As US shows dramatic results, India is getting shrouded in smoke.
By Rajiv Theodore
NEW DELHI: More than 110 million people smoke cigarettes in India – with over 98 million men, and over 12 million women – but the women smokers outdo their male counterparts when it comes to puffing away daily: an average Indian female smoker consumes seven cigarettes a day, compared to men, who average six per day.
The repercussions from this habit: tobacco claims a million lives every year in the country. Also, an average Indian woman is taking up smoking at 17.5 years as against 18.8 years among men.
Globally, between 1980 and 2012, those who smoked increased from 721 million to nearly one billion across the globe with about 6.25 trillion cigarettes puffed away, reports a study published in the Journal of American Medical Association.
Compared to India, China, who had 182 million smokers in 1980, had nearly 282 million in 2012, the report said. And India’s average cigarette smokers pale in comparison to countries like Saudi Arabia, where smokers averaged 35 cigarettes per day, with Taiwan shrouded in smoke at an average of 32 cigarettes a day.
In the US, some dramatic changes have come about in smoking habits of the populace: since the Surgeon General’s first 1964 report 40 years ago, which created awareness to lung cancer – the number of smokers in the U.S. has dropped, from 52 million in 1980 to 38 million in 2012. The fraction of Americans who smoke has subsequently also fallen by more than half, from 42 percent in 1964 to 18 percent in 2012.
The report, “Smoking Prevalence and Cigarette Consumption in 187 countries, 1980-2012,” executed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, says that the prevalence of smoking among Indian men fell from 33.8 per cent in 1980 to 23 per cent in 2012. However, female smoking prevalence in 2012 was 3.2 per cent, virtually the same as in 1980.
The news has alarmed the medical fraternity here, for obvious reasons too. Consider these statistics– Cancer killed 5,56,400 people across the country in 2010. According to the Lancet, the 30-69 age group accounted for 71 per cent (3, 95,400) of the deaths. In 2010, cancer alone accounted for 8 per cent of the 2.5 million total male deaths and 12 per cent of the 1.6 million total female deaths in this age group.