Even after six years of official ban of gutkha in the State, still 39 per cent of the children in slums in the city are unaware of the notification, revealed the Salaam Jeevan, a voluntary organisation working on tobacco control, in its report released on the occasion of World Tobacco Day on Friday.
As many as 300 children aged between 10 to 18 years residing in three slums in the Bhubaneswar city were randomly interviewed on various aspects like awareness on harmful impact of tobacco, cancer and its warning stages, anti tobacco legislation, role of guardians and related psychosocial scenarios.
It was revealed that 73 per cent of children are consuming gutkha, pan masala and other forms of tobacco stuff and the average age of starting of tobacco consumption in any form is 12. As per the Section 6 of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA), 2003, tobacco stuff will not be sold to or by minors in the country, but it seems contrary.
While the COTPA, 2003 prohibits the sale of tobacco within 100 yards of educational institutions, the study revealed that 66.3 per cent of children are of the opinion that they have seen the sale of tobacco stuff very closed to the schools.
Similarly, 45.6 per cent of the children have seen the advertisements of tobacco stuff in media. Despite ban of add of tobacco stuff, many media houses give the Ad of tobacco stuff in a surrogate way.
The stud done by chief researcher Md Imran Ali, field data collectors Bijoy Kumar Sahu, Bandana Sahu, Sameer Ranjan Mahamallik and psychometric analyst Sareeta Behera said that 78.2 per cent of children agreed to quit tobacco if they are subjected to regular counselling support, motivation and follow up.