Over half the world's population consumes tobacco: Study

New Delhi: A new Lancet study reveals that there are more smokers worldwide than previously thought and that the global tobacco burden may have been underestimated. In the light of these revelations, does India need tighten its anti-tobacco campaign?

The new study says that over half the world's population consumes tobacco. That's around 852 million people worldwide according to the new estimates.

661 million worldwide smoke and 247 million are smokeless tobacco users, 206 million in India alone. China has maximum consumers at an estimated 301 million. India comes next, with 275 million tobacco users.

President, PHFI, Dr Srinath Reddy said, “The new study shows that given the fact that tobacco is going to be centuries number one killer and is still biggest publicly threats, not only do we need strong laws, they need to be effectively implemented and India is an important area in which tobacco control needs to be strict even more.”

Dr Nevin Wilson, The Union sad, “One in 10 deaths globally is because of tobacco use and the imperative policy makers to invest in tobacco control.”

In a major boost to the fight against tobacco use, Australia will be the first country to implement plain packaging for cigarettes.

But come December, all cigarettes in Australia will be sold in drab looking olive brown packets with big graphic health warnings on them. All brand names will be written in the same generic font. The colours and packaging have been tried and tested, to discourage smokers.

New Zealand, UK, Turkey and even India are thinking on the same lines. And if India follows suite, cigarette packets might be sold in plain grey colours.

Seema Gupta VHAI said, “India definitely needs to adopt plain packaging. And like the market research showed that 80 per cent of respondents said that they will not really initiate if they can’t associate with a particular brand they will not even think of smoking and a dull grey colour will have a lot of difference as compared to a bright red, blue or any other colour which normally companies use.

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