Tobacco.org

City wakes up to ban on smokingx 

LUDHIANA: Ban on smoking in public and also no sale of tobacco products to minors has gone to the wind as in the last nine months, the health department could issue only 12 challans. As if rising from slumber to make the city smoke-free, the health department is once again planning to start a drive, and a meeting is scheduled for Monday to discuss the issue.

One can easily see tobacco sellers offering pan masala, cigarettes near residential areas or in front of educational institutes without a check. The fact that the administration did not receive even a single complaint on the helpline started for the purpose proves that the ban was never implemented.

The ban was imposed on October 2, 2008, but since then the health department issued warnings to only one city club for not following the norms and challaned only 12 people for smoking at public places like Model Town, Mall Road, and the bus stand. As per the law, any person found smoking in public has to pay a minimum fine of Rs 200, but that has hardly deterred people because there is no one to implement the ban.

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• Tamil cinema’s role in anti-smoking campaign 

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control begins to be implemented. Article 13 of the treaty lists measures to substantially limit movie smoking. In India, Bollywood has been the primary measure of implementation. A 2004 study commissioned to study changes in Bollywood's tobacco imagery after the Tobacco Control Act (2003) was passed, found that the "imagery had markedly increased in the wake of tobacco advertising bans in other media."

When this was brought to the notice of the government, it amended the TCA to include a ban on all depictions of tobacco products and their use in film or television. The amended rules indicated that no individual can display tobacco products or their use. In films made prior to the notification, a scroll will have to warn the audience about smoking.

"Media plays a huge role and we intend to launch research on smoking and Tamil cinema as part of the 'Smoke-free Chennai' project," says Prasanna Kannan, State consultant for Tobacco Control. The State has also sent notices to those involved with recent films including 'Vettaikaran', 'Aasal' and 'Yogi' to remove smoking scenes.

Earlier this week, actor and producer Prabhu clarified that 'Aasal' starring actor Ajith featured awareness messages and the actor, too, had incorporated a message on the perils of smoking in the film.

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KANT: Tobacco control is most cost-effective way to prevent cancer 

Most public health programmes of the Government of India are directed towards communicable diseases such as malaria, filaria, polio, tuberculosis and leprosy etc. The occurrence of certain diseases due to lifestyle changes like diabetes, respiratory/cardiac diseases, tobacco related disease and cancer, has now been recognized, and public health programmes are also being initiated against them. But these are few and far between. Life style diseases have a peculiar "follow others" ingredient which becomes still more complicated due to ignorance, especially in families where the elders have addictions and wrong eating habits, and the youngsters are exposed to the "role model" phenomenon. In many situations elders tell children that tobacco is bad for children and the latter are confused as to how it is bad for them and good for others. This ambiguity, coupled with peer pressure proves to be disastrous for the youth.

Most important part of all this is that the diseases and death caused by these life style aberrations are preventable. . . .

Lung cancer is one fatal but preventable life-style disease. Smoking causes 90% of lung cancer.

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Tamil Nadu: Anbumani urges Karunanidhi to act tough on smoking ban 

Expressing concern over "increasing trend" of smoking in public places and high sales of cigarette in Tamil Nadu, former Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss on Saturday urged Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi to strictly implement the ban in the state.

"There is no proper implementation of cigarette ban in the state which is affecting non-smokers, especially women and children. It is a matter of concern that the ban is not being implemented," Dr. Ramadoss, who had introduced the ban on smoking in public places in 2008, said in a statement here.

While the Government Order had clearly laid out measures including penalty for defaulters and placing announcement boards banning smoking in public, the former health minister alleged that the state government had not taken necessary steps in a "full-fledged way". . . .

Dr. Ramadoss rued that Tamil Nadu constituted 10 per cent of national cigarette sales and urged the chief minister to take all efforts to strictly implement the ban.

There was an "increasing trend" of smoking in public places in the state and it had earned the "dubious distinction" of ranking second in sales of cigarette in the country, only after Andhra Pradesh, he added.

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• Defying law, smoking continues unchecked at public places  

KANPUR: Are norms regarding smoking in public places being complied with? Not if one went by the findings of non-governmental organisations. Their survey report finds that around 50 per cent of bars and restaurants are not complying with smoke-free laws. The survey was conducted in 211 indoor places in 16 cities of 12 states. It was found that smoking was taking place in 127 out of the 211 places covered during the study period.

Level of fine particles in places where smoking was observed was found to be 32 times higher than the World Health Organisation air quality guideline for particulate matter in indoor places.

At a district-level advocacy workshop on tobacco control organised on Saturday in association with district tobacco control cell, Kanpur, and NGOs from Lucknow and New Delhi to generate awareness on health hazards due to passive smoking, the data presented a clear picture on how the norms were being flouted.

Ashish Pandey, one of the members of the NGO from New Delhi, informed that the study demonstrated gross violation of smoke-free laws in India and provided evidence that indoor smoking caused exposure to harmful levels of air pollution.

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Ban surrogate cigarette ads, Ramadoss urges Tamil Nadu 

Former union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss Saturday urged the Tamil Nadu government to ban all surrogate cigarette advertisements and implement the law banning smoking in public places in right ernest.

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Non-smokers to cough up a protest for campaign 

The next time you are enjoying a smoke near your office building, don’t be surprised if someone around you starts coughing noisily and, perhaps, deliberately too.

A group of NGOs have started a new campaign — ‘Khaasi Sunao, Sutta Bhujhao’ (Cough aloud, stub out cigarette) — to encourage non-smokers to get proactive about their right to breathe clean air.

“We want non-smokers to register their protest by coughing aloud and also educate smokers about the law that bans smoking in public places,” said Dr Surendra Shastri from Tata Memorial Hospital, which is actively involved with the NGOs who run the ‘Smokefree Mumbai’ campaign.

He added that teaser advertisements regarding the ‘Khaasi...’ campaign would be up on BEST buses and billboards soon.

The NGOs have tied up with Seth GS Medical College (attached to KEM Hospital) to reach out to youth and doctors.

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ITC Posts Record Quarterly Profit as Tobacco, Paper Sales Rise 

ITC Ltd., Asia’s second-largest tobacco company by market value, posted a record quarterly profit as cigarette sales rose and its paper and agriculture businesses almost doubled earnings.

Net income climbed 27 percent to 11.4 billion rupees ($247 million) in the three months ended Dec. 31, from 9.03 billion rupees a year earlier, Kolkata-based ITC said in an e-mailed statement today. That compares with the 10.7 billion rupee median estimate of nine analysts compiled by Bloomberg.

The fastest pace of earnings growth in three years helped the company’s shares gain as much as 3.8 percent today, the biggest jump in two months. Accelerating growth in the $1.2 trillion economy is boosting income for residents of the world’s second-most populous nation and increasing demand for ITC’s Goldflake and Wills cigarette brands and Fiama di Wills shampoos.

“Cigarette volume growth has been very impressive because of the lack of increase in taxes in the budget,” said Abhijeet Kundu, an analyst

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Uttar Pradesh villagers rely on 'hookah' to keep away the cold 

Hookah is no longer the luxury of the riches but now become the savior for many in Uttar Pradesh's Khushaal Nagar village.

The villagers believe that it helps them overcome certain health related problems and also to beat the intense cold as they lament that the state government has been unable to provide them with adequate facilities to fight against the cold.

"In villages, we do not have any work, so we poor people burn wood and smoke Hookah. The city has a lot of advantage because of the business; we don't get any facilities from the Government. The villagers are dying because of cold. Thus we somehow survive by burning wood and smoking Hookah," said Saraswati Devi, a villager

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GPI launches its tobacco free pan masala  

Godfrey Phillips India today launched a tobacco free pan masala under the label of Pan Vilas.

"We are targeting 5% share in the estimated Rs 1,500 crore premium pan masala segment in the launch year," Godfrey Phillips India (GPI), executive vice president for marketing & corporate affairs Nita Kapoor said here while launching Pan Vilas, which is placed in the the premium category.

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Tobacco Act violations: 3 hotels issued challans 

Chandigarh

The state nodal officer, National Tobacco Control Programme, along with the inspector of LHA Chandigarh, inspected the hotels and restaurants in Sector 26 for any violation of the Control of Tobacco Products Act (COTPA) on Wednesday. The team inspected 15 premises and issued three challans for improper signage in the inspected premises. Nearly 80 persons were challan ed for smoking at public places by the enforcement agencies in the month of December last year, while a total of 642 challans were issued between April and December 31 last year for violations of various provisions of COTPA.

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Tamil Nadu Govt exhorts MLAs to implement Tobacco Control Act  

The Tamil Nadu Government today sensitised Members of the state assembly on the evils of tobacco and exhorted them to implement the Tobacco Control Activities Act in their respective constituencies to make the State tobacco free.

As the Legislators, presently attending the session, did not turn up yesterday, the State Public Health department organised the ''sensitisation workshop on tobacco control'' this evening at the Secretariat.

As the workshop was inaugurated by Speaker R Avudaiyappan, members turned up in good numbers and listened to the evils of the use of tobacoo and how the Tobacco Control Activities Act is being implemented in the State.

They were told about the ban on smoking in public places and ban on sale of tobacco products near eductional institutions and pictorial message warning displayed in pack of tobacco products.

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Risen from the Ashes  

The story of Gurkha Cigars www.gurkhacigars.com www.gurkhacigars.com blends the history of British Colonialism in India and one modern businessman’s desire to develop and market a product unlike any that had come before it. It is a tale best told while relaxing in a plush chair with a fine cigar and your beverage of choice. . . .

At the height of British rule in India, the Gurkhas were acclaimed for their bravery and strength fighting in both the Indian Army’s Gurkha regiments and the British Army’s Brigade of Gurkhas. They were, in effect, a 19th Century version of Special Forces operatives.

They also were quite adept at making their own cigars from the local tobacco. Fondness for these legendary Nepalese colonial fighters inspired the British to name their own cigars Gurkhas. Hansotia retained and revived the name as an homage to the Gurkhas’ fabled history.

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• Butting heads over India's tobacco  

A few weeks into his habit, still searching for a brand to call his favourite, Singh stands next to a roadside shop and studies dozens of glittering packages of gutkha with inviting labels that hang like sausage links. One package features the image of Disney character Minnie Mouse. . . .

It's widely accepted that in Canada the battle against big tobacco has made strides in recent years. In 1965, roughly half of adult Canadians called themselves smokers. These days, just 17 per cent of Canadians call themselves smokers.

But in India, the story is far more sobering. Some 1 million Indians will die this year from tobacco-related diseases, a figure that's surged 43 per cent from 2005.

An alarming 57 per cent of India's 1.2 billion population use gutkha or smoke traditional cigarettes or the hand-rolled, unfiltered variety known as bidis.

The problem is that there is a growing view within the ministry of health in New Delhi that some leaders have conspired to stop their efforts to curb tobacco use, watering down warning labels on tobacco products, stalling attempts to ban smoking from popular and influential Bollywood movies, and failing to ensure India's anti-tobacco laws are enforced.

"There's this belief that the heavens will fall if you do something against the tobacco industry," says Jagdish Kaur, the government's chief medical officer. "It's maddening. You have to ask, `What are we handing the future generations of this country?'"

One of the most troubling aspects of tobacco use here, Kaur says, is how many pre-teens and teenagers consume tobacco. By the time they are 10, 37 per cent of children are smokers or chew gutkha.

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• Smokers fined in north Kashmir  

The north Kashmir district of Baramulla again took the lead in the Kashmir valley, where those smoking in public places were imposed fine.

However, police in Srinagar and other districts continued to remain indifferent to impose ban on smoking in public places.

The district administration had recently imposed ban on the sale of illegally manufactured gas cylinders after one such cylinder exploded resulting in the death of four people and injuries to several others at Pattan.

Official sources said here today that a team of police, headed by Station House Officer (SHO) and Food Inspector, Rafiabad, conducted surprise checks in the public places.

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