Let a hundred anti-cigarette lobbies bloom

Let a hundred anti-cigarette lobbies bloom

V GangadharUpdated: Saturday, June 01, 2019, 02:38 AM IST
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Eat, drink and smoke. What is good for James Bond is good for you too, discovers V GANGADHAR.

The ‘responsible ‘media is screaming that smoking is bad. The days of the chain smokers could be numbered.

Friends, Indians and countrymen do not believe all this clap-trap. Talk and listen to people who know a lot about smoking. We now have a new species of experts on tobacco who can talk with authority on the topic, the fast-growing Beedi Barons. Very soon they will be joined by Cigarette Czars. It is high time we learnt from their wisdom and experience.

Ram Prasad Sarma (Beedi Baron from MP): As an honourable member of the Parliamentary Committee looking into rules regarding sale and consumption of tobacco products but we have to go by established facts. Does smoking cause cancer? Does tobacco contain any herbal medicines?

Shyama Charan Gupta: Beedi Baron and BJP MP from Allahabad: Member of many committees studying impact of smoking on the human body: Look, listen to the experts like me and then decide. I know the contents of hundreds of studies. Not one provided proof linking tobacco use to instances of cancer. What more can one ask for?

Dilip Gandhi: BJP MP from Maharashtra, Head of the Parliamentary panel examining certain provisions of the Cigarettes and other Tobacco products Act. We are highly successful and influenced the government to put on hold a proposal to increase the size of the pictorial warning on tobacco products from 40 per cent to 80 per cent. This move helped to push up sales of beedi, cigarette and cigar. After my views were published, the media carried dozens of my photographs and do you know what the result was? My family and friends and fellow addicts congratulated me on my ‘youthful’ new looks which made me look 20 years younger!

My findings were varied. The critical anti –tobacco studies were conducted by individuals with vested interests and not by well-known institutions. In our country we only highlight harmful effects caused by tobacco on cigarette. Where are the warnings on beedi and chewing tobacco packets?

The comments from abroad are more revealing, they come from exalted sources.

Indians love and admire James Bond. Sean Connery is an all-time Hollywood hero. Sean Connery, Pierce Bronson, Daniel Craig, George Lazenby were all famous ‘Bond’ actors smoking cigarettes averaging nearly 100 a day. They were strong, muscled men who performed impressive stunts and defeated a variety of Villains led by Auric Goldfinger, SMERSH villain, Blofeld, Scaramanga, the Soviet killer with a third nipple who used a golden gun and bullets, American gangsters who smuggled diamonds and Sir Hugo Drax, British nobility who attempted to blow up UK with an atom bomb. Drax, member of the prestigious British Club, ‘The Blades’ took on Bond in a card game where, using a highly polished cigarette case to catch reflections of cards held by his opponents tried to cheat Bond but was beaten in the game. He was exposed as a Soviet spy and killed by Bond

It is true the powerful cigarette lobbies are still active in India. We had to develop our own James Bonds to expose foreign tobacco lobbies and expose their evil designs. If the Modi sarkar failed in this job, the people of India will rise to the occasion and crush the tobacco lobbies and their stooges in the NDA sarkar.

 (V Gangadhar writes satire, a special form of humour. Incidents and anecdotes in his column are purely imaginary)

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