Smoking is bad for you, but that doesn't mean it can't be fun, argued smokers down the ages, both the famous and the infamous. "For me an object is something living. This cigarette or this box of matches contains a secret life much more intense than that of certain human beings," wrote Spanish artist and sculptor Joan Miro.
The intensity of Miro's "secret life" -- played out within the ephemeral walls of cigarette fumes enveloping him in his supernal happiness of the moment -- has seared the sensibilities of non-smoker majorities and sparked deeply polarised debates across borders. These have dwelt on early death and the agonies paving the tortuous roads leading to it, those momentary lapses of reason, meaning pitted against impulse, groundlessness contrasted to shared vice; even the economic benefits created by tobacco jobs for the living. Or, the government profiting from its share of smoker money.
While the interests of cigarette smokers and regulators rarely align, a full-blown divide worries the industry not least because of profits being affected. The industry, has withstood the regulatory onslaught pretty well down the years as it argued that absolute majority of opinion did not mean absolute truth.
This month, as India joined a select group of nations to ban ENDS (Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems or electronic cigarettes), it witnessed new arguments being reincarnated by the industry in the same old packs. Successive waves of bans have rarely elicited the cries of protest which greeted the ENDS ban, a revenue-hungry government's next crusade.
After the steep hike in cigarette prices, the ENDS ban raised alarms in tobacco industry circles. The irony can't be missed for an industry which has not seen negative growth in sales in the last 15 years, save 2015. The tobacco lobby, long used to taking smoking proscriptions and bans on the singular vice without much murmur, raised its hands in collective dissent.
The Tobacco Institute of India (TII) protested this week that a ban on electronic cigarettes would disregard the rapid growth of these products and the huge IPR and technological advancement being made globally in making e-cigarettes a safer alternative to the real thing. Euromonitor projects the world market value of ENDS in excess of $60 billion by 2030.
ENDS, not justifiable
An e-cigarette is a battery-operated device that uses liquid nicotine, propylene glycol, water, glycerin and flavour to give the user the sense of smoking a real cigarette.
TII's rationale does not cover any emerging threat to its captive cigarette market. It simply airs overblown fears of e-cigarette IPR being monopolised by overseas intents. Indeed, TII stencils into its protestations a familiar argument which it earlier applied while opposing cesses on cigarettes. It says that in view of the growing global acceptance of electronic cigarettes, a ban in India will pose a serious threat of these products being smuggled into the country.
While TII's call for a balanced regulatory approach is timely, hardly 5 million e-cigarette smokers (or 'vapers') exist in India at the moment, and the possibility of illegal trading catering to such a minuscule portion of the market seems far from tenable.
Canada and New Zealand which had earlier prohibited ENDS have reversed their decision and allowed these products to be made available in their respective countries. But both countries have successfully restricted their smoker populations to less than three-fourths their total people count. A national survey in 2015 found that the smoking rate among Canadians is at an all-time low, at 15 per cent of the population, from 19.9 percent in 2011.
In India, the percentage of women smokers alone increased from 5.3 million in 1980 to 12.7 million in 2012. That matched the combined populations of Austria and Denmark that year.
Kicked by the habit
Tobacco products giant ITC Ltd's June quarter results were a slap in the face of a government cess imposed last month. Sales of the company, which holds a 76 percent market share of the organised cigarette market in the country, rose 6.6 percent from a year ago, while segmental profit rose 9 percent. This was in a period when destocking by dealers led to most consumer companies reporting lower than expected sales growth. In the June quarter, 93 percent of the increase in the segment profit over a year ago was contributed by the cigarettes business.
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India is home to 117.37 million smokers. Its organised cigarette market has survived and thrived the ravages of a plethora of price bump-ups and bans, ranging from individual states banning public smoking, blackouts of surrogate cigarette advertising in print, online, television and outdoors, and statutory warning coverage on cigarette packets stipulated at as high as 90 percent.
The social stigma of being seen with a glowing stick of cured tobacco arbitrated between the pointer and middle fingers does not make habitual nicotine sippers shrink away in the grip of an epiphany. Enlightenment makes no sense when the medium has long subdued the message.
The tobacco industry has throughout voiced restrained though genuine concern over the cumulative impacts of steep taxation and intense regulatory pressures. It believes that illegal tobacco trade continues to grow resulting in significant revenue loss to the exchequer. The vast underbelly of the illegal trade caters largely to a vast majority of India's tobacco users over 18 years of age. This age group relies on gutkha (chewing tobacco), bidis and smuggled cigarettes, according to a study by research firm GlobalData Plc titled 'Cigarettes in India, 2017' published this month.
The introduction of e-cigarettes in the tobacco industry over the past decade has increased their use by many vapers -- a reference to the evaporation technology used by them to ingest nicotine in limited doses. India's e-cigarette market is pegged to grow at a CAGR of 63.38 percent over the 2013-2018 period.
Those wanting to quit smoking tobacco preferred to vape and get a feel of satisfying smoke without apparently damaging their lungs. But criticism against e-cigarettes intensified after teenagers and school children went about vaping with a will.
Where's me smokes?
Researchers went to the extent of concluding that vaping is as harmful as cigarettes, which the e-cigarette industry took pains to deny. Call it a bad case of brand carryover or sheer prejudice, it was obvious that e-cigarettes would not easily erase the prevailing scepticism regarding their use. Neither would they be fully accepted as alternatives to real cigarettes -- when the brutally amplified health implications of what they sought to replace were imprinted stubbornly in the minds of non-smokers, health professionals and regulators.
Use of e-cigarettes by teenagers and middle-school children has riled critics of e-cigarettes globally. However, the market is expected to witness huge growth driven by people working in the IT sector in cities such as Bangalore, Hyderabad and New Delhi, and celebrities, because of changes in their preferences. That worries governments, small or big, despite conventional cigarettes and their electronic counterparts, though rooted in the same vice, being vastly different beasts.
But, why do smokers still do it? Not the vaping types, but the never-say-die ones who ingest tar-sodden nicotine from tobacco wrapped inside paper treated with carcinogenic chemicals. Why would they willingly disregard sensible counsel to forego pain and suffering, ignore their guilt pangs to indulge in fetishist nee rebellious self-gratification, and wilfully succumb to the wrong kind of cool?
As Gregor Hens, an accomplished author and translator writes, "Every cigarette that I've ever smoked served a purpose — they were a signal, medication, a stimulant or a sedative, they were a plaything, an accessory, a fetish object, something to help pass the time, a memory aid, a communication tool or an object of meditation. Sometimes... all at once."
If it is a deeper urge to connect more with oneself at the cost of health, wealth and future happiness, smokers may have a point. The government will disagree, and with good reason. Scientists talk of the deepest justification for smoking as the smoker's relationship to a very close friend or parent. Giving up smoking means severing the relationship, or a part of oneself. Essentially, ceasing to be oneself. That's why kicking the butt is not Mission Hard, but Mission Impossible.
Disclaimer: The video and photographic material used in this article are part of and relevant to the subject matter of the article and are in no way intended to promote or encourage the vice of smoking.
