Dr Sharad G Vaidya, a medical practitioner who heads NOTE, has put the powerful industry on the mat by focussing on what the spread of tobacco has meant since it was brought into India from South America by the Portuguese in the start of the 17th Century. "It's a huge market in India and south-east Asia. Tobacco companies are also targeting youth between 15-25. Two countries where it will zoom up is India and Indonesia," Dr Vaidya said.

Persistent drives saw a tough tobacco-control law passed in Goa, India's smallest state. But the angry tobacco industry hit back,; after many months the law is still to be signed by the president. Despite thetobacco lobby's power, if it sails through, this could be the tightest anti-tobacco law across India.

The bill as passed by the Goa Assembly bans smoking and spitting in public places and vehicles. It blocks direct and indirect advertisement, the sale of tobacco products to those below 21, and to anyone within 100 metres of schools or places of worship.

Violation of the advertisement and sale curbs will lead to three months in jail; other offences will result in various levels of fines. Voluntary groups will have some powers in enforcing the law.

Affected interests first tried to delete the advert-ban clause, but, later, the bill was passed unanimously. Then, the governor's consent - usually a mere formality - was declined. The bill has now been referred to the President of India and it will become law only with his assent. NOTE estimates that in India about 5,500 to 6,000 youth in their teens start using tobacco each day.

But unlike other groups, NOTE does not waste its breath telling you about thehundred-and-one ways of how tobacco could affect your health. It instead sees tobacco as an issue of economics, of politics, of power and of finances.

In Goa, tobacco is also linked with history. "Tobacco addiction in Goan society demanded regular supplies from Portugal (in past centuries)," writes historian Dr Celsa Pinto, author of a book on trade and finance in colonial `Portuguese India'.

But that was all in the past. For the present, NOTE wants to get a "clear, effective and comprehensive law" for the whole of India to ban tobacco advertisements and sponsorship of sports. It is also working towards higher taxes on cigarettes and tobacco-related products and makes efforts to enforce laws that block the illegal sale of cigarettes to children.

NOTE closely interacts with bodies like the World Health Organisation, the World Bank and the American Cancer Society in its efforts to build public opinion. Using electronic-mail and the Internet, the small but active organisation keeps in touch with the latestdebates on tobacco in the west.

"In today's world, there's more than enough scientific evidence about the ill-effects of tobacco, that it kills in the long-run," says Vaidya. Even tobacco companies have now agreed that nicotine is addictive, he points out.NOTE has shown how far-reaching the effects of tobacco are on society. Some time back, NOTE did a study which showed how advertising affected young minds. After tobacco-sponsored cricket matches, 15-20 per cent students surveyed felt that smoking and `ghutka' improves memory.

"Students also felt that if you smoke, you will become a better cricketer," Vaidya reports. Such students were five times more likely to smoke than others.

Now, NOTE plans another drive: taking a flame through schools and villages across south Asia for one year from May 1999, to build awareness over tobacco at the turn of the century.

But if tobacco is really so bad, why does it still hold sway? Vaidya feels that in India the problem is that tobacco is classified as a legal andagricultural product, instead of being in the basket of narcotics.

Likewise, the Indian government has invested 33 per cent in equity holdings of India's main tobacco companies, and even the life insurance bodies put earnings into such firms, he says.

Vaidya questions the view that tobacco gives revenue to governments. Revenue from tobacco, needs to be balanced against the subsidies given to it by governments. "My hunch is this subsidy will be equal if not more than the revenue it generates," says Vaidya.

"Tobacco industry gets every type of subsidy from A to Z and from Z to A - agriculture, seeds, transport, water, electricity, the works. The total estimates have never been calculated," he points out.

Vaidya is quick with figures: one out of every two persons using tobacco will eventually die of it. Every increase of tobacco production by one tonne will kill one person in a lifetime. "Tobacco takes a heavy toll of 800,000 to one million voters in the country every year. Maximum deaths occur betweenthe ages of 45-55.

"Tobacco doesn't just kill people; it depletes the soil of its nutrients at a rate three times faster than food-crops. It needs twice to three times more water than other food crops. Soil erosion is twice that of food-crops since no weeds grow in tobacco fields."

Vaidya believes campaigns can help children stay off tobacco. He says figures from the small Indian federal province of Goa indicates cigarette sales are down - from 450 earlier to 350 per head - over eight years. Since 1993, he says, India's campaign against tobacco has been really growing.

But reports in the British medical journal "The Lancet" say that transnational tobacco companies, facing growing curbs in the USA and other affluent countries, are increasingly marketing their products in developing countries. Smoking rates in some industrialised countries are decreasing at about one per cent a year, but growing in developing countries by some three per cent per year. If current trends persists for the next 30 years,seven million people from developing countries will die every year from smoking-related diseases.

Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control (Hong Kong) director Judith Mackay has said that while smoking is decreasing in the west, transnational tobacco companies are turning to softer markets, specially in Asia, where health information is less well known.

For the past several years, corporations such as Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, and British-American Tobacco have been expanding rapidly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Third World Network Features