Tobacco use down 27.6% in state: Survey

  • | Sunday | 18th February, 2018

PATNA: The Global Adult Tobacco Survey 2 (GATS-2) for the year 2016-17 revealed that the prevalence of tobacco use in Bihar has dropped from 53.5% to 25.9% in the last seven years. “We wanted to reduce the production of tobacco through the increase in taxation,” Kumar added.The state health department recently banned the sale of loose cigarettes in the state. The survey fact sheet was released by state health minister Mangal Pandey on Saturday.Interestingly, the prevalence of tobacco use among youngsters in the age group of 15-17 year decreased from 21.7% to less than one per cent during the survey period of 2009-10 to 2016-17.The survey also stated that 43.4% of men and 3.6% of women in the state consume tobacco in all forms. It is made under WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) to generate comparable data within and across countries.Health department principal secretary Sanjay Kumar said the state government plans to introduce farming of alternate crops in place of tobacco. “We need to target the districts where tobacco is cultivated.

PATNA: The Global Adult Tobacco Survey 2 (GATS-2) for the year 2016-17 revealed that the prevalence of tobacco use in Bihar has dropped from 53.5% to 25.9% in the last seven years. The survey fact sheet was released by state health minister Mangal Pandey on Saturday.Interestingly, the prevalence of tobacco use among youngsters in the age group of 15-17 year decreased from 21.7% to less than one per cent during the survey period of 2009-10 to 2016-17.The survey also stated that 43.4% of men and 3.6% of women in the state consume tobacco in all forms. Besides, out of 5.1% smokers in Bihar, 6.6% are men and 3.4% are women, whereas the use of smokeless tobacco accounts for 23.5%, of which 41.4% are men and 3.6% are women.“The yearly casualty due to TB in the country as of now is 4.8 lakh while 10 to12 lakh people die from various diseases caused by the consumption of tobacco in the country every year. We need to set up a time limit for making Bihar tobacco-free, similar to that of TB eradication by 2025 and reduce it even to less than the present 25.9%,” Pandey said.The GATS-2 report is a national representative survey, readied by the Union ministry of health and family welfare with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). It is made under WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) to generate comparable data within and across countries.Health department principal secretary Sanjay Kumar said the state government plans to introduce farming of alternate crops in place of tobacco. “We need to target the districts where tobacco is cultivated. Such districts are Samastipur, Vaishali and Muzaffarpur. We have to work out the economics as to how much it costs to produce tobacco per acre and replace it with an alternative crop,” said Kumar.With the introduction of GST, the tax slab on tobacco products was increased from 5% to 28%. “We wanted to reduce the production of tobacco through the increase in taxation,” Kumar added.The state health department recently banned the sale of loose cigarettes in the state. “This was done so that the 85% pictorial representation of the diseases due to tobacco on the packet of the cigarette gets disseminated among the masses, when they purchase the entire packet,” said Kumar.

If You Like This Story, Support NYOOOZ

NYOOOZ SUPPORTER

NYOOOZ FRIEND

Your support to NYOOOZ will help us to continue create and publish news for and from smaller cities, which also need equal voice as much as citizens living in bigger cities have through mainstream media organizations.


Stay updated with all the Latest Patna headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.

Related Articles