategy to reduce tobacco use.
Research from around the world has shown that large, graphic warnings are most effective at informing consumers about the health risks of tobacco use, motivating smokers to quit and discouraging non-smokers, including children, from taking to this habit.
Other findings say, 16 more countries since 2008 have enacted national smoke-free laws covering all public places and workplaces. Altogether, 739 million people in 31 countries are protected by comprehensive smoke-free laws. In addition, 210 million people are protected by smoke–free laws at state or local level, a gain of 100 million since 2008. In the past two years, 23 countries, with a population of nearly two billion, have aired strong mass media campaigns about the harmful effects of tobacco use.
“It is disheartening to see that India, where more than 2,500 people die daily due to tobacco use, took about two years to finally notifying the new set of warnings. However, civil society representatives and public health activists feel that the stronger pictures will only appear on smokeless tobacco products, whereas smoking forms like bidi and cigarette packets will carry milder pictures,“ Bhavna Mukhopadhyay, executive director, voluntary health association of India, said.
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