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With World No Tobacco Day on May 31, AIIMS doctors have recommended pictorial warnings on tobacco be extended to cover 80 per cent of the size of the packaging. Addressing a conference on Thursday, Dr S K Khandelwal, chief of the National Drug Dependency Treatment Centre (NDDTC) at AIIMS, said, “Our recommendation is that the warnings should be 80 percent, not the debated 40-45 per cent, and they should be as dramatic as possible. It must be understood that nicotine addiction is a medical problem like any other drug addiction and not just a habit as the tobacco lobby would like us to believe.” He said it needs preventive measures and it also has its own treatment, both medical and based on behavioural therapy.
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Doctors at AIIMS said tobacco use initiation is coming at a much younger age – at less than 10 years. “At a younger age, tobacco acts like a gateway drug meaning young tobacco users start using more drugs as they grow older,” Dr Khandelwal said.
The Global Youth Tobacco Survey is a cross-sectional poll that uses a two-stage cluster sample design to get a representative sample of schools and students. In India, a total of 12,086 students in the year 2006 and 11,768 in 2009 in the age range of 13-15 years were surveyed.
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