Editorial Team
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Written By: Editorial Team | Updated : May 31, 2014 9:50 AM IST
In recent times, B-town biggies like Shahrukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan have been pulled up for either smoking in public or promoting tobacco usage in their films. So it was heartening to see Bollywood actors and singers came together in a musical concert in Mumbai in support of World No Tobacco Day to generate awareness about the ill-effects of smoking and to generate awareness about cancer and other deadly diseases.
'People smoke, because they are not aware. They think smoking looks cool but it's actually not so, because it finishes you from the inside. Be it cancer, your lungs or heart diseases they all are associated somewhere to excessive smoking. So what is the need to smoke? Live long, live healthy and look young and look great that's what is important,' said actress Raveena Tandon.
The concert was organised by the Cancer Patients Aid Association at Rangsharda in Bandra and the event was also graced by Neetu Chandra and singers like Akriti Kakkar and Vishal Dadlani.
'We can't go and heal them, but through our music, if we can spread some awareness and bring everybody together, to sort of at least, make them believe in the fact that we all in our little-little ways can make a difference,' Akriti Kakkar said.
The theme of this year's campaign is 'Ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship'. It really is a burning issue right now and the authorities in India are also hell-bent on banning tobacco from the TVs, cinemas and other influential forms of media. There's enough evidence to support the belief that by curtailing tobacco display from mainstream media, impressionable youngsters will avoid taking up smoking.
The WHO estimates that the tobacco industry spends billions around the year in advertising, promotion and sponsorship. In countries like ours where direct advertising is banned, the tobacco industry usually adopts a technique called 'surrogate advertising' in which they promote other products to drill the brand name into the consumer. The long-term goal is a total ban on direct and indirect advertising, promotion and sponsorship, as provided in guidelines to Article 13 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, can substantially reduce tobacco consumption and protect people, particularly the youth, from industry marketing tactics. To be effective, bans must be complete and apply to all marketing categories. Read on to find out how you're being manipulated by tobacco companies.
