Tobacco use among women up four times, men down 33%

Nitin Jain

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, November 27

In a startling revelation, the use of tobacco among women has gone up four times in the state during the past five years, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) has confirmed.

In contrast, men have started showing reluctance towards use of tobacco as it has come down by 32.81 per cent between 2015-16 and 2020-21, the national survey conducted by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has revealed. However, the use of tobacco among both women and men in Punjab was much below the national average.

The development assumes significance as the initiatives undertaken by the state government against the use of tobacco have started showing positive results.

Sharing survey findings, the president and Director, Public Health, Strategic Institute for Public Health Education and Research (SIPHER), Dr Rakesh Gupta, told The Tribune, here on Saturday that the NFHS-5 conducted in 2020-21 found that the average of women, who used any kind of tobacco in the age group of 15 to 49 years was 0.5 per cent in urban and 0.3 per cent in the rural areas, which overall accounted for 0.4 per cent women consumers.

In the NFHS-4 conducted in 2015-16, the average women tobacco users in the state were 0.1 each in the urban and the rural areas, with an overall rate of 0.1 per cent. Though the state recorded a fourfold increase among women tobacco users since 2015-16, it was still a whopping 8.4 per cent less than the national average of 8.9 per cent.

Showing an encouraging trend, the average men in the age group of 15to 49 years, who use any kind of tobacco in the state, fell almost one-third from 19.2 per cent in 2015-16 to 12.9 per cent in 2020-21.

The NFHS-5 showed that the number of men tobacco users in the urban areas of the state came down from 17.1 per cent in 2015-16 to 12 per cent in 2020-21, which accounted for overall 19.2 per cent, while the rural men consumers fell from 20.7 per cent in 2015-16 to 13.4 per cent in 2020-21, accounting for overall average of 12.9 per cent.

This was almost one-third than the national average of 38 per cent men tobacco users found in the country during the NFHS-5.

It was in 2010 that the former Chief Secretary, Vini Mahajan, who was then heading the Health and Family Welfare Department as its Principal Secretary, had taken a slew of measures to control tobacco use in the state.

Dr Gupta, who remained nodal officer of the State Tobacco Control Programme from 2010 to 2017 and later superannuated as Director, Health Services, said the first initiative towards tobacco control was allowing the utilisation of challan money for tobacco control activities in the state.

“The results visible today are due to initiatives taken without any finding from the Centre till 2016,” asserted the SIPHER head.

In 2011, the state government started declaring districts as tobacco smoke free with Mohali becoming the first such district on the basis of the compliance report by Chandigarh PGI’s Department of Community Medicine. Till 2014, all 22 districts were declared tobacco smoke free in Punjab.

Continuing with the anti-tobacco measures, the state government had banned chewable tobacco in 2012, e-cigarettes in 2013, which was followed by 18 other states in 2018 and banned in India in 2019. Besides, Punjab increased VAT on cigarettes from 20 per cent to 50 per cent plus cess in 2013, banned sale of loose cigarettes in 2014, started observing No Tobacco Day on November 1 every year since 2015 and initiated process to declare village tobacco smoke free in 2016.

If this was not enough, Punjab represented India at a WHO consultation in Panama on e-cigarettes in 2016, represented India at another WHO consultation in Geneva on plain packaging of tobacco products in 2017.

The state government had also banned hookah bars in 2018, set up tobacco cessation centres in all the districts with the availability of nicotine gums, patches and Bupropion tablets in 2019, authorised head constables of state police to challan tobacco users under COPTA-2003 in 2019 and integrated the NTCP programme with NOHP, NCD and TB clinics for tobacco cessation centres.

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