The harms of tobacco use and its adverse economic impact have been well established. What is not so well-known is that tobacco also poses a serious threat to the environment. It is one of the world’s worst polluters and cigarettes are the most pervasive single-use plastic product on our planet.
Accordingly, the focus of the World No Tobacco Day 2022 commemorated every year on 31 May is “tobacco and the threat to our environment.” Every year, WHO and partners join hands to raise awareness about harms of tobacco use by organizing year-long activities across India and the world in line with the theme of World No Tobacco Day.
On 31 May this year, the Government of Rajasthan organised an event in Jaipur as a finale to its 100-day tobacco-free Rajasthan campaign under the state government’s Nirogi Rajasthan initiative. On the day, more than 10 million people across Rajasthan took the pledge not to consume tobacco and drugs in offices, universities and in rural areas at 11:00 am.
The event inaugurated by the state’s Health Minister Mr Parsadi Lal Meena was attended by over 1700 participants including the state’s Health Secretary, Director General of Police, Mission Director-National Health Mission and representatives from Panchayati Raj, health, education, police, food, departments in addition to UN agencies and civil society organizations. The districts and blocks across the state were also connected to the event through video conferencing facilities.
Applauding this initiative, WHO Representative Dr Roderico H. Ofrin said that “This campaign has the potential to serve as a global template for stakeholder and community engagement. The governments innovatively designed 100-day campaign has been meticulously planned to synchronize activities across 33 districts, right up to the level of village panchayats, with active involvement of Panchayati Raj institutions and the community, to take tobacco control to the household level.”
Rajasthan has the distinction of being a pioneer in envisaging a three-tier Panchayati Raj system implemented for the first time in Nagaur in 1959. The strong anti-tobacco policies adopted by the Government of Rajasthan was visible from the Global Adult Tobacco Survey results, which observed that the number of tobacco users in Rajasthan decreased from 13.5 million in 2009-10 to 12.6 million to 2016-17. The Government of Rajasthan was a recipient of WHO’s World No Tobacco Day award in 2019.
This initiative has set the state on track to achieve yet another commendable initiative by resolving to become tobacco-free.
WHO has been working closely with the state government of Rajasthan on various health programmes including elimination of TB, sustaining gains of polio free status, hypertension control and very recently on creating state health accounts.