Cigarette smoking is spreading in Kashmir like many other parts of the country . Smoking is a terrible vice .
Smoking causes cancer of the lung, throat, mouth, nose, voice box, esophagus, pancreas, liver, stomach, kidney, bladder, ureter, bowel, ovary, cervix and bone marrow (myeloid leukemia). Tobacco smoke also causes heart disease, stroke and emphysema.
We need to bear in mind the grim impacts. Tobacco kills up to half of its users.
Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year. More than 7 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.
Over 80% of the world’s 1.3 billion tobacco users live in low- and middle-income countries.
Statistics are horrifying.
In 2020, 22.3% of the global population used tobacco, 36.7% of all men and 7.8% of the world’s women.
Surveys and studies paint a grim picture about smoking in Kashmir.
A recent survey suggest that the Kupwara district has more than half of its population as smokers. Almost 56.6 per cent of the people in the border district use tobacco in any form.
As a matter of fact, is followed by Shopian where 52 per cent of the population is smoking or using different smoking products. Of them, five per cent are women.
Anantnag is at No 3 ranking in smoking where 49.9 per cent population is smoking. Budgam has 48.8 per cent of the population smoking.
It is painful reality that India, under the prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act (COTPA), 2003, a complete ban is in place for advertising and promotion of Tobacco related products through mass media. Still, it is one of the best-performing sectors. After China, India has the world’s largest population of smokers and tobacco production.
Data is worrying. Around 21 percent adults in Jammu and Kashmir are using that tobacco even as authorities have taken slew of measures to decrease the percentage of tobacco consumption in the erstwhile state.
As per GATS-2 data, 35.2 percent men and 5.1 percent women and 20.8 percent of all adults smoke tobacco in J-K.
As per the data , 6.8 percent men, 1.5 percent women and 4.3 percent of all adults currently use smokeless tobacco, while 39.7 percent men and 6.2 percent women and 23.7 percent of all adults either smoke tobacco or use smokeless Tobacco.
The society should ponder.
