PMK leader and former Union Health Minister Dr Anbumani Ramadoss is thrilled as the Jayalalithaa government has responded positively to his long-standing demand that gutka and other chewing tobacco products be banned since they are among the most dangerous addictive health hazards for the youth.
Health experts and NGOs in the state have been worried over the use of gutka and tobacco, especially among the younger generation and hope that a nationwide cancer mortality study, which underscores the massive health burden of tobacco, will galvanise the state and central governments into action and prevent hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths annually.
Tobacco use is estimated to have caused nearly 1,20,000 deaths across India in 2010, according to a research carried out by the Toronto-based Centre for Global Health Research (CGHR) in partnership with Mumbai’s Tata Memorial Hospital.
Nearly 6,00,000 Indians die of cancer every year with over seven in 10 deaths (71 per cent) in the 30-69 age group, the most productive period of a person’s life, the report published in the Lancet medical journal, states.
“As Chennai is emerging as a capital of oral cancer, the state government should immediately give effect to the ban,” Dr Anbumani said, adding that the public health directorate of Tamil Nadu had sent a proposal to the state government to ban gutka and other cancer-inducing tobacco products, and the government was taking steps to implement it. This was conveyed to him by the Director of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, he said.