Categories
· Health/Science
· Tobacco Control
· Bidis
· Statistics/Database
· Class/Income Levels
non-USA, by Country
· India
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Jump to full article: Sify.com (in), 2008-05-13
Intro: An estimated 100 million people - mostly the poor and illiterate - smoke beedi in India and 200,000 tuberculosis deaths are due to these hand-rolled cigarettes, a health ministry report released on Monday said.
The report, for the year 2004-05 and termed as the first analytical, scientific and systematic study on the trend, said beedi smoking was more harmful than cigarette smoking.
"In India, beedi smoking contributes substantially to death from tuberculosis," said Health Secretary Naresh Dayal.
Dayal released the beedi monograph that lists the prevalence of beedi smoking in the country, its consequences - both economic and healthwise - and public health policy strategies.
He said there are more beedi smokers than users of any other kind of tobacco products. "Beedi is the most widely used form of tobacco. There are 240 million tobacco users of which 100 million smoke beedi," he said.
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