Journalism of Courage
With ten per cent of tobacco addicts in the country smoking beedis,cancer surgeons are amazed the product is not in the tax net. They are also upset that the government has only marginally increased tax on cigarettes.
Pankaj Chaturvedi of Tata Memorial Hospital said the government continues to sell cigarettes at a cheap rate as compared to other South Asian countries. He added that the finance minister has in fact disappointed the public health community by hiking tax on cigarettes by only 18 per cent. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) the taxes should be as high as 65 per cent,he said.
Raising tax on cigarettes is an eyewash. Considering that the increase is marginal,it will virtually have no impact on consumption, Chaturvedi said fearing that cigarette smokers may shell out more to smoke similar number of cigarettes as before. Failure to raise tax on smokeless tobacco has disheartened most cancer surgeons. They say that there is a rise in lung cancer among women also. India has the highest number of oral cancer patients with 75,000 to
80,000 new cases reported every year.
According to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS 2010) released in October 2010,nearly one third of Indias population is addicted to smokeless tobacco. Kamlesh Bokil,head and neck cancer surgeon at Ruby Hall Clinic,said that there is no control on beedi consumption and the ban on gutkha has come much too late.
