Ban tobacco campaign kicks off

A signature campaign urging the Tamil Nadu government to implement the regulations to ban the sale of gutkha and entirely curb all forms of direct and indirect advertising for tobacco products, kicked off in the city on Friday.

The campaign, organised by Pasumai Thayagam, the environmental activism arm of the PMK, began near the Gandhi Statue on the Marina Beach.

Former Union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss, who muscled the nationwide public smoking ban through in 2008, took part in the campaign. Former minister of State for Railways AK Moorthy and PMK president GK Mani also took part.

The organisers said they would campaign across the State and present the letters to the Chief Minister, Chief Secretary, Director of Public Health and Food Safety Commissioner after they collect 1,00,000 signatures in support.

Speakers at the function said the necessary legislation was already in existence, and that the Tamil Nadu government was in a position to roll out the ban in a short period of time.

“But there are certain forces that are preventing the implementation of the ban,” claimed Anbumani.

He also noted that the lack of stringent measures to curb all forms of advertising had led to doubling of the percentage of school children who consumed tobacco products in the space of a decade.

A handout at the campaign said 7.1 per cent of school children in Tamil Nadu consumed tobacco products in the year 2000. This number rose to 13.7 per cent in 2006 and 14.6 per cent in 2009. The figure now stood at over 17 per cent, it claimed.

This alarming increase, the activists claimed, was a result of subversive advertising and coaxing tactics undertaken by companies that produced and marketed tobacco products such as cigarettes, gutkha and khaini.

They said the government must step in to enforce a complete ban on advertising at the point of sale and also prevent the display of tobacco products next to chocolates and other things that children might be attracted to buy.

They noted that the complete ban on gutkha and all forms of advertising had already been implemented in 13 States.