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A hazy future?
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Though the ban on cigarette smoking seems to have had an impact on smoking in public, one wonders whether the effect will be sustained in the long run.
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THE ATP Indian Open at Chennai is a proud sporting event that has put the city on the international tennis map. Till last year, it was known as the `Goldflake Open'. A new sponsor has been found in response to the growing sentiment against such sponsorship and to fall in line with government policy. It has been an enduring irony that cigarette manufacturers should sponsor sports events all over the world.
The change has become all the more relevant with the recent Supreme Court directive banning smoking in public all over India. Cigarette manufacturers have flourished through the ages, thanks to smokers' continued craving for their products despite their prices going up every year. Unlike liquor manufacturers who use surrogate advertising to keep their brand image alive, cigarette companies have not taken this route in a big way, barring stray experiments.
The ban on smoking in public places has come as a delightful gift to the non-smoking public, a frustrated lot, harassed all the while by smokers polluting public spaces.
As for smokers, the ban is a deterrent that should clearly do their own health a world of good.
While banning smoking in public, Mr. Justice Narayana Kurup in his judgement in the Kerala High Court, made it clear that the harmful effects of smoking are reflected in government expenditure in public hospitals on treating persons affected by the habit, even exceeding the revenue derived from excise and other levies on tobacco products.
Tobacco being a veritable milch cow for governments, can they afford a fall in the revenue that may result from the smoking-ban in public places? Given the sizeable financial implications, will the government seriously implement the ban?
In Chennai, on the first day of implementation of the ban, a few hundred people were caught smoking in public places and fined by the police. In the long run, how effectively can the police enforce the ban?
How practical is it to regularly pick up people seen smoking on the road or in other public places and take them to court? Does our police force have the time, manpower and infrastructure to concentrate on smoking offenders, unless they institute a separate `anti-smoking squad'? What is the ground situation in Chennai?
A head constable doing duty at Ashok Nagar said that booking people found smoking in public was done only under specific orders from superiors. Even against specific complaints from non-smokers, all he could do was to ask the smoker in public to crush his cigarette.
Traffic warden P. Madhusudhan, who was regulating traffic near the Siva Vishnu temple in T. Nagar said that people must be educated about the purpose of the ban. He added, there was no system formulated yet like the mobile courts used to punish traffic offenders.
While a couple of non-smokers welcomed the move, a well-dressed young man near the Duraiswamy Road subway on his way to office with a cigarette in hand said that he had been smoking for the last three years. He would cover his cigarette if he saw a policeman or if it came to the worst, he would pay a fine, he said. He agreed that he was polluting the air around him.
In such cases, clearly the urge to smoke seems to subdue one's sense of social responsibility in public places. A petty shopkeeper attached to a juice shop on Venkatnarayana Road, T. Nagar, said that his cigarette sales had dropped after the ban. On the whole, not many people were seen walking with a cigarette in hand.
The ban seems to have had an impact on smokers in public but we have to wait and see whether the effect will be sustained in the long run.
But there are worse pollutants, not coming under this ban, causing harm to public health, and most of them are government-owned! The authorities have turned a blind eye to the atrocities that they cause.
These transport monsters belch out through their exhausts black smoke many times deadlier than the damage caused by tobacco smokers. Will the government ever actually succeed in removing "smoking" vehicles from our roads?
M. S. RAJAGOPAL
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