ENARADA,Mangalore, July 6, 2013:
By C D Souza
It is a month since the Karnataka government took a bold decision to ban gutka to coincide with World no Tobacco Day on May 31st. The government has remained steadfast in its commitment to impose the ban despite the opposition pressurizing it to reconsider its decision. Though officially the ban on gutka and pan masala is in full swing, on the flipside manufacturers and sellers are cashing in on the loopholes in the law and sell nicotine openly, albeit in a different form. So officially gutka is off the shelves in Kartnatka but those who are addicted to it are somehow able to satiate their craving for it.
So instead of one packet of gutka all that a consumer has to do is go in for sachets i. e. one sachet containing supari and khata and another sachet that contains tobacco and kheni. A petty shopkeeper from Falnir who does not want to be named says “people take these sachets separately and therefore the sale of these sachets have increased manifold after the ban on gutka. The only difference is that this is the spit tobacco where the user mixes both sachets, makes into a ball and keeps it under his lips and spits it. He does not swallow it unlike gutka where the user swallows everything. On the whole demand-wise there has been not much of a difference. Only die hard addicts of gutka go on searching for its availability in the black market”.
This petty shop-keeper says that for about ten days after the ban there was hoardings by shop keepers and he too sold whatever stock he had for a higher price. He gives the example of a BSNL employee who held huge stock of gutka soon after the ban and made a huge moolah by selling it for a higher price. Some wholesalers also made huge profits following the ban and due to thriving black market, he says.
As a word of caution he hastens to adds: “if the black market thrives as long as the stock lasts it is at least fine. But if some offenders begin to manufacture them in factories and push them in the black market then the illegal sale will thrive on”. This is going to be a big challenge to the government says this graduate who is running the petty shop for a livelihood. He says that the only way to find a solution to the impasse is to ban both gutka and pan masala and other tobacco products, as done by the Kerala government.
It may be recalled that the Congress-led UDF government of Kerala put a blanket ban on the manufacture and sale of gutka and pan masala from May 2012. Chief Minister Ommen Chandy defended the ban saying it was enforced under the provisions of Food Safety and Standards Regulation Act, 2011. Kerala was the second state in India to ban the use of gutka and pan masala after Madhya Pradesh.
Sadashiva, who owns a shop in Bikarnakatta in Mangalore, says that the sale of tobacco and areca has caught up just like gutka after the ban. “On the whole the sale in my shop has not affected. Only a very few go back in search of what they want. I am surprised they manage to get it which means that it is available in black. But I am not sure how long this trend will continue”.
Ambroze D Souza, (59) an ex-serviceman who is working as a security guard in a central government organization was using gutka earlier and has now switched over to tobacco and areca sachets. “I tried to get gutka sachets for two weeks but now it has become very expensive and at this age I cannot go searching for it in shops where it is available in the black. If there is a raid I know I cannot run (he is overweight) and hence I am not taking any risks”, Ambroze points out.
It means that there is an element of truth in what the areca growers were saying. Manchi Srinivas Achar, President of All India Areca Growers Association speaking to enarada.com soon after the ban had said that unless the government bans all sorts of tobacco there cannot be any health benefits for the public. Reiterating the same views Machi Srinivas Achar points out “from the very beginning I have made it clear that there may not be much impact on the demand for areca because of the ban. As I had told earlier black marketers will thrive under such a market where there is a ban only on one product. Now we know there is a black market and the government is losing revenue because of this. Moreover areca has been made a victim unnecessarily”.
Achar is of the view that though demand for areca will always remain constant the middlemen would cite the government ban on gutka and would not give proper market price for the product. This would be a great loss for the farmers because these middlemen would make profit at the coast of farmers. Achar therefore urges the government to remove the license given to those to manufacture tobacco and chemicals which are harmful to health.
Physician Dr Srinivasa Kakkillaya opines “all products of tobacco including areca leads to oral cancer. Now people use the products of two sachets and keep it in the mouth as a ball. That causes local irritation and sensitivity is lost and that leads to cancer. Research in all cancer hospitals has shown that tobacco of all forms causes cancer of the mouth. The Karnataka government has taken only a half hearted measures by banning gutka which will have no health benefits to the public. The government should be stern both in its ban and its implementation”.
May be the government should take a cue from the above and mull over banning all tobacco products, if it is really sincere about its intentions of public health.
