India mulls growing medicinal plants as alternative to tobacco

India is committed to reduce production of tobacco by 50% in the next decade. The Centre has allocated Rs 1,000 crore for growing medicinal plants as an alternative to tobacco plantation

Union Health and Family Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said

India is committed to reduce tobacco production and manufacturing of its products by 50% by 2020 to comply with the UN Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Growing medicinal plants as an alternative to tobacco plantation is a step in that direction and Rs 1,000 crore have been allocated for the same. A part of it has already been sanctioned.

Currently, 1,00,000 hectares of land is under tobacco cultivation. With food crisis increasing in the country, the government may ask farmers to grow food crops as an alternative to tobacco. The Centre is making all efforts to put this land under cultivation for medicinal plants and other crops so that the farmers do not lose their job. The Health Ministry is jointly working with Commerce and Labour Ministry for growing alternative crops as well as rehabilitate the bidi rollers in the small and cottage industries.

Tobacco use is expected to kill six million people worldwide and drain $500 billion from the global economy each year, reveals the latest edition of the “Tobacco Atlas”. In India and China, over half a billion people consume tobacco.

A whopping 81% of the Indian employees interviewed said that they had found a new place to smoke ever since the ban on smoking at workplaces was implemented on October 2, 2008. On the bright side, the survey showed that 37% of the Indian employees were trying to reduce the number of cigarettes they smoked in a day.

Dr P C Gupta, who is the president of the World Congress on Tobacco or Health and the head of Healis, has time and again underlined the need for an all-round implementation of the ban.

He had said that “By next year, smoking will cause about 9,30,000 adult deaths each year in India, up from about 700,000 deaths per year in 2004.” This, he had felt, was reason enough for local governments and public bodies to implement the law on tobacco control.

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