Date:  20th & 21st July, 2009
Venue: Hotel Ginger, Guwahati, Assam

Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI) organized a meeting for all the North-East State Voluntary Associations and West Bengal Partners on 20th & 21st July 2009 at Ginger Hotel, Guwahati, Assam. The total number of participants in the meeting was 16 (sixteen). The two day refresher meeting was to capacitate the state partners in undertaking advocacy at state and district levels to upscale the enforcement of tobacco control laws as well as to provide fillip to the tobacco control movement in India.
VHAI- PHC, Programme Manager, Mr. Ajay Tripathy, welcomed all the participants and said tobacco is a serious health issue.

Bhavna Mukhopadhyay, Sr. Director, VHAI gave the presentation on Tobacco Control in India, the Issues, Challenges & Strategies. She shared that India's tobacco problem is more complex than any other country in various forms – Smoking and Non-Smoking of tobacco products are available in India for consumption.

The main themes stressed and discussed during her presentation was that over 12 lakh people in India die every year due to tobacco related diseases while around 60 lakh people die in the world. Around 6 million farmers cultivate tobacco and 20 million people work in the tobacco industry.

Scientific evidence and the statistics presented by her was alarming that by 2010, smoking will cause about 930,000 adult deaths in India; of which 70% (90,000 women and 580,000 men) will be in the age – group  of 30 to 69 years. Apart from this she even explained about WHO M-POWER package and various conventions on tobacco control - Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and different anti-tobacco legislations. She emphasized that in order to control the demand of tobacco important measures needs to be focused:

Apart from this she highlighted major challenges to achieve the objective of tobacco control are coalition politics, federal system of governance, fragile economy, violations and glamorized the products by tobacco industry.

She mentioned in order to deal with these challenges, India should have a strong judiciary system, sensitive media and proactive civil society bodies to work for tobacco control.

She gave various examples and appreciated the efforts of VHAI & its State Partners on tobacco control work. The presentation was concluded with emphasis on multi-pronged approach involving different stakeholders ,mainstreaming tobacco control agenda in the central and state government plans and strengthening civil society movement and public-private partnership in tobacco control at the state and district levels.

Dr. P.C. Bhatnagar, Director, VHAI spoke on the model and the levels involved in tobacco control programme. He mentioned that tobacco laws are basically social law and cannot be implemented effectively without strong support from the civil society and moreover capacity building of the civil society is highly required. He gave few examples related to the challenges faced by tobacco control group and counter strategies applied to save lives. He cited Kottayam model and activities organized by KVHS in order to achieve the objectives and different action plans for future.

The State Partners shared their experiences related to tobacco control, gray areas and action plans for future.

On the second day of the refresher meeting, Bhavna Mukhopadhyay, Sr. Director, VHAI discussed several important issues related to advocacy, modalities and action needed for tobacco control. She emphasized on creating comprehensive smoke free environments, to make people aware of the dangers of tobacco use, implement pack warnings on tobacco products, enforce advertising bans, increase taxes on all tobacco products and alternative livelihoods and other advocacy issues for bidi and tobacco workers.

Ms. Rachita Bansal, Legal Consultant, Tobacco Control Laws, gave the presentation on COTPA 2003, IPC (Indian Penal Code), Constitutional rights, CrPC (Criminal Procedure Code) and other laws pertaining to tobacco. She elaborated each Section of COTPA with illustrations, examples and the gaps in it. She also explained about the process involved in bringing out pictorial warnings on tobacco products and mentioned the role of the civil society in tobacco control and said that the civil society has a very important role in helping in the enforcement of the laws.

The participants were divided into groups and there was one to one interaction between the speakers and the participants, related to various issues like COTPA, implementation and advocacy plans for tobacco control programme. The participants vehemently expressed their views on the related issues.

After the meeting, the participants interacted with the experts and raised several concerns. The meeting was concluded with a vote of thanks by VHAI- PHC, Programme Manager, Mr. Ajay Tripathy with a request to each one of them to work together for the tobacco control in order to curb the use of Tobacco in India.