Clearing the haze

WHO had launched a similar campaign against smoking during the last Winter Olympic Games at Salt Lake City two months ago. Due to the support by the International Olympic Committee IOC and its partners, the campaign proved a grand success. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General of WHO, was in Salt Lake City for the Games and congratulated IOC for recognising the dangers of using tobacco and making the Olympics tobacco free.

Tobacco kills over four million people every year, constituting the single largest preventable cause of death around the world. As tobacco consumption increases all over the world, especially among young people and people in the developing countries, it is estimated to kill more than 8.4 million people by 2020.

WHO says tobacco is a communicated disease 8212; communicated through marketing, advertising and promotion. The Tobacco Free Sports initiative seeks to not only protect spectators and athletes from tobacco use and exposure to second-hand smoke but to also ensure that sport is not misused to market a deadly product. The partners in Tobacco Free Sports initiative include FIFA, Federation Internationale de L8217;Automobile Association FI, Olympic Aid and the US centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Tobacco companies pump millions of dollars every year into sporting events worldwide. In the US alone, according to the Federal Trade Commission, the major domestic cigarette companies reported spending 113.6 million on sports and sporting events in 1999. In countries where direct tobacco advertising is banned by law, sponsorship of sports amounts to a cynical manipulation of national laws. Despite a federal ban on tobacco advertising on television, it is estimated that tobacco companies achieve the equivalent of more than 150 million in television advertising every year in the US through their sponsorship of motors sports events.

During the Wills World Cup cricket in 1996 in India, a survey showed that smoking among Indian teenagers increased five-fold. Yet, in India, Tobacco Free Sports is not taken seriously. The laws are in place but nothing is done to implement them. In the capital, cigarette and paan masala shops are located near stadiums. The Ferozshah Kotla cricket stadium has a paan shop inside the precincts.

It will be befitting if the Indian Olympic Association takes a cue from the IOC and makes the upcoming National Games at Hyderabad, smoke-free.