He is not
getting a sufficient meal a day. He could not look into the helpless eyes of
his mother. So he went outside to spend some time with his friends. They
couldn't supply him with food, but tobacco, the cheapest. At a very young age,
he suffered from oral cancer. He sold his properties for treatment and got
cured. Now he has a family with a wife and two children. He is a trolley
puller. Now they strive for food, not tobacco.
India
bears three-fourths of the burden of the world's tobacco. 267 million users are
in India. 21.4% use smokeless tobacco, out of which 29.6% are men and 12.8% are
women. 7.7%use bidis. 30.2% of adults are second hand smokers. Smoking causes
cancer of all sorts, especially oral cancer and lung cancer. 1.2 million people
die every year in India due to tobacco and its effects. 90% of oral cancers are
due to smoking.
The hunger
situation in India is very precarious. In 2021, the position of India was 101
out of 121 countries, and the position of malnutrition was 107 out of 121
countries. 224.3 million people are undernourished. Child wasting is 19.3%,
which is worse than 2014 (15.1%).
Smoking
not only causes cancer and TB, it is also associated with CV, type 2 diabetes,
and the metabolic syndrome. Lack of food may aggravate the situation earlier,
causing a loss of income due to the loss of human capital of the smoker and the
family members as caretakers. Women are thrown out of the family. So tobacco
can never be a substitute for food. 13.3% of people smoke in public places. Let
us take a vow to totally eradicate it by making some amendments to the law and
enforcing them with all honesty.
Tobacco is
less precious than life.
Dr. Minakshi Panda, PhD
Retd. Prof. of Political Science
Chairman, PECUC
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