igarette consumption in India is falling steadily even as the number of women smokers is rising, making it home to the second largest number of female smokers after the United States.
According to the latest data on cigarette consumption given by the health ministry in Parliament, the consumption in 2014-15 was 93.2 billion sticks — 10 billion less than in 2012-13. The production of cigarettes too fell from 117 billion to 105.3 billion sticks in the same period.
In the face of this good news is the sobering finding of a global tobacco study, which showed that the number of women smokers in India went up from 5.3 million in 1980 to 12.7 million in 2012. The study, titled 'Smoking Prevalence and Cigarette Consumption in 187 Countries - 1980-2012' was carried out by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and released last year.
This jump in numbers constitutes only a marginal increase in prevalence (percentage of smokers in the above 15 population) from 3% to 3.2%. But it has been flagged as an area of concern by anti-tobacco activists who point out that it runs against the global trend of the rate of decline among women smokers being consistently faster than in men.
Incidentally, unlike most countries where cigarettes constitute over 90% of tobacco consumption, in India, it is just about 11% . Hence, while the decline is a positive development, its impact on burden of diseases caused by tobacco consumption remains limited as consumption is dominated by chewing tobacco, followed by bidis.
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