The Tamil Nadu tobacco Survey for 2015-16 has found that 47% of current tobacco users consume it within 30 minutes of waking up.
The survey also found that despite an official ban on the manufacture of tobacco products in the State over 90% of those surveyed reported no difficulty in procuring the banned gutka products. They did not mind paying twice the price to purchase the banned product.
For the survey, the Cancer Institute interviewed 1,11,363 individuals from among 28,64,400 tobacco users over the age of 15 in 32 districts in the State. The survey revealed that the consumption of tobacco was now 5.2%. The use of tobacco was the highest in the district of Pudukottai at 19.9% while it was lowest in Thanjavur district at 1.2%. According to non-governmental organisations working in the field, there were four companies manufacturing chewable tobacco in Pudukottai district.
One of the major limitations of the survey, according to E. Vidhubala, associate professor at the institute, was that child users were left out. School children were lured to a new form of tobacco sold in small pouches that was easily accessible, she said.
The survey would be taken as a baseline and such studies would be done every two years, she added. Since the institute relied on NGOs, college students and institutions working in the field to collect data for the study that cost around ₹12.50 lakh, she said similar studies could be replicated across the country. V. Shanta, chairperson of the Institute, who released the survey on Sunday, said tobacco control was politicised due to the involvement of a large number of beedi workers.
‘Weak enforcement’
She blamed the weak enforcement of laws and the lack of measures to reduce supply. The government had yet to enforce the law of 85% pictorial warning on the packets. It had not taken sufficient action to ban child labour in the beedi industry and in tobacco farming, she said.
If the State had to be tobacco-free, then awareness and education of the ill-effects of tobacco should begin at the school level, Dr. Shanta said. “Health is a State subject but no State has a designated officer exclusively to work for tobacco control,” she said, adding, “The government should enforce the rule that no tobacco user can be a teacher.” She called for comprehensive education of children in the impressionable age group of 12-14 years.
The State had banned sale and manufacture of chewable tobacco but it had not been able to prevent the sale of foreign brands of cigarettes, which found their way illegally into the market, said Health secretary J. Radhakrishnan, who received the first copy of the survey and a video to raise awareness against tobacco use. He called for an effort to ensure “change in behaviour” among the people.
