Smokefree India Calls on COP11 to Deliver Urgent Youth Protections Against Tobacco

PRNewswire

New Delhi [India], October 14: Smokefree India today issued a four-point call to action ahead of COP11 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), urging delegates to confront India's escalating youth tobacco crisis with urgency and evidence-based policies.

Every day, more than 5,500 Indian children start using tobacco. One in five school students aged 13-15 has tried tobacco; nearly 9% are current users. By early adulthood, 28% smoke and 15% use smokeless tobacco.

Dr. Pawan Gupta, Senior Consultant, Pulmonary Medicine at BLK-MAX Super Specialty Hospital, New Delhi, said, "The damage inflicted by traditional tobacco begins early and lasts a lifetime. We witness its devastating consequences daily--oral cancers, lung diseases, and heart conditions--often in individuals who started using these products in their teens. With 1.35 million deaths annually, the science is clear: traditional tobacco is a proven killer, and our youth are its most vulnerable targets. But our top priority must be preventing initiation, promoting cessation, and ensuring our efforts are guided by science, not fear."

Smokefree India's Demands for COP11:

- Tobacco control first: enforce existing bans near schools, remove flavored and single-stick products, and expand school-based prevention programs.

- Youth-centered cessation: integrate quit counseling in schools and clinics, scale peer-led interventions, digital quit lines, and affordable cessation aids.

- Balanced regulation of alternatives: protect minors with strict controls but allow safer nicotine options for adults, creating pathways away from smoking.

- End conflicts of interest: divest government shareholding in tobacco companies to remove fiscal barriers to enforcement.

Despite ENDS being banned, cigarettes, bidis, and gutkha remain widely available, often near schools. Surveys confirm vaping prevalence is extremely low (2.8% of adolescents have ever tried an e-cigarette, GYTS 2019; 0.7% of adults aware of vaping have ever used one, GATS 2016-17). Yet public discourse is dominated by vaping--narrowing the national conversation and shielding domestic tobacco interests from scrutiny.

Smokefree India stressed that prevention must be matched with structured cessation support. Current policies trap youth in high-risk products while denying access to safer options.

About Smokefree India

Smokefree India is a public health advocacy platform committed to protecting young people from tobacco addiction and ensuring evidence-based, people-centered tobacco control policies.

For more information, visit https://smokefreeindia.net/

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