TLI Staff
New Delhi: Ignorance is bliss but knowing is enlightenment. Once smokers know what all a puff of cigarette contain, they will probably be enlightened enough to not light that dangerous stick.
National President of Indian Medical Association (IMA) and Rajya Sabha MP Dr Santanu Sen while participating in a discussion on the bill to ban e-Cigarettes said that a normal cigarette usually contains nearly 700 chemicals of which 60 are cancer-causing.
“A normal cigarette usually contains nearly 700 chemicals, out of which 250 are very much harmful. And out of those 250, 60 chemicals are important to create cancer. All of them are carcinogenic agents, like nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide, arsenic, ammonia, acetone, toluene, pesticide, methanol, and methylamine,” he said.
Noting the harmful effects of cigarettes, Dr Sen said that smoking increases coronary heart disease by two to four times and stroke by two to four times. It increases lung cancer by 25 times and the probability of COPD, that is, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease by 13 times.
Further, there is hardly any organ in our body which does not get affected by smoking. For the pregnant woman, there are incidence of still-birth and low-birth rate baby.
“Forty-two per cent of total male death is due to tobacco, and for the female, it is 18 per cent. Sir, you will be surprised to know that the total global load of smokers is lying with India, which is 12 per cent, and even more,” the IMA President said addressing the Chair in Rajya Sabha.
Not surprisingly, cigarettes are considered sin goods under the goods and services tax (GST) and attract the highest tax rate and the peak compensation cess. But in spite of that, a large number of people have been undeterred.
As per the Rajya Sabha MP, not less than 85 billion cigarettes were sold in 2016. Diversified FMCG major ITC constitutes 77 per cent of the market share while Godfrey Philips has 9 per cent share. VST accounts for 8 per and Phillips Morris International 3 per cent of the total pie.
“So far as the passive smoking is concerned, 30 per cent of the entire population get affected by the passive smoking in the indoor workplace; 7.4 per cent get affected in the restaurants; and 13.3 per cent get affected in the public transport,” the Trinamool Congress MP said.