India has seen a decline in tobacco consumption among the youth. The findings of the survey show that currently, 8.5 percent of youth in the age group of 13 to 15 years in India use tobacco in some form or the other. In the year 2009, this rate was 14.6 percent. 9.6 percent of boys and 7.4 percent of girls in India use tobacco in some form or the other.
The survey found that Himachal Pradesh has the lowest tobacco consumption among youth at 1.1 percent and Arunachal and Mizoram have the highest tobacco consumption among youth. There, 57.9 percent of the youth in the age group of 13-15 use tobacco.
Madhya Pradesh has been ranked 29th in India in a survey conducted by the Global Youth Tobacco Survey on the use of tobacco and cigarettes among youth in different cities across the country. They did this survey in 2019 regarding smoking monitoring and tobacco control. They released the findings of the survey conducted in the year 2019 by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on 10 August.
Under this survey, the youth of 13 to 15 years were also included. They did this survey among a total of 80 thousand 772 students of 987 schools in India. During this survey, the teams also went among the students of private and government schools of Indore. The survey was conducted by the International Institute of Population Sciences, Mumbai under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
The Global Youth Tobacco Survey also estimates the age of onset of tobacco use, the age of exposure to indirect smoking, tobacco advertising, etc. The survey also pointed out that only 37.8 percent of youth in the classroom were taught about the harmful effects of tobacco use. It was also found that 19.5 percent of the youth smoke in school which is quite worrying. The average age of onset of cigarette consumption among youth in India is 11.5 years, bidi is 10.5 years, and smokeless tobacco is 9.9 years.
3.9 percent of the youth of the state use tobacco
Madhya Pradesh ranks 29th in India in terms of tobacco use among youth. In Madhya Pradesh, 3.9 percent of youth (13-15 years of age) use some form of tobacco, compared to the national average of 8.5 percent of youth. Mukesh Kumar Sinha, Executive Director, Madhya Pradesh Voluntary Health Association said that the survey of Global Youth Tobacco shows that tobacco consumption among youth has declined as a result of significant efforts in tobacco control, but we should not be satisfied because in India Indicates a total of 8.5 percent tobacco use among youth. In such a situation, we still need a lot of effort to ban tobacco and cigarettes.
