IT is not at all unexpected for a survey to find shops selling cigarettes to minors in Pakistan. If anything the uninterrupted supply of cigarettes to or via the underaged public is yet more proof of how freely vendors can distribute their dangerous merchandise amongst those who are most likely to succumb to temptation. But this is not all that a report by a coalition of those who want to curb the use of tobacco has come up with. There is more information. The report says that over half the violations occur in Punjab which could actually be on account of the size of the province in comparison with the other units. The differences in numbers apart, what is truly surprising is that there are big gaps, between the provincial governments, in tolerance levels in certain aspects of cigarette selling, as in the case of tobacco advertising. It is not easy to understand, for instance, why Sindh is the only province where the billboards hailing and wooing cigarette smokers are no more in the picture. Punjab, again true to its size, maintains the usual 50pc share of these billboards whereas Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, which actually needed to lag behind the other provinces in this race, account for the other 50pc.

The same report was not simply content with giving out estimated figures about cigarette smoking; it ventured into the most difficult territory where an attempt was made to gauge the changes in the behaviour of the people in the context of tobacco addiction. A change towards the positive was noted where the smokers now at least appeared to find it tougher than before to argue their case. It is clear that the government has also been forced to adopt a similarly defensive approach in the face of aggressive campaigning by the anti-tobacco camp. This has so far failed to translate into the will to implement the existing laws, let alone come up with any other strategy to curb the rampant use of tobacco.

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2017