India, Lowest Consumer of Cigarettes Annually

The consultant oncologist and head and neck surgeon, Dr Vishal Rao said, “From Canadian perspective India might be doing well in displaying the pictorial images on tobacco products but, the standards are not complied with. Even the pictures are not changed every year, which is mandatory,” as reported by TNN.

Most recently a special committee put together in India to look into the concern about the warning status.

Dr Bhojani who is one of the members from the special committee said, “Compared to India, countries like Thailand displays much bigger and visible images on packets of tobacco products. In India, the authorities had first proposed to display a picture on 50 percent of the front panel of the packet, which has been gradually reduced to 40 percent The pictures too are very vague, of an x-rayed chest or a healthy lung, which nobody would relate to,” as reported by TNN.

The reason for the low consumption of cigarettes in India was explained by Dr Rao. He said that in India the consumption of cigarette  is low because a large number of the population smokes other tobacco product like hookahs, beedis or chiroots which aren’t considered as tobacco products by Global standard. There is a high number of beedis consumed in the country which are very cheap and high on Tar. And thereby a figure of 99 cigarettes consumed per capita per annum is heavily misleading.
 

Also Read: Smoking: The Cause of 100 Million Deaths in India