On this year's world no tobacco day (March 31), WHO and other premier health agencies carried a campaign that criticised growing tobacco instead of growing food given the circumstance of global food shortage. The slogans used included "grow food, not tobacco" and "we need food, not tobacco". Here is the link to their news release.

The campaign aimed to "encourage governments to end tobacco growing subsidies and use the savings to support farmers to switch to more sustainable crops that improve food security and nutrition". A noble cause indeed. And although not stated in the news release, the campaign materials carried a plea to smokers to end smoking. Both the campaign and the narrative can be empathised and commended for their intentions; but not for their impact.

Starting with subsidies, they are provided by the governments because the output of those subsidies immensely benefits the nation's economy. It is not to say that nutritious food does not have economic value — it indeed does. But because of its perish-ability, short shelf life and grow anywhere factor, it has lesser economic value than tobacco. So long as their is global demand for tobacco, its economic value will remain high and governments will promote its production. Curbing tobacco's demand — not the government's response — is the key.

Unfortunately, the campaign may fail to reduce the demand of tobacco too because it disregards the basic human nature of self preservation. The fundamental instinct of every species is self preservation — one's own health and well being over other motives. There are many principles in psychology, such as Maslow's law, that reflects this nature contextually. Even those actions seen as selfless have self fulfilling drives when analysed deeply. This fundamental human nature raises the question whether someone who smokes despite knowing his life is at risk, will stop smoking because someone else is supposedly starving as a consequence?

I say "supposedly" because the narrative of low food production is questionable given the reports of wasted food from food logistics and consumer eating habits. As per United Nations, 17% of food go to waste at the retail and consumer levels, and 14% of food is lost annually between harvest and retail market. Furthermore, it is estimated that over 1.3 billion tons of food goes to waste each year.

This number is significant because WHO claims that the 1 million hectares of tobacco producing land in the Western Pacific Region can be used to produce 60,000 tonnes of fruits and vegetables or roughly 2,43,000 tonnes of rice. We waste food more than 21,666 times the amount of fruits and vegetables and more than 5,350 times the amount of rice that can cultivated in tobacco farms.

Another WHO post says that 3.2 million hectares of fertile land is used for tobacco farms globally. It doesn't however say that how much food can be produced with land. But if you calculate as per the 1 million hectare numbers, you can produce 1,92,000 tonnes of fruits and vegetables and 7,77,600 tonnes of rice globally from tobacco production farms. Even by these numbers, we waste food more than 6,770 times the amount of fruits and vegetables and more than 1,671 times the amount of rice that can cultivated globally in tobacco farms.

These figures make you question whether food shortage is actually responsible for global poverty and therefore is there any substance to the "grow food, not tobacco" campaign. Even assuming some substance for argument's sake, it seems possible that the food crisis can be solved by not going after tobacco or any other crops, but by merely ensuring decentralised food production which lightens food logistics and by inculcating no-waste eating habits in consumers.

Considering these arguments, although we do not have an analytic system to figure out how many smokers who saw the campaign quit smoking for the reasons featured in it, we can logically infer that only few smokers would quit influenced by the campaign. They will soon restart smoking too because their underlying motive for smoking wasn't addressed and it was a sympathetic response that called him to quit smoking. Sympathy goes only so far.

These campaigns tried to appeal to the emotions of the smokers, but the crux of the campaign that intended to stroke their emotions was weak and misplaced. The crux must have been the health risks to the smokers themselves. Although such campaigns have been everywhere yielding tiny results, this is commonsensically the most effective narrative for such campaigns. Nothing will shake a person as a threat to his or his family's self preservation will; and if it doesn't, probably nothing will.

One can argue that there is always a way to make a person do something and therefore make an arrogant smoker quit smoking. It's true. But to come up with such a way, the individual must be meticulously studied. These campaigns in context are designed with a mob in mind; not a meticulously studied individual.

The case of tobacco is a conundrum — it causes cancer but brings in tax money, have innocuous impact but contains recreational value. If you prohibit tobacco based products, they will find their way to black markets.

If you raise their price instead, only the financially privileged end up with access it. How ethical this is and what will replace tobacco products among those who cannot afford is unclear but important too.

The only reasonable thing that can truly reduce the use of tobacco products is to curb their demand. For that, agencies and authorities must first understand why people use it, whether this motive can be fulfilled by other less injurious and cheaper way, and if so promote it.

For the record, Bhooti's intention is not to discredit the health agencies across the world. This critique is only meant to be constructive — an introspection into whether the campaigns are truly sensible considering the huge amount of public resources spent on them.

As for those who have missed the intention of this post and are wondering whether we actually promote smoking tobacco, we do not. We want to make it loud and clear: smoking is addictive and smoking causes cancer. If you are the bread winner of the family, your cancer will destroy your family too. So choose wisely.