Jump to full article: New Kerala.com (in), 2009-03-10
Intro: Thousands of street children in Mumbai spend more on tobacco than on food every day, according to a survey of their economic conditions and tobacco consumption.
"Street children spend far more on tobacco than on nutritious food. These children spend more each month on naswar (snuff), mava, gutka (both forms of chewing tobacco) and cigarettes than on meat, almost as much for khaini (powdered tobacco) as for milk, and more for all forms of tobacco except masheri (tobacco paste) than on fruit or eggs," said the survey 'Choosing Tobacco over Food: Daily Struggles for Existence among the Street Children of Mumbai'.
The survey, conducted by Shelter Don Bosco - a Mumbai-based NGO working with street children, is part of a report 'Tobacco and Poverty: Observations from India and Bangladesh', distributed on the third day of the 14th World Conference on Tobacco or Health here.
"Tobacco use is an integral part of life for street children in Mumbai. They start by picking up discarded butts from cigarettes and beedis (small hand rolled cigars), then quickly move on to purchasing tobacco and spending significant sums of their meagre incomes on it. The children also report an array of health effects from tobacco use," the survey said.
A significant finding was that close to half (46.8 percent) of the children in the study sample use gutka and 39.5 percent smoke beedis.
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