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.
- 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]