ANTI-SMOKING POSTER

WARNING:


SMOKING 
CAUSES
MALE SEXUAL IMPOTENCE

CLINICAL & RESEARCH NEWS-1

Smoking Cessation Harder 

For Women Than Men

Men and women are not created equally—at least not when it comes to quitting smoking.

Women may suffer greater smoking-related health problems and have a harder time stubbing out that last cigarette than do men, according to a review of recent research.

Kenneth Perkins, Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, reviewed more than 100 studies on smoking cessation and found that women appear to suffer greater risks of smoking-related diseases than men and tend to have less success than men when they try to quit smoking. The study appears in the May issue of CNS Drugs.

In regard to smoking-related health risks, one study showed that women had almost twice the risk of myocardial infarction than did men. Other studies pointed to greater risk of heart attack and stroke in women smokers who use oral contraceptives.

In addition, outcome studies on lung cancer led Perkins to conclude that, controlling for the amount of smoke exposure, women may have nearly double the risk of lung cancer as men. Recent research has identified a role for estrogen in increasing the lung cancer risk, according to Perkins.

Perkins also found some evidence that breast cancer risk may be increased among women who smoke, although he acknowledged that more studies are needed to replicate that finding.

Thus, smoking is especially dangerous for women, and the imperative to quit couldn’t be clearer. But it’s not that easy—especially for women, according to Perkins. “Treatment isn’t one size fits all,” he told Psychiatric News. “We can’t just say, ‘Here is a nicotine patch, now go and use it.’ Women have unique obstacles facing them.”

The research that Perkins reviewed suggests that women have more concerns about weight gain after they quit and greater susceptibility to falling back into old habits when faced with certain cues that trigger smoking, such as being around certain friends or experiencing specific moods.

Perkins also noted that men tended to benefit more from nicotine replacement therapy.

One study by Joel Killen, Ph.D., of Stanford University found that using nicotine gum resulted in abstinence from smoking twice as often in men as did using a placebo. For women, however, the nicotine gum didn’t help them to abstain from smoking.

Yet another study found similar results with the nicotine patch, where 17 percent of women but 24 percent of men were able to abstain from smoking with the treatment.

But women had a more positive response than men when it came to certain antidepressant medications. Perhaps due to the fact that depressed mood more often precipitates a smoking relapse in women, they are more likely to benefit from medications such as bupropion than are men, according to Perkins. Medications used to assist smoking cessation, such as clonidine and naltrexone, are also more effective for women, according to outcome studies.

Pregnant women, however, cannot take these medications since there is a significant risk to the developing fetus.

Finally, researchers are developing anti-smoking strategies that are tailored to women.

Perkins is currently involved in a counseling approach for women who are trying to quit smoking. Researchers at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic are using cognitive-behavioral therapy with women to reduce their concerns about weight gain.

The researchers are also using bupropion to see if it boosts the effects of therapy compared with placebo.

Smoking has resulted in the deaths of 3 million women since 1980, according to the Surgeon General’s recent report on women and smoking. It is also expected to cause 3 million more deaths per year among women by 2020.

“My message is not only for the smokers themselves but also for health care providers that there are many obstacles that crop up when people are trying to quit smoking,” said Perkins, who added that smokers should identify ways to cope with these obstacles before they emerge. “Often, people are faced with the situation that made them smoke, and they don’t have a coping mechanism in place,” he pointed out. ▪

MISSION DE-ADDICTION-1

The race begins to stop smoking with you

Summons to stop smoking is one of the most difficult tasks that many adults will be overcome. Cigarettes are easily accessible and socially acceptable, and may be difficult to follow. For other forms of chemical dependency addicts must completely from the culture that supports their habit to delete. If drug of choice, you can buy in supermarkets, but a much bigger challenge. While there are stories of people who were able to walk, is the most common history of struggle and repeated failure.

Perhaps the most important thing you can do if you decide you want to stop smoking is to help a friend or family member to win, drawing you to justice. Having someone there to encourage the street is more than any other product, stop smoking, you can buy. It is important to remember that smoking addiction as emotional, of course. Although various aspects of the medical community trying to argue both sides, it seems safe to conclude that two factors come into play, so be sure you have a great support to congratulate you, the consumer products selected to help you stop smoking.

Of course, there is a range of consumer products in order to help you stop smoking. Everything from chewing gum, patches right hand and hypnosis, to be able to reduce your cravings for cigarettes after. Some smokers have found these products can be useful to varying degrees, but it is important to remember that they are only tools. To complete the final decision must come from within or from you.

For many smokers to stop smoking, smoking might be a problem for others in their lives than by concern for themselves. The new parents decide that they want their children growing up exposed to tobacco smoke and grandparents decide that they want their grandchildren to let them know until adulthood. Family ties are important incentives and have the key to success for many adults who have stopped smoking.

If you choose, preferably with the help of your doctor, one of the commercial products to help you stop smoking, you should do a lot of research beforehand to know what to expect. Familiarize yourself with the benefits, as some will be reduced gradually over time, while others remain stable. It should also be a time for the effects that may occur, be ready.

In the struggle to stop smoking, the ultimate responsibility to you eventually. Although you can use the best products available and surround you with a strong support network, no help, if not stop the commitment to start smoking. Take the first step. Decided that it would be a slave to addiction and do what is needed to improve the quality of your life, and therefore the quality of life for your family.

WOMEN AND SMOKING-3

INFERTILITY and SMOKING      

Is a baby part of your future plans? Many women today delay childbirth until they are in their thirties or even forties, which can cause fertility problems even for nonsmoking women. But women who smoke and delay childbirth are putting themselves at a substantially greater risk of future infertility than nonsmokers.

The fact is women smokers have around 72 percent of the fertility of nonsmokers. When all other factors are equal, it is 3.4 times more likely that smokers will require over one year to conceive.

Increasingly, studies are showing that decreased ovulatory response, as well as the fertilization and implantation of the zygote may be impaired in women who smoke. Thought is also given that chemicals in tobacco may alter the cervical fluid, making it toxic to sperm causing pregnancy to be difficult to achieve.

We can't leave the men out on this one, though. Men smokers are 50 percent more likely to become impotent. Some of the toxic chemicals found in cigarettes may result in gene mutations that can cause miscarriage, birth defects, cancer, and other health problems in their children.

WOMEN AND SMOKING-1

Smoking:

The Women's Health Perspective

WARNING!

If You Are a Woman, Don't Smoke Cigarettes!

We all have heard the warnings-- cigarettes can cause cancer and increase our risk of heart disease. But the sad fact is that approximately 23 million women in the US (23 percent of the female population) still smoke cigarettes. Smoking is the most preventable cause of death in this country, yet more than 140,000 women die each year from smoking related causes. The highest rate of smoking (27 percent) occurs among women between twenty-five and forty-four.

Despite all the warnings today's teens have heard about the dangers of smoking, the reality is that almost all of the new smokers today are teenagers; over 1.5 million teenage girls smoke cigarettes.

Women smokers suffer all the consequences of smoking that men do such as increased of risk various cancers (lung, mouth, larynx, pharynx, esophagus, kidney, pancreas, kidney, and bladder) and respiratory diseases, but as women we need explicit cognizance about the numerous smoking-related health risks which are uniquely ours. This article explores these risks and, hopefully, provides women smokers the further perception and inducement, perhaps, needed to stop smoking.

ANTISMOKING ADVOCACY-1

 COLLATERAL EFFORTS:            

Smokescreen Consulting

Smokescreen Consulting is a technology firm providing internet-based solutions to advocacy efforts. Our primary target has been improving public health by reducing exposure to tobacco. To that end, we've developed the following websites:

• smokefree.net Email Lists and Letter-writing Campaigns
• tobacco.org Comprehensive and current tobacco news
• tobaccodocuments.org Huge collection of internal tobacco industry documents
• smokefreedc.org Advocacy Website for Smokefree DC
• tobaccovideos.org Tobacco commercials, news clips and testimony

ANTISMOKING LEGISLATION-1

Massachusetts Law Will Require

Cigarette Ingredient List

BOSTON - Massachusetts is about to become the first state to require the tobacco industry to divulge the exact ingredients -from chocolate to ammonia - in each brand of cigarettes, cigars, and chewing tobacco. Tobacco lobbyists complain the law is illegal, forcing them to reveal trade secrets to competitors. Besides, they say, the industry has already handed over a list of 599 ingredients found in cigarettes. But anti-smoking activists say the list does not give the exact amounts in each brand - critical in determining whether some cigarettes are more harmful than others. And they say letting people know exactly what they are inhaling, or chewing, would be a powerful way to get them to stop.
The result of the bill, passed by the Senate 39-0 last Thursday (7/25/96), may be public disclosure of "The List" of cigarette additives for the first time in history. Though manufacturers revealed their additives to the government in 1994, they were allowed to present a compiled list of 599--with no brands or amounts specified. In addition, the list was kept secret from the public. The Tolman bill (Sen. Warren Tolman, D-Waterford is chief sponsor) would require manufacturers to present their information to the Mass. Department of Public Health, which could then release the list to the public. Every food and every drug has to list its ingredients and tobacco products will now be held to the same standard, Tolman said.

©1996 Gene Borio, the Tobacco BBS

ANTISMOKING RESEARCH-1

New Research!

It is already known that nicotine stimulates the release of dopamine causing a high and often leading to addiction. But now there is evidence suggesting that nicotine might not be the only factor that hooks people on tobacco.

The following article appeared in Time Magazine. ^©1996 Time Inc. Reprinted by permission.

How Smokers Get Hooked

Take a puff of tobacco, and a blast of 4,000 chemicals fills your lungs, blood, and brain. The smoke delivers a strong hit - about 2 mg in each cigarette - of nicotine, a compound the U.S. Surgeon General in 1988 deemed an addictive drug. But is nicotine alone what hooks people on tobacco? Apparently not. According to a new report, smoking may exert yet another powerful addictive influence, one that enhances the effect of nicotine in what a leading researcher calls a "diabolical synergism."

In the new research, published in the journal Nature, scientists ran brain scans on smokers had 40% less of a brain enzyme known as monoamine oxidase B, or MAO B. The enzyme breaks down dopamine, a chemical messenger in the brain associated with feelings of pleasure. Because of its exquisitely satisfying effects, says Joanna Fowler, a chemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory and one of the study's authors, "dopamine is crucially important in reinforcing and motivating behavior."

Thus smoking appears to create a self-perpetuating cycle: less MAO B leads to more dopamine, leads to more pleasure, leads to more smoking, leads to less MAO B and so on.

Scientists have not yet identified what factor in smoke lowers levels of MAO B, but Fowler speculates that it may be working synergistically with nicotine to boost dopamine levels. Earlier research showed that nicotine also increases dopamine levels by gripping like Velcro to receptors clustered in the forebrain.

There may be an even more dangerous synergy at work, according to Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "Every substance that is addicting leads to an increase in dopamine levels in the brain," he says. That may help to explain why people who abuse another. Fowler likens the effect to creating a biochemical pathway or channel: "A drug may leave an imprint in the brain, so that the next drug becomes more pleasurable than it would otherwise." In short, the brain gets into a rut that just grows deeper and deeper.

COMBATING SMOKING-

Make Tobacco Companies Liable

To combat smoking, remove warning labels on packs

By Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan

THE QUESTION of smoking and what to do about it has never had a higher profile - complete with presidential pronouncements, proposed government regulations, industry counter-offers, and a range of litigation. Unless we reassess our goals and embrace the only viable solution -that is, holding the cigarette industry legally responsible for the health consequences of smoking - the industry will prevail. More children will begin smoking (recent government figures indicate that one in three high-school students reports having smoked within the preceding month, a sharp increase from just five years ago), and the pandemic of tobacco-induced disease will dominate the health scene for the next century. Thus far, five ineffective measures have been proposed by the Clinton administration, by the industry, or both:

• Let the Food and Drug Administration regulate cigarettes. Putting aside the question of legal authority, how could the FDA regulate tobacco as a drug without banning it? Cigarettes are neither "safe" or "effective" - the two criteria the FDA uses for regulating drugs - for any medical purpose.
  
• Make the warning labels stronger. Would a side-of-the-pack warning that "one in three smokers will die prematurely" deter a curious fifteen year old from lighting up? Proposed regulations like this one explain why the industry appears unconcerned.
  
• Let the federal government regulate nicotine levels. Do the tobacco companies recognize that it is the nicotine in cigarettes that keeps the customers coming back? And do the companies manipulate nicotine levels? Yes - and of course they do. But banning nicotine in cigarettes would be tantamount to banning cigarettes altogether. And placing limits that would serve to reduce nicotine levels would only encourage smokers to inhale more deeply and light up more frequently to satisfy their cravings. Addiction would hardly be discouraged.
  
• Stop advertising to kids. Who is a child? Eighteen-year-olds are fair and legal game for cigarette advertisers, but how can you devise an ad aimed at 18-year-olds that does not create interest in 15- and 16-year-olds? When you come right down to it, the purpose of cigarette advertising is to attract new smokers - and children are the only prospective new smokers. The idea that we can target just those ads "aimed at kids" is ludicrous.
  
• Let the industry handle marketing its own way - responsibly, this an oxymoron. How do you responsibly market a product that prematurely kills 500,000 Americans each year. The only effective solution to dealing with cigarettes is to hold the industry and its business partners -suppliers, advertisers, publications accept ads, vendors and the like - responsible for the health consequences of cigarettes. In other words, treat them the way we treat any other American corporation. The way to accomplish this - as counterintuitive as it may at first seem - is to move the congressionally mandated warning labels from cigarettes and cigarette ads.
  

The warning labels, which the industry ushered through Congress in 1965, relieve cigarette companies of the burden of giving specific, detailed information about the hazards of their products. Further, the warning labels are the reason the cigarette companies have never successfully been sued. The threat of litigation is powerful incentive to any company to stay honest, to inform customers of the exact nature of the risks involved with its products and to update them on any new findings. Because of the warning labels and the resulting near-immunity from lawsuits, the cigarette industry has had no reason to act responsibly.

If the labels were to come off-a move that would require an act of Congress - cigarette manufactures would scramble to protect themselves by putting full and detailed labels on their products. There is no way they would recycle the existing labels since such labels are, by current liability standards, inadequate to meet the standards of full disclosure.

Without the protection afforded by today's warning labels, cigarette companies would likely withdraw advertising as we now know it, because the images are inconsistent with reality, and could be used against them in court. Publications, vendors and others would re-evaluate their potential liability in promoting the sale of such dangerous products. Indeed, cigarette companies might even try to protect themselves by requiring purchasers to sign "informed consent" forms.

All these changes would occur without government intervention (beyond the act of Congress needed to remove the warning labels) and would precipitate economic and social changes that would lead to a natural decrease in the number of smokers. Removal of the congressionally mandated dated warning labels is our last, best; hope - and it should be advanced by everyone who is interested in real solutions, not shams.
Reprinted by permission - 

 Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan is president of the American Council on Science and Health in New York. 

ANTISMOKING NEWSFILE-4

Single Largest Cigarette Tax Hike Goes Into Effect Wednesday

WASHINGTON  - However they satisfy their nicotine cravings, tobacco users are facing a big hit as the single largest federal tobacco tax increase ever takes effect Wednesday.

Tobacco companies and public - health advocates, longtime foes in the nicotine battles, are trying to turn the situation to their advantage. The major cigarette makers raised prices a couple of weeks ago, partly to offset any drop in profits once the per-pack tax climbs from 39 cents to $1.01.

Medical groups see a tax increase right in the middle of a recession as a great incentive to help persuade smokers to quit.

Tobacco taxes are soaring to finance a major expansion of health insurance for children. President Obama signed that health initiative soon after taking office.

Other tobacco products, from cigars to pipes and smokeless, will see similarly large tax increases, too. For example, the tax on chewing tobacco will go up from 19.5 cents per pound to 50 cents. The total expected to be raised over the 4 1/2 year-long health insurance expansion is nearly $33 billion.

Smokers are mulling their options.

Standing outside an office building in downtown Washington last week, 29-year-old Sam Sarkhosh puffed on a Marlboro Light. His 8-year-old daughter has been pleading with him to quit, he explained, and he has set a goal to give up smoking by his 30th birthday.

"I'm trying to quit smoking, and it could help," said Sarkhosh, an information systems specialist. "I don't think it will stop me from buying cigarettes every now and then, but definitely not as often." A friend who smokes Camels went out and bought four cartons in advance, he said.

The tax increase is only the first move in a recharged anti-smoking campaign. Congress also is considering legislation to empower the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. That could lead to reformulated cigarettes. Obama, who has agonized over his own cigarette habit, said he would sign such a bill.

Prospects for reducing the harm from smoking are better than they have been in years, said Dr. Timothy Gardner, president of the American Heart Association. The tax increase "is a terrific public health move by the federal government," he said. "Every time that the tax on tobacco goes up, the use of cigarettes goes down."

About one in five adults in the United States smokes cigarettes. That's a gradually dwindling share, though it isn't shrinking fast enough for public health advocates.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says cigarette smoking results in an estimated 443,000 premature deaths each year, and costs the economy $193 billion in health care expenses and lost time from work. Smoking is a major contributor to heart disease, cancer and lung disease.

Public health officials are urging individual doctors and staff at telephone "quit lines" in every state to make the most of the tax increase by reaching out to smokers. But it's unclear how deeply the tax will cut into tobacco consumption.

Eric Lindblom, research director for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, says he expects a drop of at least 6 percent to 7 percent among young smokers.

Philip Gorham, who tracks the tobacco business for Morningstar, the investment research firm, said he expects an overall drop of 4 percent to 5 percent this year. What happens after that is less certain, especially as the economy recovers.

"I would expect a road bump this year," said Gorham. "But these companies will still be extremely profitable. I still think they will make their return on capital by wide margins in the long run."

Philip Morris USA, the largest tobacco company and maker of Marlboro, is forecasting a drop, but spokesman Bill Phelps said he cannot predict how big. Philip Morris raised Marlboro prices by 71 cents a pack early this month, and prices on smaller brands by 81 cents a pack. Other major companies followed suit.

The pricing moves raised eyebrows. "That's nothing more than greed," said Kevin Altman, an industry consultant who advises small tobacco companies. "They weren't required to charge that until April 1. They are just putting that into their pockets."

Responded Phelps: "We raised our prices in direct response to the federal excise tax increase, and people who are upset about that should find out how their member of Congress voted, and contact him or her."

Some policy analysts have questioned the wisdom of boosting tobacco taxes to finance health care for children. They argue that the fate of such a broad program should not depend on revenues derived from a minority of the adult population, many of whom have low incomes and are hooked on a habit. The tobacco industry is also warning that the steep increase will lead to tax evasion through old-fashioned smuggling or by Internet purchase from abroad.

But smoking control advocates such as Lindblom say tobacco taxes should be even higher. "There's a lot of room to go after cigars and smokeless," he said. "We are certainly hopeful that health care reform will include some more increases."

Standing outside a Washington department store, attorney Margaret Webster, 42, puffed on a Marlboro Ultra Light and lamented the fact that the government is reaching deeper into her pocketbook.

"I don't think we (smokers) like it," she said. "But I've heard so many people say they were going to quit when the price went up ... and they're still smoking."

ANTISMOKING NEWSFILE-3

European VAT, customs and trade alert

March 30 2010

Increase in Excise Duties on Tobacco Products   

The EU Council of Ministers has adopted a directive that amends existing EU excise duty legislation on tobacco products and narrows the differences between Member States’ tobacco taxation levels. In short, the directive calls for an increase in EU minimum taxation levels on cigarettes and fine cut tobacco products by 2014. For cigarettes, the directive allows a transitional period, until 2018, for countries that have not yet achieved (or have only recently achieved) the existing minimum rates. It also permits countries that do not benefit from the transition to impose a quantitative limit of 300 cigarettes on Member States that apply the transitional arrangements. The directive seeks to promote public health by gradually reducing tobacco consumption and to create a more level playing field for manufacturers by making taxation rules more transparent

ANTISMOKING NEWSFILE-2

Tobacco tax worries store owners

Premium cigarettes now cost up to $6.99 a pack, and regular cigarettes cost at least $4.25.

As of yesterday, mom-and-pop stores joined gas stations in increasing the prices of cigarettes, per the law signed Feb. 5 by Gov. Felix Camacho, which increases the tobacco tax from $1 to $3.

Some customers entered stores to ask, "Have you raised your prices yet?" while others simply walked in, glanced behind the counter, and walked back out, said Na's Market manager Smith Bae.

"I'm a smoker. Even me, I try to quit," he said, a light-green pack of cigarettes jutting from his own breast pocket. "It's very hard."

As a small store manager, he said he didn't understand how a tax increase would help people's health.

"Why only for the cigarette? What about the beer?" he asked, adding alcohol has far more adverse effects than smoking, such as causing vehicle accidents and bar brawls.

After having changed the price of cigarettes yesterday, he was worried the price spike may be bad for his business, though he said it was too soon to tell.

Before the tax hike was implemented, some customers tried to buy from him in bulk.

Meanwhile, Chalan Pago resident Liz Mesa, who smokes, said it would have been hard for people to buy in bulk before the price increase due to economic conditions. Cigarettes wouldn't have been on their list of top priorities, she said.

"Most customers knew about the tax hike thanks to media coverage," said Kyong Duke, a manager at Shine Market in Chalan Pago.

However, for a few disappointed, even angry, customers, store owners had to explain yesterday the price increase was caused by a change to local law.

"Some customers, they were not too nice," Duke said.

She said tobacco sales were very slow yesterday, just as one customer came in, asked if the price had been increased, and summarily walked back out.

Money for health

The money raised by the new taxes will go into the Healthy Futures Fund, a pool of money that can be appropriated by the Legislature for health agencies, substance abuse awareness programs and public safety programs. About a third of the money will go to the hospital, the Guam Cancer Trust Fund and the Guam Cancer Registry, according to Pacific Daily News files.

According to Mesa, whose carton usually lasts her about 15 days because she's "not a heavy smoker," some other longtime smokers may find it hard to kick the habit and may just cut back on other purchases.

Mangilao resident Mary Bamba, who sat smoking at the Sunshine Plaza in Chalan Pago-Ordot, said yesterday a lot of people she knew were getting mad about the increase.

"It's ridiculous," she said. "Gas goes up 10 cents and what? Tobacco goes up (more than) a dollar? That's too much."

And if the tax hike was supposed to deter people from smoking, she said most smokers "cannot quit just like that," though the price hike may help a select few.

"Maybe 10, 20 percent will quit," Duke agreed. "They'll be shocked at first, but they're going to continue."




Utah Tobacco Tax Hike Passes

April 01, 2010 - SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah Governor Gary Herbert let a $1 per-pack cigarette tax increase go into law without his signature, The Associated Press reported.

That tax, part of House Bill 196, also raise taxes on a number of tobacco products. The tax on cigars will increase from 35 percent to 86 percent of the manufacturer's sale price, while the tax on moist snuff will rise from 75 cents to $1.83 per ounce, according to the report.

Herbert repeatedly said he opposes increasing taxes, but the tobacco tax was built into the budget to which he and legislative leaders agreed, the AP reported. And Herbert said in a statement earlier this week that it would be fiscally irresponsible for him to veto the tax, as it would create an imbalance in the state budget, particularly in the areas of public and higher education, the report stated.
The tax takes effect July 1.

ANTISMOKING NEWSFILE-1

1.

Raise tobacco taxes to global levels: Report

New Delhi, Apr 8,2010 (PTI) The government should raise taxes on cigarettes and bidis to internationally recommended levels, a move that would save millions of lives and generate more than Rs 18,000 crore in revenues, a report said today.

Tax on cigarettes accounts for less than 40 per cent of the retail price of a package only today, which is far below the World Health Organisation recommended levels of 65-80 per cent, it said.

"Raising cigarette tax to 78 per cent of the retail price could avert 3.4 million premature tobacco-related deaths and raise about Rs 14,630 crore in new revenues for government each year," National Institute of Public finance and Policy (NIPFP) director M Govinda Rao said here today, while releasing the report on the 'Economics of tobacco and tobacco taxation in India,' prepared jointly by the NIPFP and the Centre for Global Health Research. 

ANTI-SMOKING ART-1

ANTI 

SMOKING

ART

A Painting by 

one of the 
greatest painters

VINCENT VAN GOGH



A SKULL WITH CIGARETTE

ANTI-TOBACCO INITIATIVES-1

Students ban tobacco around campus

Tobacco products such as zarda, khaini and talab may soon disappear from paan shops and kiosks located near
educational institutions in Manipur. The Democratic students Alliance of Manipur have announced a ban on the sale of
tobacco products inside and outside educational institutes.
The presidents of the students organization, said the sale of tobacco products inside educational institutions and
outside, within a range of 100 meters, would be banned completely. The decision was taken in view of the increasing
trend of schoolchildren turning into habitual consumers of these harmful products.
The organization has constituted a special task force to enforce the ban. The drive against tobacco products will include
poster campaign, distribution of leaflets and organizing awareness campaigns among the student community in
educational institutions. Most educational institutions are located close to paan shops. In some cases, these items are
reportedly available even inside the campus. The students’ organization said 30% of youngsters in the age group of 15-
25 are consumers of alcohol, drugs, zarda, khaini, talab and similar products. They have appealed to the authorities of
educational institutions to prevent students from leaving the campus during school hours. They said students who
owned two wheelers, left schools and colleges during class hours regularly to procure drugs and alcohol.