|
India Inhales
Two and a half thousand Indians die every day from smoking related diseases - one every 40 seconds. Yet these numbers will be dwarfed in the future if present trends in tobacco use continue. This week, City Life goes to India to talk to cancer sufferers and campaigners and look at the effects of the globalization of tobacco addiction.
With declining markets in the West, and 50 per cent of India's population under the age of 25, the major tobacco companies are increasingly targeting India as their new growth market. Already, 250 million Indians use tobacco, and the market's already worth a massive $5 billion. And they don't only smoke it: many Indians chew tobacco, mixed with lime, spices and other substances - some of them possible carcinogens. As a result, India has one of the world's highest rates of mouth cancer.
Roadside kiosks are the main retail outlets for tobacco in India. There are kiosks on every corner of every street in every town. Over two hundred and fifty million Indians use tobacco on a daily basis.
Manoj Thaker knows - he had to have half his jaw removed after developing oral cancer. Now he campaigns against tobacco use, refusing to sell cigarettes from his stall, and collects the names and telephone numbers of the people he persuades to give up.
But the tobacco companies are keen to expand their share of one of the biggest global markets and they are deploying their marketing skills to the full to achieve their ends. As well as television commercials, they use sports sponsorship and sell sports equipment. It's more than sponsorship, says Suhel Seth, who used to be in marketing with the Indian Tobacco Company (ITC). "It's very careful target marketing where they're looking at young people who watch the sport, who are almost fanatic about it see their icons being associated with a cigarette brand. . . Cricket is the only common religion in India."
Tobacco brands Wills and Four Square shamelessly aim cricket gear commercials at boys. Commercials director Prahlad Kakkar admits that this "aspirational" advertising makes a huge impact on kids - and the kids on the street bear him out. In fact, five and a half thousand children are estimated to start smoking every day in India, joining the 4 million under 15-year-olds who already use tobacco regularly.
|
 |
Colonel Moorthy has had to have a tracheotomy because of cancer of the throat, caused by smoking. Colonel Moorthi is just one of the millions of cancer victims in India. His cancer is a direct result of smoking. But unlike other countries with high rates of tobacco-related illness, India also has high numbers of oral cancer patients - a direct result of the deadly gutkha.
Dr Sharad Vaidya, a Goa cancer surgeon, became so frustrated at the number of preventable tumours he was operating on that he started the National Organization for Tobacco Eradication (NOTE). "I started going to the schools and talking to the children," he says, because (as the tobacco companies know) that's when the seeds of a lifetime addiction are sown. In 1998 he and the schoolchildren of Goa took to the streets, to try to force the state government to legislate against tobacco and tobacco advertising. As a result of this campaign, the Goan state government banned all tobacco advertising. Tobacco companies now cannot advertise on television, in the cinema, on billboards - or even on shop premises. And smoking is even banned in public places.
Dr Vaidya thinks that only legislation can work, the tobacco companies will never show any responsibility on their own initiative. "They're impervious to the tragedy . . . Money drives them, and greed drives them to do what they're doing."
The tobacco advertising ban has indeed led to a significant fall in tobacco consumption in Goa, a trend supported by the experiences of other countries, which show similar reductions where tobacco advertising has been banned. The World Health Organization, which launched the Tobacco Free Initiative two years ago, is now calling for a global ban on tobacco advertising and promotion, in an effort to defy the prediction that by the year 2030 tobacco will be the biggest single cause of death on the planet.
Since this programme was made, Dr Vaidya has sadly died. But the organisation he founded, NOTE, continues with the work he started. Dr Vaidya would have been pleased that the Indian Government has now placed a Bill before parliament to control tobacco advertising and sponsorship. As a result, the Indian Tobacco Company, the largest player in the tobacco market in India, has announced its withdrawal from sponsorship of all sports-related programmes.
TRANSCRIPT
Read the full transcript of India Inhales
|
