E-poster Presentation 2014 World Cancer Congress

Anti tobacco campaigns in India and its impact on adolescents and young adults -A population based study (#677)

Nidhin Raj 1
  1. KIMS HOSPITAL,THIRUVNANTHAPURAM, Thiruvananthapuram, India


  In India, more than 2000 person die everyday and about 8 lakh people die every year due to tobacco-related diseases. Adolescents and young adults have been a very vulnerable population to start tobacco use at an early age and have serious helath impacts in later life. Inspite of the various strategies tried by the Govt  over the years, usage of tobacco goes up every year.


To have an overview of the various  anti tobacco campaigns in India and to assess its impact on a young population


The data was collected by questionnaire method.439 men of age between 18-29 years participated in the study. There were working men as well as students of which 37 % were  medicos and rest were non medicos. Of the 439 participants in the study  183  used some form of tobacco at any point of time


  Ban on public smoking and statutory warning on tobacco products had little impact on them. The campaign which worked well are the audiovisual ad with the tragic life story of a cancer patient and the one with  tar squeezing out of a smokers lungs. 37 %  of tobacco users had some impact,24.1%  reduced the amount of tobacco use and  13.6% quit tobacco.

Conclusions:  Over the years we have been focusing on educating them through awareness programmes via media/awareness camps. Even stringent laws came were brought in for the purpose. It is one of the rare situation where we have to scare someone to save them. But at the end of the day,that works.and that only works.we recommend similar audio/visual advertisements against alcohol use too.