Where there's a will, there's a way, goes a time-honoured adage. With determination, it is possible to find a recourse for the most difficult of situations, including the addictive tobacco smoking, which to many users seems impossible to give up.
Tobacco users who are on the lookout for a role model can find a worthy example in Shri E.Chandrasekharan Nair, former Kerala Minister for Food, Tourism and Law. This veteran politician completely quit smoking in 1987, and continues to be a non-user even after three decades now.
He reflects, “I have been through the harsh effects of smoking. The principal reason behind my heart attack was chain smoking. I suffered a heart attack while travelling from Delhi to Trivandrum by air. My doctors convinced me that smoking brought me this hardship, and then I quit smoking.”
Reacting to recent reports that pictorial warnings in packets of tobacco products in India do not comply with international guidelines, Shri Nair said, "Cigarette manufacturers in India are not completely complying with the international guidelines on health warnings, this is intentional. Concerned authorities have to ensure that these guidelines are compulsorily met.”
A report called ‘Cigarette Package Health Warnings: International Status Report’ released in the Conference of Parties to the WHO Framework Convention of Tobacco Control (FCTC) that concluded in Seoul, South Korea on November 17, shows that health warnings in cigarette packets in India only cover 40% of the front face of the packet. This is despite two rounds of revisions of warnings, in 2009 and 2011.
Article 11 of World Health Organisation’s FCTC, which India ratified in 2004, requires that health warnings “should be 50% or more of the principal display areas but shall be no less than 30% of the display areas” – the principal display areas being front and back of the package.
Image courtesy: The Hindu
Image courtesy: The Hindu
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