Indians reluctant to stub it out with 186 million tobacco users

India has the largest tobacco-chewing population in the world and the second-largest population of those who smoke it, reveals Global Burden of Disease 2019 by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

With over 186 million tobacco users in India, two in every three people who chew dry snuff tobacco the world over are Indians — 22.4 per cent men in the age group of 15-54 years in the country are tobacco smokers.

One in every two men and two in five women smoke more than five bidis (cigarettes made from tobacco wrapped in leaves) a day.

Tobacco use is the single leading preventable cause of death worldwide, according to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey conducted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, World Health Organization, and Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

Globally, around 8 million deaths are attributed to the use of tobacco every year. One in every five deaths is due to the harmful effects of tobacco.

It has been shown that around 50 per cent of long-term smokers die from causes directly linked to smoking, such as cancer, lung ailment, cardiovascular diseases, and stroke.

A smoker’s average life expectancy is 10 years lower than a non-smoker’s.

Tobacco kills nearly 1.35 million people every year in India. That’s 3,699 deaths a day on average, or 154 every hour.

The National Cancer Registry Programme 2020, released by the Indian Council of Medical Research, revealed that 27 per cent of all cancer cases in the country can be directly linked to the use of tobacco and/or consumption/inhalation of tobacco products.