Abstract
Objectives
We describe national and subnational trends in tobacco use over three decades in India, assess the impact of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) on them and draw inferences for regional tobacco control policy.
Methods
Data from nine cross-sectional surveys conducted between 1987 and 2016 were analysed. Time trends in gender- and state-wise prevalence were derived for different forms of tobacco. To assess Framework Convention’s impact, relative changes in tobacco prevalence before and after its implementation were estimated. Progress towards global noncommunicable diseases target was also measured.
Results
Post-implementation of the FCTC, smoking and smokeless tobacco use declined by 52.9% and 17.6%, respectively. The tobacco product mix (exclusive smokeless/exclusive smoked/dual) underwent a reversal from 37:52:11 in 1987 to 65:22:13 in 2016. Having achieved 20.5% relative reduction since 2009, India is en route to achieving the global noncommunicable diseases target.
Conclusions
Steep declines in tobacco use have followed the implementation of FCTC in India. However, the impact has been unequal on smokeless and smoked forms. Tobacco-control policies in high smokeless burden countries should take cognizance of this pattern and design comprehensive and flexible policies.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Agrawal S, Karan A, Selvaraj S et al (2013) Socio-economic patterning of tobacco use in Indian states. Int J Tuberc Lung Dis 17:1110–1117. https://doi.org/10.5588/ijtld.12.0916
Arora M, Madhu R (2012) Banning smokeless tobacco in India: policy analysis. Indian J Cancer 49:336. https://doi.org/10.4103/0019-509X.107724
Bandyopadhyay A, Irfan M (2019) Gender-based tobacco policies in Bangladesh and India: a prerequisite to counter the smokeless tobacco epidemic. Women Health 59:85–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/03630242.2018.1449777
Bhan N, Karan A, Srivastava S et al (2016) Have socioeconomic inequalities in tobacco use in india increased over time? Trends from the national sample surveys (2000-2012). Nicotine Tob Res 18:1711–1718. https://doi.org/10.1093/ntr/ntw092
Bilano V, Gilmour S, Moffiet T et al (2015) Global trends and projections for tobacco use, 1990–2025: an analysis of smoking indicators from the WHO Comprehensive Information Systems for Tobacco Control. Lancet 385:966–976. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60264-1
Brathwaite R, Addo J, Smeeth L, Lock K (2015) A systematic review of tobacco smoking prevalence and description of tobacco control strategies in sub-Saharan African countries; 2007 to 2014. PLoS ONE 10:1–16. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132401
Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (2018) Global tobacco surveillance system. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/global/gtss/index.htm. Accessed 27 Sep 2018
Chen Z, Peto R, Zhou M et al (2015) Contrasting male and female trends in tobacco-attributed mortality in China: evidence from successive nationwide prospective cohort studies. Lancet 386:1447–1456. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)00340-2
Ebbert JO, Montori V, Vickers KS et al (2007) Interventions for smokeless tobacco use cessation. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD004306.pub3
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2003) Projections of tobacco production, consumption and trade to the year 2010. FAO, Rome
GBD (2016) Risk Factors Collaborators (2017) Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 84 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990-2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. Lancet 390:1345–1422. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32366-8
Goel S, Tripathy JP, Singh RJ, Lal P (2014) Smoking trends among women in India: analysis of nationally representative surveys (1993–2009). South Asian J Cancer 3:200–202. https://doi.org/10.4103/2278-330X.142958
Gupta I, Sankar D (2003) Tobacco consumption in India: a new look using data from the National Sample Survey. J Public Health Pol 24:233–245. https://doi.org/10.2307/3343370
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (2018) GBD tobacco visualization. IHME, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. https://vizhub.healthdata.org/tobacco/. Accessed 27 Sep 2018
International Institute for Population Sciences (2018a) District level household & facility survey. http://rchiips.org/DLHS-4.html. Accessed 27 Sep 2018
International Institute for Population Sciences (2018b) National family health survey. http://rchiips.org/NFHS/about.shtml. Accessed 27 Sep 2018
Jhanjee S (2011) Tobacco control in India—Where are we now? Delhi Psychiatry J 14:26–32
Kostova D, Dave D (2015) Smokeless tobacco use in India: role of prices and advertising. Soc Sci Med 138:82–90. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.05.036
Kozlowski LT, Sweanor DT (2018) Young or adult users of multiple tobacco/nicotine products urgently need to be informed of meaningful differences in product risks. Addict Behav 76:376–381. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2017.01.026
Mehrotra R, Mehrotra V, Jandoo T (2010) Tobacco control legislation in India: past and present. Indian J Cancer 47:75. https://doi.org/10.4103/0019-509X.63870
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (2017) Global adult tobacco survey—fact sheet India, 2016–17. Government of India, New Delhi
Ministry of Law and Justice (2003) Cigarette and other tobacco products (Prohibition of advertisement and regulation of trade and commerce, production, supply and distribution) act, 2003. Government of India, New Delhi
Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation, Government of India (2018) National sample survey office. http://www.mospi.gov.in/national-sample-survey-office-nsso. Accessed 27 Sep 2018
Moore K, Borland R, Yong H-H et al (2012) Support for tobacco control interventions: do country of origin and socioeconomic status make a difference? Int J Public Health 57:777–786. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-012-0378-5
National Cancer Institute, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2014) Smokeless tobacco and public health: a global perspective. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD
Ng M, Freeman MK, Fleming TD et al (2014) Smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption in 187 countries, 1980-2012. JAMA 311:183. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2013.284692
Perkins R, Neumayer E (2014) Adoption and compliance in second-hand smoking bans: a global econometric analysis. Int J Public Health 59:859–866. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-014-0585-3
Qian J, Cai M, Gao J et al (2010) Trends in smoking and quitting in China from 1993 to 2003: national Health Service Survey data. Bull World Health Organ 88:769–776. https://doi.org/10.2471/BLT.09.064709
Reddy K, Gupta P (2004) Report on tobacco control in India. Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, New Delhi
Reddy K, Arora M, Yadav A (2008) A comparative analysis of WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and the Indian laws regulating tobacco. Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi
Reddy K, Arora M, Shrivastav R et al (2010) Implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in India a shadow report 2010. (Health Related Information Dissemination Amongst Youth, New Delhi
Richardson A, Pearson J, Xiao H et al (2014) Prevalence, harm perceptions, and reasons for using noncombustible tobacco products among current and former smokers. Am J Public Health 104:1437–1444. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301804
Ruhil R (2018) India has reached on the descending limb of tobacco epidemic. Indian J Community Med 43:153. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijcm.IJCM_213_17
Sinha DN, Suliankatchi RA, Gupta PC, et al (2016) Global burden of all-cause and cause-specific mortality due to smokeless tobacco use: systematic review and meta-analysis. Tob Control. https://doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2016-053302
Subramanian SV, Nandy S, Kelly M et al (2004) Patterns and distribution of tobacco consumption in India: cross sectional multilevel evidence from the 1998-9 national family health survey. BMJ 328:801–806. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.328.7443.801
Thakur JS, Prinja S, Bhatnagar N et al (2013) Socioeconomic inequality in the prevalence of smoking and smokeless tobacco use in India. Asian Pac J Cancer Prev 14:6965–6969
The International Tobacco Control Evaluation Project (2018) India country profile. https://www.itcproject.org/countries/india. Accessed 27 Sep 2018
The World Bank (2018) Smoking prevalence data. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.PRV.SMOK. Accessed 27 Sep 2018
Thun M, Peto R, Boreham J, Lopez AD (2012) Stages of the cigarette epidemic on entering its second century. Tob Control 21:96–101. https://doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2011-050294
World Health Organization (2008) WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic, 2008: the MPOWER package. WHO, Geneva
World Health Organization (2013) Global action plan for the prevention and control of NCDs 2013-2020. WHO, Geneva
World Health Organization (2015a) WHO global report on trends in prevalence of tobacco smoking. WHO, Geneva
World Health Organization (2015b) WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic, 2015: raising taxes on tobacco. WHO, Geneva
World Health Organization (2018) WHO global report on trends in prevalence of tobacco smoking 2000–2025, 2nd edn. WHO, Geneva
Zaatari GS, Bazzi A (2018) Impact of the WHO FCTC on non-cigarette tobacco products. Tob Control tobaccocontrol–2018–054346. https://doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2018-054346
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
RSA conceived the study and managed the overall enterprise; DNS and PCG identified and extracted the data sources; NA carried out data management; RSA, KJ, RSR and DV performed the analysis; DNS, PCG, NA and SK provided critical feedback on the analysis, results and interpretation; KJ, RSR and RSA wrote the first draft. All authors approved the final manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.
Ethical approval
This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors. The original surveys included in the analysis had obtained ethical approvals from the participating institution’s boards. The data sets of these surveys were publicly available or available on request, and all individual identifying information was removed.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Suliankatchi Abdulkader, R., Sinha, D.N., Jeyashree, K. et al. Trends in tobacco consumption in India 1987–2016: impact of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Int J Public Health 64, 841–851 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-019-01252-x
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-019-01252-x