The Union Health Ministry on Thursday issued a much-awaited notification on the setting up of tobacco testing labs for the purpose of testing the nicotine and tar contents in cigarettes and other tobacco products.
These labs are being set up in order to strengthen the enforcement of Cigarettes & Other Tobacco Products (COTPA) 2003 to curb tobacco consumption in the country.
The tobacco testing labs to be set up in Mumbai, Guwahati and Uttar Pradesh would check for nicotine, ammonia and carbon monoxide for which the World Health Organization (WHO's) TobLabNet has already established Standard Operating Precedures (SOPs).
India is one of the few countries in the world to have these labs which will test all types of tobacco products in India and the only country in the South-East Asia Region.
Tobacco testing laboratories is one of the part of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO-FCTC) that India is part of.
By setting up of these tobacco testing labs, India has show it commitment to tobacco control, said a senior official from the Ministry
Tobacco is the only product that does not contains the contents and emissions.
According to the WHO, cigarettes contain 7,000 chemicals of which 70 are carcinogenic or cancer-causing agents.
In most countries across the world tobacco use is synonymous to cigarette smoking. In contrast, tobacco use in India is in multiple forms. Broadly there are two types of tobacco products that are commonly used: smoking tobacco and smokeless tobacco. Smoking tobacco products include bidis, manufactured cigarettes, hand-rolled cigarettes, pipes, cigars, hookah, water-pipes and some other smoking tobacco products like chuttas, dhumtiand chillum. Smokeless tobacco is used by either chewing or , applying to the teeth and gums, or inhaling.
Smokeless tobacco products used in India include chewing tobacco items such as betel quid with tobacco, khaini, gutka, paan masala with tobacco.
Smokeless tobacco products such as mishri, gul, bajjar, gudakhu, etc. are applied to the teeth and gums, and the snuff is inhaled.
There are almost 267 million tobacco users in India. Among adults, 28.6 per cent of the population currently uses tobacco products (men 42.4 per cent; women 14.2 per cent). 21.4 per cent of adults use smokeless tobacco (men 29.6 per cent; women
12.8 per cent). Among youth (ages 13-15), 14.6 per cent currently use some form of tobacco, the official added.