The Slow Poisoning of India
In 1990 All India Radio and the Indian council of Medical research had undertaken a 28 part radio serial called Radio DATE to be broadcast in 18 languages from all AIR stations in the country. Mass surveys through the mass media was conducted. A sustained mass campaign had started for banning tobacco and its products. It has taken 10 full years for the country to become more aware and the legislation has now been introduced in the parliament. At this stage Samachar.com has come out with a 8 part article on the hazards of tobacco based on a BBC serial. We bring you excerpts from the same. Next month we will bring you the salient features of the findings of ICMR based on AIR's programme.
Last August BBC's VIJAY RANA travelled across India for four weeks to research this series. He travelled From Mysore to Meerut, From Goa to Ghaziabad and from Calcutta to Ahmedabad. He interviewed India's top cancer specialists, leading anti-smoking campaigners and social workers. He visited schools, went to villages and spoke to many smokers, including some of the terminally ill cancer patients. The result was a 15 part BBC Hindi Radio series, Dheema Zahar and a eight part series at SAMACHAR.com. Here are some
I suppose you don't work in smoke-filled rooms any more, you net-savvy citizens of the brave new world. It was from those smoke-filled rooms the guides and philosophers of the modern age preached that you need nicotine to generate the gems of wisdom or rather literally to kick-start your brain. One of those gems was Mark Twain's: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." But that in itself was a lie. Statistics do drive a point home, rather sharply. Therefore, I am throwing at you an uncomfortable set of figures.
Spare five minutes to browse through this article. In these five minutes, more than seven smokers would have died in India. Tobacco kills around 800,000 Indians in a year, approximately 2200 in a day and about 90 people per hour. Most of these people knew that tobacco kills, yet they believed death would spare them.
It was the Portuguese sailors, who brought tobacco to India, sometime in the 16th century. Soon they offered this `uplifting substance' to Emperor Akbar. There was a heated debate in the court on how the king could inhale this unknown substance. The royal hakeem came up with a compromise formula. The king will smoke, he ruled, only if the smoke passes through water. And that was how hookka was invented.
The addiction to nicotine grew fast. The Emperor must have been followed by his court and emulated by his subjects. By the time of Akbar's son Jahangir, tobacco cultivation had spread in India. Jahangir taxed tobacco and found a fabulous source of state revenue. Since then, all governments have followed Jahangir. Today 10 per cent of the excise revenues and 2 per cent of the government of India's total revenues come from 660 million kgs of tobacco produced in the country.
According to a recent report in Lancet, the latest figures of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) suggest that three tobacco related disease groupscancers, coronary heart disease, and chronic obstructive lung disease had cost the country Rs. 277.61 billion (or $6.5 billion) in 1999. Where as the nationwide sale value of all tobacco products was Rs. 244 billion. By any measure, this is bad economics.
The Indian Tobacco Board, backed up by the ministry of commerce, actively promotes the cultivation of tobacco and provides technical and financial assistance to tobacco farmers. It also promotes the `development of the tobacco industry' and undertakes `export promotion to sustain existing markets and explore new markets.'
As a result, India is the 4th largest producer of tobacco in the world. India ranks 14th in the world for manufacturing cigarettes, however when bidis are taken into account India rises to second place after China. 47% of Indian men use some form of tobacco and smoking prreviewence among women is around 12 per cent.
Indians smoke approximately 90 billion cigarettes a year, with the average cost of Rs. 2 per cigarette they end up spending Rs. 180 billion a year. What do they get in response? 400,000 cases of cancer, 1.3 million cases of heart disease and also the undesirable honour of being world leader in cases of oral cancer. This not the end of the story. According to FAO estimates, tobacco consumption in India will continue to increase at 2.4 percent per annum. Most of these new smokers will be India's school children, the passionate cricket fans of Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly, who advertise one of India's leading cigarettes every time they come out to bat for their country.
While the commerce and agriculture ministries promote tobacco, the health ministry attempts in vain to curb its consumption. "An anti-tobacco draft legislation is circulating in the corridors of power for the last five years," says the Supreme Court lawyer, Prashant Bhushan, who has filed a public interest litigation against the tobacco sponsorship of India's national cricket team. "We have to take the view of every ministry and then the matter will be discussed in the Cabinet," replies India's health minister Dr. C P Thakur. By the look of this statement, it is not difficult to conclude that tobacco control does not seem to be one of the government's main priorities. The government of India is no exception. Most governments across the world have shown such indifference.
Surely, there is something more here than bureaucratic apathy. Over the past ten years, tobacco companies have given more than $30 million to both the Republican and Democratic parties in the US, becoming one of the biggest political paymasters in Washington. The industry also spent $35 million on lobbying in 1997. Tobacco lobby is active in India too. The chief minister of Rajastan, Ashok Gehlot admits that the tobacco lobby, "rather unsuccessfully" approached him to blunt the impact of the recently introduced anti-tobacco legislation. The chairman of the National Organisation for Tobacco Eradication (NOTE), Dr. Sharad G. Vaidya, before his recent death, made this startling revelation in a BBC interview. He said that the `Goa Prohibition of Smoking and Spitting Bill 1997' was delayed because the government bureaucrats decided to send the bill to Delhi for presidential assent. "It took two years to get this assent. I suspect this delay was caused under the influence of tobacco lobby," said Dr. Vaidya in his last interview.
Tobacco consumption has been growing in India at 2 to 3% per annum. With its 250 million tobacco consumers, India is sitting on the verge of an unparalleled health crisis. According to the WHO, by 2020 the tobacco consumption will be causing an estimated 13.3% of all deaths in India.
'Cigarette smoking is injurious to health'-what a great understatement; indeed a masterpiece of bureaucratic fudging. And what does it conceal-a self-inflicted epidemic of untold dimensions and infinite enormity. Still we continue to shut our eyes to the gloom that tobacco unfolds around us.
Today tobacco kills 800,000 Indians a year. Tobacco also kills four million people a year in the world. By 2030, it will kill 10 million people a year, more than the combined death toll from malaria and other major childhood killer disease. Over 70% of these tobacco induced deaths will happen in the developing world. So powerful is the addiction of nicotine and so blinding is the advertising appeal of tobacco products that most consumers, even highly educated ones, believe that somehow they will be spared. Here is what might befall them:
People know pretty well that in most cases cancer cannot be cured. And there is much more to the killer tobacco. Tobacco harms just about every part of the body it touches -- on the way into, around and out of the smoker - from the skin and lips to the bladder. Here is the rest of the list.
Many smokers fortified with a misguided belief would still like to pretend that they have heard it all before. That's again a half-truth. Do they know?
Impotence is more common in smokers because smoking damages blood vessels, restricting blood flow. A recent US study revealed that smoking has been shown to have an effect on the size of a man's penis, inhibiting erection.
Women smokers take longer to conceive than non-smokers and had an earlier menopause compared to non-smokers.
The children born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy start smoking at an early age. Smoking causes gum disease and tooth loss. Asthma is twice as common in the children of smokers. Defective vision and cataracts are more common in smokers. Smoking makes heart beat faster, raises blood pressure and causes hypertension. Smoking can damage heart blood vessels making it difficult for heart to pump blood.
And do they know that smokers have a distinctive face, described in medical dictionaries as 'Smoker's face' -- a face that has wrinkles radiating at right angle, deep lines on the cheeks and prominent bony contours. The skin becomes slightly pigmented grey. If you smoke then close your eyes and picture yourself in your mind with these facial features.
If overconfident smokers are still not convinced, than they should meet Govind Kumar of Faridabad. He used to be a chain smoker. Not any more. He had quit smoking, but not until an AIIMS oncologist broke the shocking news that he had got the incurable lung cancer. "I knew about the dangers of smoking, but I never thought it will happen to me." He is not an exception. Most smokers continue to think like Govind Kumar until they join the rising ranks of cancer victims.
According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) approximately 160,000 people develop cancer each year as a result of tobacco consumption. Every year some 4.5 million Indian smokers suffer from angina or heart disease and about 3.9 million people get lung disease. Oral cancer constitutes 12% of all cancers in men and 8% of cancers among women. Annual incidence rate is estimated be 64,460. Researchers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai believe that the real number of cases at any given time might be 2.5 to 3 times higher than this number, because so far no proper epidemiological data is available in India. Smoking Kills - Don't be Duped.
Tobacco and Women: Don't suffocate me Mum
September 20, 1973. In the famed 'Battle of the Sexes' at the Huston Astrodome, United States, Bobby Riggs, that haughty figure of male chauvinism, lay overpowered by the legendary tennis star Billie Jean King. Before stepping into his Waterloo Riggs, the 1939 Wimbledon champion, had predicted; "There would be no way she could win."
She did win. She had a point to make, to decimate the myth of man's superiority, to tame a man's ego and as well as his physical prowess. Women rejoiced all over the world. At that time not many realised that she paid a heavy price for this victory, or to put it otherwise, she was paid a heavy price for this victory by the manufacturers of a cigarette, Virginia Slims. She was wearing Virginia Slims colours and in the background lurked large hoardings of Virginia Slims. A powerful message to those, educated, modern, sexy, slim and daring women who intended to challenge men--you could do if you puff a Virginia Slims.
As smoking decreases in the West, the tobacco industry is making huge investments in the developing countries, targeting women and girls with seductive advertising, exploiting ideas of independence, emancipation, sex appeal, and slimness. An allegedly female friendly brand MS Special was launched in India in 1990. Now often on the pages of India Today a sexy beauty, attired in sleeveless casuals, declares Gold Flake to her objects of desire, in this case two handsome men,' It's Honeydew smooth'.
It's a sheer lie, wrapped in the glossy image of a sexy girl flirting with two saxophone wielding handsome hunks. Ask those millions of people who spend their nights coughing, how could cigarette smoke be honeydew smooth. Ask Shefali Bhatia of Miranda House college, Delhi. "It was virtually forced on me. For two weeks during the ragging period I was forced or rather threatened in to smoke. And now I can't quit." Ask the media executive, who wish to remain anonymous, "Initially I wanted to do something bold, daring, different that other girls couldn't do. Now after seven years of smoking there is no fun left. But it's too late. I can't quit." Yet the smoker's fraternity is solid and assiduously seeks new members. "Many of my smoker friends consistently pressurise me, so far I have stayed away," says Rituparna, a BSc student in Bangalore's St. Thomas College. Smoking is linked with a cosmopolitan lifestyle. With growing urbanisation, career achievements and increasing spending power women are determined not be left behind men.
Take the example the two countries with the highest percentage of women smokers, Denmark-37% and Norway-35.5%. Women have attained virtual equality with men at least in smoking. According to the WHO the experience of the developed world shows, the tobacco epidemic among men is usually followed by a tobacco epidemic among women. The patterns exhibited in the industrialised world are being repeated in the developing countries like India.
Not only female smokers suffer of the negative health effects that men do, but also women are prone to additional risks.
Infertility: Certain toxins in cigarette smoke could alter levels of vital hormones such as oestrogen inducing infertility.
Breast Cancer: A women who smoke 20 cigarettes a day is four times more likely to develop breast cancer than a woman who does not smoke.
Heart Disease: Women smokers are 50% more likely to have a heart attack than a male smoker
The Pill: Women smokers who use the Pill increase their chances of developing blood clots, stroke, heart attacks and other cardiovascular disease.
Pregnancy: In Britain 33 % female smokers give up smoking during the pregnancy. The expectant mothers who continue to smoke carry the risks of:
Miscarriage and bleeding. Women smokers are twice more likely to have a miscarriage than the women who don't smoke. Increased likelihood for fallopian infection and tubal pregnancies.
Higher incidence of genetic defects for their babies. Low birth weight. On average babies born to smokers weigh 8 ounces less than those born to non-smokers. The combination of carbon monoxide poisoning and decreased oxygen levels retard the baby's growth.
One study showed that at the age of 14 children of smokers were more likely to have respiratory illness, to be shorter in height and less successful at school. Babies born to smokers have the same level of nicotine byproduct in their blood as an adult smoker does and in the first days of their lives they can experience withdrawal symptoms.
Smoking is a powerful addiction. Not everyone can quit at
will. Hitting them hard with mortal facts may discourage
some of them, but most of those who want to quit need
support and encouragement from family and friends.
References
The Damages
Help Line
The Facts
