Starting from Sunday, the World No Tobacco Day, all tobacco products in India will carry graphic pictorial warnings.
“I was 15 while returning from school all the friends had a cigarette. It felt bad but I felt grown up,” says Vibhor.
Like Vibhor most smokers start smoking at an early age and would not be able to predict that their habit could turn into a life threatening full blown addiction.
“In India there are 2 million cancer patients every year and more and more cases of youngsters reporting with cancer,” says Palliate Care Physician, CanSupport, Dr Ravinder Mohan.
Given the horrifying big picture, health authorities are hoping that newly introduced pictorial warnings like skull and cross bones, scorpion and diseased lungs on cigarette packets and other tobacco products in India, will prove effective as a deterrent especially when it comes to young people.
The law to ban smoking in public places in the country came into place last year but hasn’t been fully enforced. So, now it needs to be seen if the new measures will achieve the desired results.
In a country that records about 800,000 tobacco deaths every year even as the world marks No Tobacco day by the end of the day 2,200 people would have lost their life to in India due to tobacco use.
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