Don’t ban smoking, lend a helping hand

MUMBAI: It’s a sign of our times. If you can’t fix it, ban it. The countrywide ban on smoking from October 2, Gandhi Jayanti (how we love such symbolism!), smacks of tokenism.

I stopped smoking five years ago, so it’s not as if I’m affected by the ban. And I’m not even trying to be contrary and defending the right of people to puff their way to ill-health.

I just don’t believe it will work. Bans have never worked. Not on Simi. Not on the Bajrang Dal. Not on smoking.

You only drive the problem underground and make it that much more difficult to deal with. Granted, a ban will certainly make a lot of casual smokers give it up. But what about those addicted to tobacco. They need a helping hand, not the stick.

In the weeks leading up to the ban, we saw no sustained public campaign in office complexes and housing colonies highlighting the dangers of lighting up and offering guidance to help inveterate smokers kick the habit. Neither the government led by that compulsive do-gooder health minister Anbumani Ramadoss (never mind that the party his father founded made its name cutting down trees along Tamil Nadu’s highways) nor the voluntary agencies in the forefront of the ban smoking movement bothered to do anything of the sort.

And no one is clear on what exactly the law is. What is “public space”? Where can people smoke? What is the punitive action they face if they do? Who will interpret the law? The ambiguity leaves the door open for the petty tyrannies of the government machinery. Overnight smokers can end up being treated like hardened criminals.

So what will they do? Since this is India, probably bribe their way out of trouble.
Why don’t we, instead, make it compulsory for schools and colleges to regularly hold detailed lectures on the dangers to health from smoking, drinking and drug abuse, minus the moralising that usually accompanies any such initiative. We all know that to say “Don’t do that” is one of the surest ways of pushing a youngster to do it.

And who knows, a decade from now, smokers would have been reduced to a miniscule minority.
p_nair@dnaindia.net

COUNTERVIEW: Ban is fair, we can breathe fresh air