The World no tobacco day passes away as any other day for the nation of billions, except that some leaders talking about the ill effects of tobacco. I just remembered an old quote while a statesman said that he saw many smokers abandoning the dreadful tobacco. On questioning where, he replied in the obituary page. Well a part of the statement to be laughed upon, but on the other side of the coin the gross reality dawns. Researchers from the Informatics Program at Children's Hospital Boston and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health monitored news promoting the stopping of smoking in seven Latin American countries. They also looked at Internet queries for cessation, and found they increased as much as 84% on that day, compared with other days.

Douglas Bettcher, director of the Tobacco Free Initiative of the World Health Organization, says that almost 6 million people die from tobacco each year. The study shows that the World No Tobacco Day promotes awareness and interest in quitting, Joanna Cohen of Bloomberg School's Institute for Global Tobacco Control says. In a statement, she called the day an "effective reminder and inspiration." Their findings appear in the May/June issue of Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Some Indian facts gathered from online are given below purely for reader enrichment:
1.    Approximately 120 million citizens of India are smokers (among the largest in the world)!
2.    The Indian tobacco industry sells 102 billion cigarettes every year!
3.    An estimated 240 million people in India use tobacco!
4.    40% of deaths in India directly or indirectly occur due to tobacco intake!
5.    Smoking is more prevalent among rural women, with 2% of them being active smokers, as compared to only 0.5% women smokers in urban areas in India!
6.    More than 11% Indian women consume tobacco products!

Cigarette smoking is terribly harmful. Ghutka isn’t safe either. Burning tobacco and inhaling it is the most serious danger of tobacco use. This is the twenty fifth anniversary of the day. Yet billions smoke away to perish across the globe. (With Inputs from Internet- Aarkay)

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