The Hindu Business Line : Ifs and butts

The third edition of the Tobacco Atlas takes you through the smoky corridors of the tobacco industry and tells you what tobacco is capable of doing, at its disastrous best.

In the 20th century, it killed about 100 million people worldwide. And if the trend continues, WHO predicts it would kill nearly 1 billion people in the present century. Published by the World Lung Foundation and American Cancer Institute, the Atlas points out that the trend is already shifting from developed to developing countries, and tobacco will kill an estimated 7 million people per year by 2020.

While India contributes about 299 million to the male smokers’ population worldwide, China tops with 311 million of the one-billion smoking men worldwide. Female smoking also seems to be at an all-time high, with about 250 million daily smokers. US women account for 236 million —the largest group, while India is not too far behind with 119 million.

The tobacco atlas explains the global cultivation, processing and marketing of tobacco in a reader-friendly fashion. The authors include reputed medical anthropologists, doctors, professors and even economists. Using maps, illustrations, photographs and charts, the Atlas neatly captures the unnerving growth of the tobacco business. It startles you with gnawing revelations.

Tobacco is a “risk factor for six of eight leading causes of death in the world”. And the evidence is now undisputable that “secondhand smoke is an alarming public health hazard, responsible for thousands of premature deaths among non-smokers.” The irony is that “tobacco marketers use images of health to sell death, whereas health organisations use images of death to sell health.” Smoking is often marketed as a masculine ‘habit’, linked to “health, happiness, wealth, and power… and virility”, whereas cigarettes are marketed to women using seductive but false images of vitality, slimness, emancipation, sophistication and sexual allure.

Cigarettes account for the “largest share of manufactured tobacco products,” and the invention of the cigarette-rolling machine in 1881 undoubtedly accelerated the tobacco pandemic. The Atlas also explains the difference between smokeless tobacco and smoking tobacco, and the ill-effects of both.

The chapters clearly illustrate that tobacco is not just a matter of personal choice, but involves “politics, economics, corporate behaviour, globalisation, religion, resources, gender issues, poverty… and the future.”

The most alarming factor is that tobacco-control research continues to be under-funded throughout the world. In fact, tobacco falls last in a list of health-related research expenditure in the US National Institute of Health, while tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and even asthma top the list.

The battle against the tobacco pandemic requires policymakers to act on the findings of such committed researchers by enforcing curbs on its cultivation, processing and marketing. Policymakers, are you listening?

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