This refers to the report "Ban soon on sale of loose cigarettes" (November 26). It is the youth who are the most vulnerable since they start by taking up smoking as a fad, later accentuated by peer pressure. Their curiosity, adventurousness and risk-taking mental disposition make them experiment and try something different in life. Despite warnings on cigarette packets and from the media, about the harmful effects and life expectancy lost for each pack, they smoke since they think death is far away. Smokers enjoy their cigarettes and the smoke which emanates, unmindful of passive smoking.
R J R Nabisco had to withdraw its brand of smokeless cigarettes from the market, when it found smokers in fact enjoyed the smoke. Though steps such as banning the sale of loose cigarettes, bigger warning on packets and increasing the legal age for sale of tobacco products to 25 years are welcome, the change has to come from within. Also, in the interest of the health of the nation, the problem has to be tackled at the grass roots of tobacco growing, despite the powerful tobacco lobby repeatedly asserting its contribution to the national economy.
T S Karthik Chennai
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