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Patna,(BiharTimes): Health Minister Ashwini Choubey, said that as high as 54 per cent of the population of Bihar uses tobacco products leading to the loss of hundreds of lives every year.
Addressing a workshop on tobacco in Patna on Friday he said that about 2,200 people using tobacco products die everyday in India. Forty per cent of them die because of cancer. |
The minister said he would ask the medical officers of all government hospitals to strictly ban use of gutkha, bidi and other tobacco products outside the hospitals across the state.
Choubey also called for simplification of the Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution Act (COTPA) 2003, on cigarettes and other tobacco products.
The irony is that such a large number of people are taking tobacco, in particular smoking cigarette and bidi in public notwithstanding the setting up of State Tobacco Control Cell (STCC) in November last year. It was set up with the objective of enforcing the ban and curb the use of tobacco to check the growing number of deaths due to tobacco-related diseases.
The STCC was set up the line of National Tobacco Control Programme (NTCP).
It needs to be recalled that the STCC is currently running campaigns to spread awareness against the ill-effects of tobacco in seven districts of the state. These districts are Patna, Vaishali, Bhojpur, Munger, Darbhanga, Samastipur, and Katihar.
Later the campaign would be extended to all 38 districts.
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