Smokefree India Calls for Urgent Youth-Focused Tobacco Reforms Ahead of WHO COP11

Smokefree India has issued a four-point call to action ahead of the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP11) to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), urging delegates to confront India’s escalating youth tobacco crisis through science-driven and evidence-based measures.

Every day, more than 5,500 Indian children begin using tobacco. One in five school students aged 13–15 has experimented with tobacco, and nearly 9% are current users. By early adulthood, 28% smoke and 15% use smokeless tobacco.

Dr. Pawan Gupta, Senior Consultant, Pulmonary Medicine at BLK-MAX Super Specialty Hospital, New Delhi, emphasized the urgency of prevention and cessation efforts:

“The damage inflicted by traditional tobacco begins early and lasts a lifetime. We witness its devastating consequences daily—oral cancers, lung diseases, and heart conditions—often in individuals who started using these products in their teens. With 1.35 million deaths annually, the science is clear: traditional tobacco is a proven killer, and our youth are its most vulnerable targets. But our top priority must be preventing initiation, promoting cessation, and ensuring our efforts are guided by science, not fear.”

Smokefree India’s Four-Point Call to Action for COP11

1. Tobacco control first: Strictly enforce bans near schools, eliminate flavored and single-stick tobacco products, and strengthen school-based prevention initiatives.

2. Youth-centered cessation: Integrate quit counseling within schools and healthcare facilities, expand peer-led interventions, launch digital quit lines, and ensure affordable access to cessation aids.

3. Balanced regulation of alternatives: Safeguard minors through robust enforcement but provide adult smokers with safer nicotine options to support transition away from combustible products.

4. End conflicts of interest: Urge the government to divest its holdings in tobacco companies to eliminate fiscal barriers that weaken enforcement.

Despite the ban on electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), conventional tobacco products such as cigarettes, bidis, and gutkha remain easily accessible—even near educational institutions. Surveys show vaping prevalence in India is minimal—only 2.8% of adolescents have ever tried an e-cigarette (GYTS 2019), and just 0.7% of adults aware of vaping have ever used it (GATS 2016–17). Yet, public discourse remains disproportionately focused on vaping, diverting attention from the widespread harm caused by traditional tobacco and inadvertently shielding domestic tobacco interests from scrutiny.

Smokefree India underscored that prevention efforts must be coupled with structured cessation support. Current policies, it warned, risk trapping young people in high-risk tobacco use while limiting access to potentially safer alternatives.

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