Smoking one pack of cigarettes a day,
Takes from your life a few years away!

Cigarette smoking is a nusiance,
Give up smoking - with no repentance!

Do not let tobacco destroy YOU,
But let tobacco be destroyed BY YOU!

Winners quit smoking,
And enjoy a healthy living!

When we can’t give the next generation,
A world free of pollution!

Lets’ tell them we do care,
And give them atleast homes with fresh air!

Shachi Saluja
DLDAV Model School
Pitampura
Delhi, India

Imagine a person ( Indian) who smokes 2 packets of cigarettes per day , he continues smoking for 15 yrs and finally he dies due to some tobacco related diseases.

Can you guess roughly how much money he would have spend for buying cigars during this period ??? 

It comes to around  273750  rupees. 

1 pkt = Rs. 25

So 2 pkts for 1 year = 50 * 365 = 18250 rupees.

so for 15 yrs  = 273750 rupees.

Do you know the gravity of this amount ?????

This much amount is sufficient for a 4 membered family to get rice   for around 100 years .

for a 4 membered family , cost of  rice per day = Rs.7.5  (for 0.5  kg)

for 1 year it is  = 7.5 *365 =  2737.5 rupees.

so with 273750 they can live around 273750 /2737.5 =  100yrs

Here are a few simple solutions to making workplaces smokefree which, if incorporated into the system, can bring a sea change.

Educate co-workers about secondhand smoke.

Propose adoption of an effective clean indoor air policy for  workplaces, if needed.

Rally support and assist in adoption of a clean indoor air policy.

Sample policies and literature presenting facts of special interest to employers about secondhand smoke are available.

Employers decide to go smoke-free based on many things including (a) learning how it can help their business, (b) comments from cus-tomers, and (c) encouragement from employees.

In India section(4) of The Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products Act, 2003 prohibits smoking in public places.  Any violation of this Act is a punishable offence with fine upto Rs200.

Public place as defined in the Act and the rules means any place to which the public has access whether as of right or not and includes all places visited by general public and includes:

*Auditorium
*Hospital Buildings
*Health Institutions
*Amusement Parks
*Restaurants
*Hotels
*Public Offices
*Court Buildings
*Educational Intitutions
*Libraries
*Public Conveyances
*Open Auditorium
*Stadium
*Clubs
*Hookah Bars(where smoking takes place)
*Railway Stations
*Bus stops
*Workplaces
*Shopping Malls
*Cinema Halls
*Refreshment Rooms
*Discotheques
*Coffee Houses
*Pubs
*Bars
*Airport Lounge

But public place does not include open space example parking space, roads, open market places, parks, private homes etc.

To promote tobacco free schools it has been suggested to include ‘Tobacco Control in the Cirriculum at all Levels’.  All educational institutions have beenm directed to display ‘No Smoking Area’ at the entrance

Shachi Saluja
DLDAV Model School
Pitampura
Delhi

According to the survey released by Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI) Tuesday, majority of people agree that “all workers in India should be protected from exposure to second-hand smoke in workplaces”.

A randomly selected sample of 1,026 respondents in four metros of the country - Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata - were interviewed in December last year.

“Majority of Indians support prohibition of smoking inside public places, including workplaces, restaurants and bars and an overwhelming 99 percent of Indians strongly favour enforcement of smoke-free rules in work places in order to provide comprehensive protection from second-hand exposure to tobacco smoke,” the survey found.

Further, as many as 92 percent of respondents stated that exposure to second-hand smoke constitutes a serious health hazard for non-smokers.

In India, smoking in all public places, including workplaces, restaurants and educational institutions, is prohibited according to a regulation by the ministry of health which came into effect Oct 2, 2008.

Commenting on the results of the survey, Bhavna B. Mukhopadhyay, senior director of VHAI, said: “These concerns translate to the very strong belief among Indians that it is the right of customers and employees to breathe smoke-free air in workplaces and public places.”

India has always been faced with the rampant use of tobacco across all sections of society. The general consensus achieved by the survey is a very positive indicator of the sentiments of the public.

It is very heartening to know that Indians recognise the fact that second-hand smoke is a major health hazard, and feel that the ban on smoking in public places should be more strictly enforced.

Hello all! I am Evandro Alves Barbosa Filho, from Recife city, in Pernambuco state, northeast Brazil. I am very happy in had been invited to participate in this terrific Conference! I can´t wait to meet you all soon and can be able to share experiences and plan an agenda for youth advocacy around the world. As were asked, I am publishing my profile in tobacco control advocacy and awareness. Recife is a city with more than 1,5 million of inhabitants situated in northeast Brazil. I have being working with health promotion trough a continuous health education process towards the creation and implementation of Smoke - Free Workplaces; civil society mobilization towards disclosure of the tobacco industry’s strategies; elaboration of projects, scientific papers to national and international conferences in Tobacco Control and Social Work field and educative material in the Recife’s Tobacco Control Policy Coordination of the Health Secretariat. I also have been interviewed by local media. Actually, I am working in order to improve social control for this policy involving the Municipal Health Council and organized civil society. We developed in October of 2008 a formation cycle for the Council members that had as objective to strengthen the tobacco control actions in the city, through social oversight; to promote ethical, social, political, economic and cultural formation about the tobacco control issue and to stimulate tobacco control advocacy. I am also working to implement the Latin America Youth Net – LA RED, in which I represent Brazil, by starting from my city, first establishing partnership with the Universities’ Student’s Movement. Also I intend to improve the Recife’s Social Civil Mobilization Forum.