No smoking Day: Health experts urge Centre to stub out smoking indoors

Hyderabad: On No Smoking Day, doctors, cancer victims and public health activists urged the Union government to remove designated smoking rooms at hotels, restaurants and airports to protect people from passive smoking. While appreciating the government for initiating the process to amend The Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA)-2003, they appealed for immediate removal of current provision that permits smoking areas to make India 100 per cent smoke free country.

The Section 4 of the Act prohibits smoking in any place to which the public has access. However, the Act presently allows smoking in certain public places like restaurants, hotels, airports and in designated smoking areas.

"There is a growing evidence that smoking can prove risky for those suffering from Covid infection. Smoking worsens the lung function and reduces immunity. Smokers who develop Covid infection have more complications and greater risk of fatality. All designated smoking areas in hotels and restaurants and even airports should be abolished to ensure a total smoke-free environment.

Most of these designated smoking areas are rarely compliant as per COTPA requirements and are actually putting our public at great health risk from exposure to secondhand smoke," said Dr Venkat Rao, State Project Manager, Voluntary Health Association of India.

A recent survey conducted in India revealed that 72 per cent believe that secondhand smoke is a serious health hazard and 88 per cent strongly support strengthening of the current tobacco control law to address this menace, Rao added further.