Expensive cigarettes force smokers to shift to cheaper tobacco consumption

In order to make smokers to give up smoking, government try a lot of methods, one of its methods is to raise the cigarette prices. But this new method do not stop smokers to quit, in such situation they turn to cheapest options to ‘puff away their blues’.

Health researchers found that smokers hit by the rising prices have shifted to so call down market options like bidis and Gutkas, as heavy tax slabs have failed to kill their urge to smoke resulting in an increase in total tobacco consumption. Udayan Lal, the director of Tobacco Institute from India, said: “High rates of taxation on cigarettes are forcing consumers to shift to cheaper and alternate forms of tobacco consumption. As a result, overall tobacco consumption is increasing, as the price of other tobacco products is very low.”

According to a study, India is home to 100 million bidi smokers and around 8 lakh people in the country die due to tobacco consumption annually with 6 lakh deaths caused by bidis alone.

“It’s not that the government is unaware of the facts about the growing bidi industry. The highly labor intensive nature of the industry, which provides large-scale employment, gives it a powerful voice and that could be one of the reasons why tax rates are so low,” added Lal.

Statistics showed that about 15% of tobacco consumption in India is in the form of cigarettes while 53% is smoked as bidis. Unlike the rest of the world, where, on an average, cigarettes account for as much as 90 per cent of the total tobacco consumed, in India cigarettes represent only 15 per cent of total tobacco consumption. The balance 85 per cent of tobacco consumption is in the form of traditional tobacco products like bidis, chewing “khaini”, gutka, etc.

Bidi consumption is very high in northern India, particularly in Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.

Anti-tobacco scientists found that bidis are more harmful than cigarettes because they go out more often than cigarettes and are filled with small amounts of low-grade tobacco.

Bidi industry is an industry that is growing each year. More than 800 billion bidis are sold in India each year compared with 100 billion cigarettes sold annually.

In general the bidi is smoked predominantly by people on lower incomes because it is available and cheaper.