Tobacco inflicts huge damage on the health of India’s people and could be clocking up a death toll of 1.5 million a year by 2020 if more users are not persuaded to kick the habit, an international report said on Thursday.
Despite having signed up to a global treaty on tobacco control and having numerous anti-tobacco and smoke-free laws, India is failing to implement them effectively, leaving its people vulnerable to addiction and ill health, according to the report by the International Tobacco Control Project (ITCP).
“Compared with many countries around the world, India has been proactive in introducing tobacco control legislation since 2003,” said Geoffrey Fong, a professor of psychology at Canada’s University of Waterloo and a co-author of the report.
“However ... the legislation currently in place is not delivering the desired results — in terms of dissuading tobacco use and encouraging quitting.”
As a result, India, with a population of 1.2 billion, currently has around 275 million tobacco users, the report said. Harm from tobacco accounts for nearly half of all cancers among males and a quarter of all cancers among females there, as well as being a major cause of heart and lung diseases.
“The tobacco epidemic in India requires urgent attention,” the report said, adding that by 2020, tobacco consumption will account for more than 1.5 million Indian deaths a year.
Worldwide, the number of deaths caused by tobacco is expected to rise from around 6 million a year now to more than 8 million by 2030, according to the World Health Organisation.
The ITCP India Survey conducted face to face interviews with 8,000 tobacco users and 2,400 non-users across four states — Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal. So-called smokeless tobacco — including chewing products such as gutkha, zarda, paan masal and khaini — is the most common form of tobacco use in India, with many poorer people and women preferring these over smoking cigarettes or bindis — small, cheap, locally-made cigarettes. According to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey, 26 per cent of adults in India consume smokeless tobacco — 33 per cent of men and 18.4 per cent of women. Smokeless tobacco can cause oral and other cancers, as well as other mouth diseases and heart disease.