No tobacco

With different days celebrated on national/internationallevels on fixed dates & subjects for either promotion  or curbing  their menace ‘World No Tobacco Day’ iscelebrated every year on 31st May. The days is yet to come, let’s make a pledgein advance.

It is one of the eight official global public healthcampaigns marked by the World Health Organisation  along with World Health Day, Blood Donor Day,Immunization Week, Tuberculosis Day, Malaria Day and Hepatitis Day. Tobacco/cigarette smoking is one of the numerous leading causes of death of people  because of its mass consumption throught outthe world. Users take it as a tool of fashion, stress management,de-constipation and some get preyed upon unconsciously through imitation. Theact involves  active as well as passivesmokers  who inhale at least as muchquantity of its hazards sufficient enough to cause various health ailmentsespecially lungs as a first  and directattack. As per Times of India report dated 31-5-2017  six million people all over the world (feared to grow to eight million a year by2030) die of tobacco with one death per six seconds.  India constitutes one-sixth  of that with 27.5 crore people, more thanone-fifth of its present population of 130 crore, consuming tobacco  in one way or the other. Use of tobaccoleading to 30 percent of all cancers with lung cancer being common, there are42 percent male cancer deaths and 18.3 percent female cancer deaths says theIndian Council of Medical Research. Bidis are the commonly used tobacco products consumed  withresultant 5.8 lakh deaths. With  hundredsof  chemicals present in tobacco  69 are carcinogenic in nature to affecthealth adversely. Besides, tobacco related products are major risk factors forheart diseases, stroke, bronchitis and disorders  such as infertility, peptic ulcer   and delayed healing of wounds.

   
  1. As per Union Health Ministry (10/2018), India is the third largest tobacco producer and the second largest consumer in the world. The Central Government has enacted Cigarettes & Other Tobacco Products, Act 2003 (COPTA) to discourage the use of tobacco. Notwithstanding the ban on its advertisement,  sale, sale to minors, use in public places  besides statutory warning regarding it being injurious to health  recorded on the packets, no heed is  paid to it making the warning as null & void in practice taking toll of lives. In Islam suicide is forbidden  as the body does not belong to the holder but as  trust. Law too has banned it as illegal for life consummation. With the exception of wine/alcohol , trading in bhung, opium, hashish and other narcotics have also been banned  for similar reasons. The age old Department of Excise headed by Commissionerate offices at Jammu & Srinagar  in J&K spends a good amount of money on destruction of narcotic plants to stop or at least minimise substance abuse. According to latest Global Adult Tobacco Survey, J & K has the sixth highest  tobacco usage rate among all the states of India. The latest National Family Health Survey-4  puts the  tobacco addiction rate at more than 38 per cent  even after the introduction of COPTA since 2009 in J & K. In  a maiden meeting of the District Level Coordination Committee on the implementation of COPTA. Chaired by the District Magistrate Srinagar  on 8-5-2019  it was  stated that annual amount spent of tobacco consumption  including e-cigarettes purchased online was a staggering Rs.131 crore in Srinagar district which was the highest in the state.

While all  suchrelated activities  are forbidden inIslam for their disadvantages are more than their advantages as said in  the holy book of the Quran, tobacco/wine havebeen licensed by government seemingly guided by employment and revenueconsiderations. Surprisingly in India total economic cost attributed to tobaccodisease was a colossal amount of Rs.1,04,500 crore in 2011 with a revenue ofRs.34,000 crore only annually which is a minus entry more than double(Rs.70,500 crore) of the expenditure plaguing the Annual Financial statementsrequiring its cleansing. Scrutinising individually suiciders, drunkards, hemp users effect  directly theirown lives only against cost offered voluntarily,  smokers do effect innocents gratuitously tosuffer  curing costs unwillingly.Elongating  on this analogy smokingactivity borders criminal offence. The number of deaths  caused by  the foregoing three and AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, homicides, accidents taken  together are lesser than those of tobaccoalone. If stray acts of suicide committed mostly in camera are banned on thelogic of person being not the life giver how come en-mass activities in thethin air  under different names leadingto same finish justify the allowance with the society/exchequer   who suffer & spend more than theyreceive in exchange.

In a landmark  casethe  Hon’ble Supreme  Court of India in March 2011 allowed passiveeuthanasia (allowing withdrawal of life support system to a patient in acontinuous vegetative state) but held the active euthanasia as illegal. WhenEuthanasia has hardly earned the partial consent and that too in respect ofanimals only, does the open & permanent painful genocide  stand nowhere worth prevention? The rare acts of suicide committed in extremecircumstances has attracted the most merited statutory  ban since ages. However, the rampant harm oftobacco/cigarettes resulting in  terminaldiseases as evinced in the health & medical reports/researches andcertified by the medical practioners  onground is being ignored and  uncared  to the least. Crores of rupees go down thedrain in encountering the horrendous tobacco related diseases as we fight the effect  not the cause and  ignore the maxim ofprevention is  better than cure.  If what can not be cured has to be endured, that  which can be cured must never  be endured to allow bleed human & economicresources  ruthlessly telling upon thehealth index/ health care costs. This Frankenstein  stalking  our earnings/earning capacity and ultimatelylife demands immediate annihilation sans any second thought.

The land under tobacco cultivation should be diverted forother profitable food grain production or at least its production stopped toprevent the loss quoted ibid. Tobacco Institute of India in consultation withthe Government, Ministries of Finance & Agriculture has to strive to fightthis tobacco enigma laden with disguised activity of income generation,employment and revenue to find out ways & means  for devising an alternate pursuit  catering to the requirements of growers, employment and revenue necessities inline with the principle of cost-benefit analysis  valuing human lives atop or else reverse isgood-bye.

[The author is a former Sr. Audit Officer  working as Consultant in the A.G’s OfficeSrinagar]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

eleven + sixteen =