Say NO to Smoking, tobacco

World No Tobacco Day being observed around the world today (May 31) is intended to encourage  abstinence from all forms of  tobacco consumption across the globe. The day is further intended to draw global attention to the widespread prevalence of tobacco use and to negative health effects  which currently lead to 5.4 million deaths worldwide annually.

Notwithstanding all kinds of awareness campaigns both at the national and global level, tobacco continues to inflict huge damage on the health of India's people and could be clocking up a death toll of 1.5 million a year by 2020 if more users are not persuaded to kick the habit, according to an international report. Worldwide, the number of deaths caused by tobacco is expected to rise from around 6 million a year now to more than 8 million by 2030, according to the World Health Organisation.
Ironically despite having signed up to a global treaty on tobacco control and having numerous anti-tobacco and smoke-free laws, our country is failing to implement them effectively, leaving its people vulnerable to addiction and ill health, according to the report by the International Tobacco Control Project (ITCP).

If the consumption of tobacco continued at its present pace, one billion people will be killed in this century because of tobacco. As far as Indian is concerned, there are 27.5cr tobacco users, that is, every third Indian adult uses some form of tobacco, which is responsible for  nearly 50% cancers in India.

As per WHO, about 10 lakh Indians die from tobacco-related diseases each year. This epidemic kills more people than tuberculosis, accidents, homicides, suicide, AIDS and malaria combined. Moreover, the kind of revenue the government earns from tobacco is significantly less than the loss from tobacco in form of death, disability and diseases.

The ITPC report said that, while India has been a regional leader in enacting tobacco control legislation over the past 10 years, the laws are poorly enforced, regulations covering smoke-free zones are patchy, and tobacco remains relatively cheap. Besides, initiatives being taken at the government level in the country to curb use of tobacco, a concerted efforts need to be taken at individual-level to quit consumption of tobacco in any form and abstain from smoking, failing which the day is not far away when more and more people will get afflicted to non-curable tobacco related diseases.

On  World No-Tobacco Day today, let us take a pledge to say no to `smoking and tobacco' to prevent recurrences of death caused by tobacco and smoking related diseases in our country.