Smokeless tobacco consumption on rise

26 June 2010, 18:00 PM

Staff Correspondent

Speaker at a roundtable in the city yesterday said smokeless tobacco consumption poses massive health risk to women in Bangladesh with its use on the rise. They said about 1.5 crore women consume smokeless tobacco in Bangladesh. They said non-smoking products such as chewing tobacco (jarda) and gool are equally harmful as cigarette yet it is not defined as a tobacco product in the Tobacco Control Act 2005. This calls for amendment to the act, they said. Like cigarette packets, warnings on the jarda or gool packaging should be made mandatory by law, they said. Speakers urged the government to make selling tobacco to minors illegal and increase the fine for smoking in public places, which is now only Tk 50. The roundtable on 'Gender and tobacco with emphasise on marketing to women' was organised by Consumers' Association of Bangladesh (CAB) and World Health Organisation (WHO) at the Cirdap auditorium in the city. Presenting the keynote paper, Taifur Rahman, chairman of Progga, said chewing tobacco with paan (betel leaf) is a custom while its harmful effect does not usually get much attention in the campaign against tobacco. He said chewing tobacco causes oral and pancreatic cancer, among many other health problems. He said a gendered perspective in tobacco control policies is necessary as women smokers are on the rise in South Asia. Most of the anti-tobacco campaigns are aimed at men while women are bigger users of chewing tobacco than men. Women are also at serious health risk due to exposure to second hand smoking, he said. There are about 40 million cigarette smokers in Bangladesh, of which only 0.7 percent are women. About 42 million are exposed to second hand smoking, of which 10 million are women. State Minister for Law Advocate Qamrul Islam stressed the need for discouraging farmers to cultivate tobacco providing them with alternative options. Ubinig Executive Director Farida Akhter, Dr Iqbal Kabir and CAB Secretary General Humayan Kabir Bhuiyan also spoke at roundtable.