I’m Just Being Manan

Smoking & Alcohol are two vices that one should not indulge into, they are bad for the consumer’s health & the people around them. Passive smoking is as dangerous, if not more than, smoking itself. Road accidents due to drunk driving are common; not to forget the domestic violence drunkards are well known for. Old habits die hard, is a phrase that I often hear from some of my smoker friends, they use this phrase to describe their addiction. One cannot quit smoking and stay quit just by waking one morning and saying, “You know what, from today I quit”, it just won’t work that way. There are ways to get over addiction.

While the addicted try to get over it,no matter how sincerely, how do we make sure that more don’t get addicted. Dr. Anubami Ramadoss - The Union Health Clown Minister of India, for one feels that if Ajay Devgan, Amitabh Bachchan & Shahrukh Khan stop smoking on screen people will quit. He feels that the film industry is the cause of the number of people smoking, according to him, the film industry promotes smoking as a cool habit to have.

Maybe it does or maybe it doesn’t. I often wonder that whether someone who is addicted to something will quit it just because a film star is no more depicted as smoking, even if the film star is someone who he idolises. I did once ask this question to a group of my friends at Tapri (the local pan-beedi shop of our college). The common answer was, “We don’t smoke because they do and it makes no difference”. Were they lying or telling the truth I wondered and stopped wondering when I realized that this is the very reason why this problem has not been solved and will never be.

The film industry shows the society we are living in on the celluloid, in this society, people smoke. It would be unreal if they showed a gangster or a socially deprived protagonaist having lolipop or carrot instead of smoking, not to mention it would be ridiculous too.

The Health Joker of India has spent his stint as the Health Minister doing 2 things:

1. Getting AIIMS director sacked.
2. Trying to get a law passed that would ban depiction of cigarettes and their likes on the big screen.

The first is as ridiculous as the second, let’s not get into it.

The reason why I say that the second is outrightly ridiculous is because as long as you have a cigarette or a beedi being sold on the street people will smoke! It doesn’t matter to a smoker whether xyz actor smokes or doesn’t smoke. People smoke because they feel the urge to, because they see people around them smoking and more so because it is easily available at every corner.

I have yet to hear the Union Health Joker going after the cigarette manufacturers, I am yet to see the Union Health Joker trying to get a law passed which bans cigarette or alcohol manufacturing altogether.

Make cigarettes not so easily available, people consuming cigarettes will decrease, the number of cigarettes people smoke will decrease but our Health Joker feels that making the film industry stop showing smoking on screens will stop poeple from smoking!

Levy absolutely humongous taxes on the manufacturers, make selling cigarettes at 2 rupees an absolute impossibility for the manufacturer and then see how the number of cigarettes people smoke comes down, then see how a casual smoker slowly quits on his own.

Alas! I forgot this is India and well here, banning the depiction of smoking on celluloid will make people quit smoking.

Well, I am Just Being Manan expressing my Maverick Thoughts.

PS: I don’t smoke, neither do I consume alcohol.

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