Will Pictorial Warning Prevent Suttabaaz from going for Sutta?

Is there something different with your pack of cigarettes today? Did you notice anything that might make you want to throw it away? If you did, even if you did not succumb to the thought, history of sorts has been made. If your pack contained a pictorial warning, then the anti-tobacco lobby’s hard work has actually kicked in.


May 31 is celebrated as World ‘No tobacco’ Day. India celebrated this through an order
by Supreme Court which says that all cigarette packets manufactured in India should carry a pictorial warning covering 40 per cent of its front space, from June 1 onwards.
But will this deter all the Suttebaaz from puffing?.

The anti-tobacco lobby is not entirely wrong in this struggle against tobacco products.
Tobacco — this little herb has created more damage to the world than any atom bomb has. Widely used as an intoxicant all over the world since time immemorial, tobacco is the key ingredient of cigarettes and pan, though well known to have a number of harmful effects, even causing cancer.

As per WHO:

India is caught in the midst of a catastrophic smoking epidemic, which is causing one in five of all male deaths in middle age and will cause about one million deaths a year during the 2010s. Seventy percent of these deaths (600,000 male and 100,000 female) will be between the ages of 30 and 69.


"Smoking is harmful to health". This is a statutory warning printed on all cigarette packets. Yet, the question arises as to how many people pay heed to this warning.
The Indian government instituted a smoking ban in public places in October 2008.
But there is no concrete evidence that the ban has worked (at least the sales no doesn’t reflect a slowdown in consumption).

The habit of smoking is more concentrated in the higher and lower echelons of society with the middle class much better placed in this scenario, estimates say. Will the educated urban smoker be bothered by this. A study says they will be. Visual medium is the strongest way to communicate messages. A Delhi-based NGO, says a picture is harder to avoid and works even with non-literates ( I disagree with non literates part though). It says graphic images will certainly interrupt the automatic manner in which a smoker reaches for his cigarette and ultimately lead to quitting too. The math works out this way: Anyone who smokes 20 cigarettes a day is exposed to the message 7,300 times a year at the crucial moments – when buying a pack and when taking a cigarette out.

Fine, that settles for the urban smokers. Now the major chunk of the tobacco consumers comes from rural, illiterate class. Firstly they don’t just dwell on cigarettes only, they have bidis, gutka etc which are not carrying these messages. Secondly even if other tobacco products were carrying these messages I doubt they would have made difference with
this class.

So my one point solution is to make the prices of all tobacco products exorbitantly high e.g. a packet of cigarettes should cost about 200. I know this will sound very irrational
but anything for preventing from all my suttebaaz friends from going for it.

My Thoughts towards Smokers:

I am not in favor of banning smoking as it collides with a personal freedom of humans
and will make India look like China and after all animals are born to indulge in vices and forbidden pleasures. Warnings have seldom stopped animals, man or otherwise from tasting the forbidden fruit.

Some way out for this community.
Don’t buy packets. Go back to your college days where you used to buy 1-2 cigarettes, that too on loan.
Or if you can afford cigarettes buy them and put them in a metal case to avoid those gruesome pictures.


I have tried to be neutral here. If in the beginning of the post I sounded like an anti-tobacco activist I have made some amends at the end.

This is one issue which we start a debate on it will last till eternity. I know 500-1000 words a little too few to sum my thoughts. Probably the readers can take it further by
their comments.

Love,
Saket.