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Submitted by PatientsEngage on 2 September 2015

Curbing smoking is very important to India for two reasons:

About one million Indians die from smoking-related causes every year, which are among the top three ways to die.
Smoking also saps Indians of money; more money, it emerges, than it earns for the government.

Indians aged 35 to 69 spent Rs 104,500 crore ($15.9 billion) in 2011 on diseases associated with tobacco–including cancer, respiratory diseases, tuberculosis and cardiovascular diseases. This figure is almost six times as much as central-excise tax collections from all tobacco products that year, according to the Government of India, WHO and the Public Health Foundation of India.

To put the health cost of tobacco in further perspective, it exceeded the combined annual state and central government expenditure on health care by 12% in 2011.

Bidi smokers make up 61% of the nation’s 120 million smokers, according to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) 2010. This is a conservative estimate. Some studies peg the numbers of bidi smokers higher, at 73%, even 85%.

Bidi smokers face a higher risk of developing potentially-fatal chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), among other illnesses, because tobacco is packed more loosely in bidis, requiring smokers to inhale more strongly.

Bidi workers and rollers exposed to tobacco dust had a six-fold higher incidence of respiratory impairments, such as breathlessness and cough, reported a 2006 study in Murshidabad, West Bengal.

Many women workers suffer gynaecological problems and pregnancy complications. This should be a concern, as 90% of the workforce is female.

This was in an article in the The Wire which is now not accessible

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