Alarming! Deadly tobacco killed 100 million young men in 100 years

Tobacco consumption has been responsible for nearly 100 million premature deaths in India among men below 35 years of age during 1910-2010, a leading international body has revealed. The startling figures are part of a report released recently by the Union South-East Asia Office, International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, in the Capital. Alarming The report, authored by Pranay G. Lal and Nevin Wilson, also stated that nearly 4.52 trillion cigarettes and 40.3 trillion bidis were produced over the 100-year period. Out of 100 million deaths, the share of bidi-related deaths was a staggering 77 million. The estimates, derived from the "most conservative datasets" by the researchers, presented alarming mortality estimates. Bidi is said to be the major agent of completely preventable, premature death among adult men in India. Bidis rapidly grew from 0.55 trillion annually in the mid-1970s to nearly a trillion every year by the end of the decade. In the mid-1990s, bidi manufacturing peaked and it is estimated that more than one trillion bidis were consistently produced annually. There was a decline in bidi production by 1998 and in subsequent years. In 2010, around 605 billion bidis were produced. "Although bidi production and consumption may be declining, the full effects of the high number of bidis By Neetu Chandra in New Delhi smoked from 1980 to 2010 will be felt from 2015 till at least 2050," according to the report. "Cigarettes will resurge in the coming decades as smokers are expected to graduate from bidis to cigarettes, and more new smokers are likely to take to smoking cigarettes than bidi," it said. Data was widely collected from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ministry of Finance and Agriculture and Food Ministry for deriving the results.