Lifting the smokescreen

Sunita Tomar was the face of India’s anti-tobacco campaign, the advertisement describing her mouth cancer and how she started consuming tobacco because there was no warning on the products at the time. Just before her death, she made sure her letter reached the Prime Minister. In it, she expressed dismay over Dilip Gandhi’s remark against bigger warnings on tobacco products. The BJP MP heads the parliamentary panel that's managed to convince the Centre to put on hold increasing the size of pictorial warnings on tobacco packets from 40 to 85 per cent. He also insists that there is no Indian survey to prove that tobacco use leads to cancer.

Science is science, don't listen to these things, a minister tried to set the record straight, downplaying the Congress' charge of bowing before the tobacco lobby. India has the highest prevalence of oral cancer globally, with 75,000 to 80,000 new cases every year. Overall, smoking is cited as the reason for seven lakh deaths annually. The country has come a long way in highlighting the ill-effects of tobacco. Smoking is not allowed in most bars, hotels and public places, neither are advertisements or film clips except those highlighting the damage it does. Every budget sees the stick getting costlier. Smoking bans interestingly are as old as tobacco itself — Japan outlawed it in 1620. Yet, those who smoke, will.

A US survey points out how the goals against tobacco consumption need to be realistic. It says that 90 per cent of all drinkers drink alcohol when they feel like it but leave it alone when they don’t; come to smoking, only 10 per cent who start can take it or leave it. That can in no way justify the government's decision to not increase the pictorial warning size. If bigger scary pictures help, as experts feel, in weaning away many, there is no reason not to go for it. Like education campaigns, it saves public health costs. Also, why not motivation tours by those who've quit and counselling helplines? No country has ever regretted a strong tobacco policy.