'Life Se Panga Mat Le Yaar' may trigger quitting behaviour

It can be a fair bet that tobacco users who saw or heard popular playback singer Shaan's lilting song 'Life Se Panga Mat Le Yaar' would have given a serious thought to quitting this addictive habit, as evidenced by findings of a recent study conducted by UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies.

The study, 'The impact of media campaigns on smoking cessation activity: A Structural Vector Autoregression Analysis,' concluded that tobacco control media campaigns appear to be more effective at triggering quitting behaviour than pharmaceutical company NRT campaigns.

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effect of tobacco control media campaigns and pharmaceutical company-funded advertising for nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) on smoking cessation activity.  

It used tobacco control campaign data from the Central Office of Information and commercial NRT campaign data. Data on calls to the NHS stop smoking helpline from the Department of Health. Point of Sale data on over-the-counter (OTC) sales of NRT and Prescribing data from The Health Improvement Network (THIN), a database of UK primary care records were also used.

Coming back to 'Life Se Pang Mat Le Yaar', this video was created as part of the tobacco control campaign of Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The track is targeted towards youth and adolescents all over the country and sends a strong message that life without tobacco is a life worth living.

The music video has Shaan dancing with children, encouraging them to take all problems in their stride and not to make things worse for themselves by consuming tobacco. Hence, tobacco use is a “panga” they can well live without.

The entire video has a very pro-life stance, is youth centric and speaks of their dreams and aspirations. 

The Ministry had in May 2011 appointed Shaan as the tobacco control ambassador of India.