Despite the image enhancement that tobacco
companies try to achieve by diversifying into other forms of businesses,
sponsoring sports events or music, and doling out prizes and awards for
gallantry, their practice of manufacturing and selling tobacco products
continues to cause great harm to society. And they continue to market and bank on
tobacco sales for their profit.
Two thousand people will die today in India due
to tobacco. India has 250 million tobacco users with around 900,000 succumbing
to tobacco-related diseases every year.
We ranks 1st in the world for incidence of oral cancer, caused almost
entirely by tobacco use. One of our senior ministers had to be operated in USA
for cancer of the cheek due to his Gutka habit. Although his face reveals a
lack of symmetry, it is a matter of satisfaction that he is cured of cancer,
and has turned a major anti-Gutka campaigner in Maharashtra.
Tobacco has no nutritive value or health benefit.
While smoking, one inhales 43 cancer causing substances, 15 harmful chemicals
and 400 poisons, all in a single puff. Tobacco
contains nicotine that provides that little kick that people get of it. It is
however addictive and habit forming.
The habit usually starts at a young age, usually
in school or college, under “peer pressure”, when seniors get their juniors
initiated. It usually starts with a spirit of adolescent experimentation or
rebellion, and helps a young person enjoy a feeling of having “grown up”. The
occasional fag then becomes a way of life, a fashion or personality statement
and then very soon, a habit that gets increasingly difficult to kick. Smoking
rates in India are growing at an alarming 7% annually.
The harmful effects of smoking are well known to
even those who smoke: lack of stamina, chronic cough, heart disease, stroke and
stomach ulcers. Smokers are at high risk of cancers, not just of lungs, but of
the mouth, pancreas and bladder too. Contrary to the popular “macho” image
projected by the tobacco industry, smoking reduces potency in men and causes
infertility and birth defects in women.
Smokers tend to be self centered, with scant
regard for the welfare of their families and those around. Innocent children ad spouses exposed to 2nd
hand smoking because of an uncaring man, are often harmed this way. They often
develop asthma and bronchitis. Sudden infant deaths occur more commonly in
homes where someone smokes. Spouses of smokers are at increased risk of
developing premature heart disease and cancers. Further, children growing up in
a “smoking home” are more likely to take to it in life.
One often finally kicks the habit after a major
health problem like a heart attack. By then much narrowing of the arteries have
already occurred. One wishes it was much earlier.
Use of tobacco remains a classical example of how
irrational some of us can be despite belonging to the human race that claims
rationality as its USP.
As published in HT City ( Hindustan Times) dated 6 October, 2013.
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