But, if advertising and promotional campaigns can convert millions of new users into addicts and maintain the existing users, similar campaigns can be initiated towards de-addiction and preclusion, too.

Realising the importance and urgency of educating people on the harmful effects of tobacco, the World Health Organisation has rightly decided to mark this year’s No Tobacco Day as the Tobacco Health Warning Day.

Sustained, comprehensive and evidence-based tobacco-controlled programmes have shown positive results around the world. Hence, more such programmes involving clinical strategies that help smokers kick the habit should be initiated on a war footing.  This needs to be effectively backed by economic, regulatory and social efforts. The dangers and consequences of smoking have to be sufficiently highlighted, starting at an early school level, instilling the right lessons at a young age - for instances of smoking among young people, especially those in teens, are numerous and a genuine cause for concern.

As manufacturers try to divert attention from the ill-effects of the product through advertising, countries are fighting back, making it mandatory that tobacco packages graphically show its dangers. It is here that the policies adopted by countries like the UAE gain importance.

The UAE has banned smoking in public places and is planning an increase in the price of cigarettes, while unifying the tobacco-control policies in the UAE. A six-week long No Tobacco Campaign in the country is seeking to garner a minimum of 10,000 pledges against the use of tobacco.

Effective warnings on tobacco packets, especially with pictures can be a cheap and, at the same time, effective strategy to reduce the attraction of tobacco for those who are not yet addicted and to motivate users to quit. But the question here is, why not ban tobacco, which is a cash crop and the only legal consumer product that can kill when used exactly as the producer intends?