Save Your Child from Tobacco: Citizens Awareness Group & Consumer Voice

40 lakh tobacco consumers in Punjab

Rinki Sharma, Head Projects for Consumer Voice briefed media about the increasing vulnerability of school children to tobacco products which requires strict implementation of COTPA

Citizens Awareness Group and Delhi-based NGO, Consumer Voice, underlined the need for strict implementation of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution Act, 2003 (COTPA) in the region to protect children from tobacco consumption.

Addressing media here today at Hotel Aroma, Rinki Sharma, Head Projects & CSR for the Voluntary Organisation in Interest of Consumer Education (VOICE) said that the need is to strictly ensure the implementation of the Act especially where the lives of school children and youth to tobacco products is at stake.

An Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) report says that tobacco use accounts for about 30 percent of all cancers in men and women in India while tobacco related cancer accounts for 42% of the male deaths and 18.3% of female cancer deaths.

According to National Family Health Survey 2015-16, in the past one decade, the number of men using tobacco products in Punjab has increased from 19.2% to 34%, and Chandigarh itself has 17 percent population consuming tobacco.

(L-R) Surinder Verma, Chairman, Citizens Awareness Group
with senior cancer specialist, Dr S M Bose, and Consumer Voice
Head-Projects Rinki Sharma.

Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) India in its 2016-17 reports that out of the total population in Punjab, 7.3% smoke tobacco and 8% use smokeless tobacco. 

Dr S.M. Bose, former senior professor and head of Surgery and Emergency in PGI, who has also authored a book, among others, on ‘Cancer’ said that tobacco is a slow poison and there should be total ban on its consumption.

Not only it causes direct cancer but also effects various other organs causing peptic ulcer, esophagus cancer, prostrate, urinary bladder, and pancreas, he said.

He lamented to increasing trend amongst urban women to adopt smoking which the studies have proved cause breast cancer too.

Author of book on cancer, Dr S M Bose, voiced
total ban on tobacco.

Dr Bose said 114 people die every hour in India due to tobacco use, and expressed his dismay at the results of a recent survey by PGIMER in 25 government schools of Raipur Rani where it found 25 percent children consuming tobacco.

Surinder Verma, Chairman, Citizen Awareness Group, informed that along with Consumer Voice special initiatives are being taken to sensitize all stakeholders and would be approaching the authorities to effective implementation of COPTA, by not only banning the use of its sale within 100 yards of the school premises as also making licensing of the vendors selling cigarettes and all type of tobacco products.

Rahul Mittra’s Production ‘Sahib Biwi aur Gangster III’ to be released on 27th July

The third edition of ‘Sahib Biwi aur Gangster’ with Sanjay Dutt on the lead is due for release in July 27 this year, informed award-winning producer Rahul Mittra, the Chandigarh-lad who made it big in the Bollywood.

Winner of best producer award at numerous international film festivals including Poland , Norway, Vietnam and winner of 2017's Amity Leadership Award among others, Rahul Mittra was in the city today to meet with his classmates from St. John’s High School from 1987 batch.

“It is always exciting to come to your home town where I spent my childhood and had great time in the school which taught me to excel in every field,” Rahul quips.

His next venture is on suicide-bomber kids with Sanjay Dutt in the lead as an army doctor posted in Afghanistan, called “Torbaaz”

The film has been shot in geographically isolated highly mountainous terrain, Kyrgyzstan, and would be released sometimes end of this year, Rahul informed.

“I must move on from one space to another, and next venture probably would be on the digital front,” he announced.

Sharing his memories of the school, he said: “I was a great story-teller always in school and started writing in my 9^th and 10^th for the school magazine, as well as for the local daily.”

Rahul lost his father, a senior IAS officer in Punjab Government,  in 1988 in a helicopter crash, and he immersed himself in studying hard and entered the field of journalism, and moved on to corporate communication, marketing, media and events management, promotions, before landing up in Bollywood to try his hand as film producer. 

“Without any godfather, I moved into the industry with professional communication skills having had tough grounding in varied aspects, getting into this complicated art of cine production somehow appeared easy for me,” Rahul said who is a well-respected studio head in Bollywood.  

His first production of Sahib Biwi aur Gulam (SBG) with Randeep Hooda was a box-office hit and thereafter there was no looking back, with SBG becoming a franchise of which the audience will see the third edition this July.

 His earlier movies that received people’s appreciation include Saheb Biwi aur Gangster, Saheb Biwi aur Gangster Returns, Revolver Rani, Bullet Raja, Sarkar 3, Daddy, etc., that gave him the opportunity to work with some of the Bollywood’s top actors like Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt, Saif Ali Khan, Arjun Rampal, Irrfan Khan, Randeep Hooda, Jimmy Sheirgill, Kabir Bedi, Kangana Ranaut, Sonakshi Sinha, Chitrangda Singh, Mahie Gill, Nafisa Ali, amongst others.