Smoking – It Kills
I would like to explore the basic Question in my mind.
Why do People Smoke.
Of all the reasons that I hear people talk , the most common I come across would be for the High that it gives you. Smoking is in the form of Cigarettes, hukka and drugs like Ganja , Charas, Heroin etc. Even though everyone knows the effects on the body , why do people smoke? What drives people towards tobacco?
We see that people generally fall prey to smoking during their teens or in college. There are many factors behind this as well. But one of the most common across multiple age group is Peer Pressure. Smoking becomes the “ IT” Thing. People who dont smoke are considers non-cool at a certain age and people who smoke start to consider themselves as rebellious or different from other people. There is also the feeling that Having a smoke with a Drink reduces any tension present in one’s life. That would be the chemical imbalance of the brain and and the hormones working which cause this effect.
What would help in reducing the number of people smoking in India?
We now see that there are Ad’s which are being shown while screening any movie about the ill Effects of Tobacco on our Body. Cigarette packs since years have the tag “ Smoking Kills” on it. But are these enough? Should there not be more involvement from the Government? Governement cannot randomly go ahead and impose ban on sale of tobacco products as multiple workers and farmers would go jobless. It cannot go ahead and increase the price of a cigarette . A Person paying 8 Rs now for a cigarette will not mind paying 10-15 Rs for a Cigarette as well.
So what should we do to reduce this? We need to put on our thinking caps and find ways to curb this menace.We now need think of some alternative way in which we can engage the farmers , the shop owners selling the cigarettes, the factory workers into some other work and try to find out ways in which we can reduce the no of smokers among the youth atleast.
Assuming that a person smoking 5 cigarettes per day is taken as an average for the No of Cigarettes being smoked all over India by the entire smoking Public of India for an Entire year. Price of 1 cigarette =8 Rs.
Money Being spent by the person in an Year= 5*8*30*12=14400 Rs.
As per the data available , In India we have 27.5 crore people who are smokers. Nearly 34 percent of Indians above 15 either smoke or chew tobacco. Assuming only 20 crore smoke and the rest chew tobacco, we have the below money being smoked away in fumes
20,00,00,000*14400=288000,00,00,000 Rs which is 2.88 Lakh Crore Rs being puffed away.
Considering the amount of money being invested into this , the amount of revenue it generates is huge. The amount of working opportunity is also huge. If we think with respect to hospitals, it would benefit them , for the illness caused by smoking results in high severity and is a major financial loss for the family and a benefit for the hospitals.
So the Question that I would like to ask is: The Smoke that we take in- Is it worth the Damage we cause to our body and to our Family?
References for the Figures:
Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/tobacco-users-in-china-and-india-the-lancet-tobacco-firms/1/213534.html
http://environment.about.com/od/healthenvironment/a/smoking_deaths.htm
Shridhar
MBA-ITBM, 2013-2015
