Shoba Srinivasan comments : I'm fascinated by one thing though- despite the written warnings on the cigarette packets and the various advertisements showing really gross descriptions of what smoking does to the body-why do men and women and even children still smoke? Can they not read, and can they not see that it causes so much harm....?
Moizullah Tariq Malik comments : Tobbacco industry is financially very strong. Media needs ads for their survival and law-makers need election donations. The issue is how to fight it out. By making laws? Is law that much respected in our lands? I personally think that we should start first by marking no-smoking places like NO SHOULD SMOKE IN THE BUSES (as i personally hate the smell there) and many other public places and by this way the people get awareness.....even it is slow process BUT i believe it can work... Anyway, a noble cause..............thanks for the very informative article
Its a very difficult time for mothers of teenage daughters. They don't think of their health and the effects smoking is going to have on them. Women attain a manly voice due to smoking, they will not set good examples as mothers, they will blow money on gaining desease, addiction can make people use unfair means to make money and makes them defiant of practicing family values are some of my foremost concerns. These children are aware of all the ill effects of tobacco. They are not ready to give any hearing to their elders when it comes to such vices. My daughters give me example of one of their uncles whom they have seen smoking all their lives and he seems healthy to them. Thanks for providing info on women's health issues. It has given me a direction and more hope to get my daughters to quit. Another problem is most of their friends smoke too. even if they quit the smoke from their friends smoking is going to harm them even more. what should one do about that apart from breaking friendships?
Rajrani comments : Women who smoke can also read smoking is bad for health! its a choice they make. World should stop making all this noise for them.
Prof Rajendra Aggarwala comments : Social conditioning and pressures have usually been far more effective than passing laws or preachings on ill effects on health etc. In my young growing days during 40s and 50s, drinking(alcohol), smoking, premarital sex/sex outside marriage/visiting prostitutes/womanising were considered social evils universally among all middle classes and other 'respectable' families. Tobacco chewing was, however, not considered as much of an evil as smoking, presumably due to lack of understanding about its health hazards, or the habit of mixing tobacco with beetlenuts-a popular after meals concoction, or the practice of Hukka in the rural areas. For girls and married women, drinking and smoking and sex before or outside marriage were essentially taboo(at least in middle class societies-urban or rural), but even for young and older men they were the evils that were constantly hammered to be avoided. Such social conditioning was certainly very helpful in persuading these growing young men to either avoid such 'minor evils'(as were some of them defined) completely, or controlling them to a large extent. For growing boys or young men, their company in schools and colleges and personal example of their parents/close relatives provided effective(but not always foolproof) checks.
Times ,however, have changed drastically. Drinking limited to 'defence services' in the 50s, has spread wildly in Indian civil society, having become a fashion and almost a social norm. Smoking has changed from bidis to cigarettes for those who can afford the transition. Tobacco continues to maintain its sway having acquired more sophisticated brands. Premarital sex, which was substantially controlled due to non-availability of 'safe girls' for the purpose is getting glamorised. The last two decades have largely brought about much of these changes, thanks to the greater interaction with the western world(both boys and girls), growth of the MTV generation for a decade, and now with the availability of all sorts of pornographic materials over the internet. Bollywood has played no mean part in shifting the moral values due to its obsession with Hollywood morality, and plagiaristic creativity- particularly impacting the young girls during the last decade or two. Our magazines in India like FEMINA have been glamorising the 'bare body beautiful' of the fair sex, calling themselves 'The Women of Substance',(No, possibly 'The Women ON Substance'?!!). Drinking, smoking, and pre-marital sex(including dating) among young Indian girls largely emanates from the 'feminist movement' of trying to ape every thing western and an unnatural urge to 'equate themselves with men in all respects', without any appreciation of the fundamental differences between the two sexes.
What can be done to check or control this landslide in larger moral values and the damaging effects on health or even life by scourges like cancer, breathing problems, liver failure, birth defects in the newly born, and the ever expanding sexual diseases particularly AIDS, which is fatal. India today probably has the largest number of AIDS cases in the world and the numbers appear to be exploding. Time is not far off, when the epidemic will reach the middle class, if Indians do not reverse their moral slide by continuing to ape only western solutions to western maladies. They are not adequate for Indians. Indians need Indian solutions to problems that are essentially Indian- arising from aping others rather than from their own social, moral or instinctive impulses. Education and all other information based measures are fine but will never be adequate. We need to go back to our own roots in terms of social, moral and ethical values to reverse these dangerous trends. There are no short cuts.
