Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 04, 2008
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Online edition of India's National Newspaper Monday, Feb 04, 2008 ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version |
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Tamil Nadu
Girls as young as five and seven initiated into chewing of tobacco Survey finds out that 16 per cent of youth smoke CHENNAI: Smoking usually starts as an experiment among children but soon turns addictive. Researchers across the country have found to their shock that children take to tobacco before they turn 10. Another alarming trend is that the gap between boys and girls using tobacco has fallen considerably. As the world observes Cancer Day on Monday, the World Health Organisation will lead the battle against tobacco-induced cancer. The theme this year is ‘Children and second hand smoke exposure.’ “We did a survey among schoolchildren aged 10-14 years in Chennai and found that by the age of 14 at least 50 per cent of them had tried smoking. Initially we thought that students experimented during the vacations after class X examinations. Then we found that children begin experimenting when they are in class V or VI,” says oncologist Ramnath Jayaram. During an anti-cancer campaign in a hamlet near Coimbatore some time ago, we found girls as young as five and seven had been initiated into chewing tobacco to stave off hunger, he says. Researchers are finding, to their dismay, that tobacco use is not an urban phenomenon.A study by a Mumbai-based agency states 5,500 youths in India succumb to tobacco addiction every day. Mumbai-based Healis Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health, that conducted the global youth tobacco survey in 2006, found that exposure to second hand smoke had not registered a significant fall. Researcher Mangesh Pednekar, involved in the survey, says: “At schools there has been no improvement in teaching children about the dangers of tobacco. Also, in the three years since we did the first survey there has been no fall in the sale of cigarettes to minors.” The pan-India survey involved 12,086 children in 179 schools and is representative of the population. The survey found that awareness of the exposure to second hand smoke in public places had improved slightly in urban areas. But, the prevalence of smoking among the youth had gone up from 4.8 per cent in 2000 to 15.9 per cent in 2006. More than two in 10 students currently use at least one form of tobacco, the survey found. “You can stop smoking if you want,” says A. Sharfudeen, secretary of the Laryngectomees Welfare Association of Tamil Nadu. For 15 years, he smoked 10-20 cigarettes a day until he lost his voice in 1998. His voice box was surgically removed, and he now uses an electro larynx. “My lifestyle has changed,” he says. He travels by bus and uses sign language with bus conductors. He had to learn to ignore comments from people who assume he is hearing and speech impaired. If we want to avoid inhaling smoke then we must be assertive, says Dr. Ramnath. “Smoking affects us. So let us not be too polite about telling the other person to stop smoking.”
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