Cigar Weekly

Madras India

Humphrey Bogart used to seduce women through his smoke rings. In a movie like "Casablanca," much of this Hollywood star's playboy persona came from the cigarette he held between his fingers. That the tobacco stick finally finished him is something that all his fans, especially female, wish they could blow away.

However, cigarettes still play a disturbingly major part on the screen, and continue to symbolize not just masculinity but also female empowerment. We all remember Sharon Stone's fag play in "Basic Instinct," which women copied with glee, hoping that the stick between their lips would kick up their confidence, boost their image and help them look all the more sexually alluring. This precisely is the problem - stars pushing not just cigarette sales but also a concept that is deadly.

In India, time was when only villains or vamps smoked. They were bad people in any case - not worth aping. The larger society was not unduly perturbed by this, for it knew that the young would not seek to transform themselves into evil, unlovable figures, reeking of tobacco, stained teeth and ruined health.

However, at some point, tobacco majors, elbowed out of a more aware and conscious West, turned their attention to the developing world. India, with its rapidly rising population, made up of 60 percent "youths," seemed an ideal market. The companies unpacked their cartons on the streets, and they thought up a novel way to tempt teens to take to tobacco: films. If popular heroes could be seen with fags, the image would send an irresistible message to young boys and girls. Studies have shown that smoking is a habit that usually forms in one's teens.

So when Tamil superstar Rajnikant played with cigarettes in "Muthu" (also seen in Japan), the picture was extremely evocative. Impressionable, young minds concluded that if the hero - not the villain - could smoke, it must be perfectly legitimate to do so.

It is in this context that Indian Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss pushed the Federal Government to pass the Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products Act. But his repeated appeals to movie stars to refrain from on-screen smoking have gone largely unheeded. The excuse or reason has been "creative liberty."

On June 30 the Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court cited mega-star Amitabh Bachchan and others for allegedly violating the Anti-Tobacco Act. The Goa-based National Organization for Tobacco Eradication filed the case after billboards showing Bachchan smoking a cigar went up on a highway.

A couple of weeks before the case was filed, another Bollywood star and heartthrob of millions, Aamir Khan, made a public announcement through his blogs that he had begun smoking again because of work pressure. The fact that he went public with what was a private affair arouses my suspicion that Big Tobacco is back to its tricks, which are becoming more novel.

The most dangerous thing about Khan's "disclosure" is that it will encourage boys and girls to pick up the poison stick to try to beat stress! Children have enough of it already, given the highly competitive atmosphere they grow up in. Most of them live through childhood without quite enjoying the pleasures of childhood. They are pushed to achieve - not really to learn or savor.

In May, The Hindustan Times, a leading Indian newspaper, front-paged a picture of another Bollywood star, "King Khan" Shahrukh Khan, smoking in full public view at the much-hyped Indian

Premier League cricket match series.

Tobacco reportedly kills more than a million people in India every year, besides causing innumerable diseases. The economy suffers. This is well documented and needs little elaboration. So how do we tackle this menace?

Ramadoss told the last World Conference on Tobacco and Health in the United States: "One of the easiest ways to bring down the number of children and young people getting initiated into tobacco use in India, without any budgetary allocation for this public health exercise, is to remove the depiction of tobacco use in films and TV."

He was right, because if showing smoking on the screen was harmful, the glamorization of it was even more so. The effects of asking stars to smoke on the screen have been analyzed, and the finding leaves nobody in doubt.

A 2003 study by the World Health Organization and the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare revealed that 76 percent of Indian movies showed cigarette smoking. This study also concluded that 52.2 percent of adults in India who began puffing in their teens were influenced by movies. A similar study in 2004-2005 demonstrated that on-screen depiction of tobacco use had become more aggressive with the percentage rising to 89. Of these, 75 percent involved lead actors.

India makes a thousand-odd films a year; 60 million people watch them in theaters, and another 70 million on television. So 130 million men, women and children see Bachchan and his ilk puff on poison. But many of those who are watching tobacco turn to ash in a haze of smoke on the screen do not understand that cigarettes are lethal. Maybe they don't even care, hypnotized as they are by the image of their favorite stars blowing rings in the air.

Gautaman Bhaskaran is a Madras-based journalist who writes for several newspapers across the world.