India’s Health Ministry has written to the Indian Premier League and BCCI, ordering a complete ban on tobacco and liquor advertisements, including surrogate publicity, during the upcoming season starting on March 22.

The ministry said that the incident, which is associated with health and fitness, oppose itself if it directly or indirectly promotes tobacco and alcohol on any platform.

The IPL has been strictly urged to ban all forms of advertising, including surrogate advertisements in stadiums, national televisions, products in events, and supporting products by players.

Why tobacco and alcohol ban?

India is facing increasing burden of various non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney and liver infection, cancer and lung diseases.

“India is experiencing an important burden of non -conducting diseases – heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, diabetes, high blood pressure etc.. Eats for more than 70% of deaths annually. Use of tobacco and alcohol is the major risk factors for NCDs. Director General of Health Services Goyal wrote to the chairman of the IPL.

Most of these diseases have been linked to lifestyle options, including smoking and excessive alcohol consumption. These lifestyle habits can have prolonged disastrous consequences.

According to published in the Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention written by ICMR researchers, non-communicable diseases contribute to about 38 million (68%) of all deaths globally and about 5.87 million (60%) of all deaths in India.

Regular intake of alcohol can cause liver cirrhosis. In the initial beginning, regular alcohol can lead to digestive issues affecting blood pressure, overbird the liver and pancreas and vomiting.

Smoking has been linked to various diseases of lungs, heart, brain and even some cancers. In fact, not only smokers, even those inactive smokers have a high risk of developing lung cancer.

Not only lungs, mouth and throat cancer, intestinal cancer, liver cancer, kidney cancer, cervical cancer and some blood cancer are also associated with tobacco consumption.

Smoking and alcohol consumption has also been linked to a condition called high blood pressure or hypertension, which is 130/80 mm Hg or more. Alcohol increases intestinal fat in the body which causes high blood pressure, causing various heart diseases.

In 2022, India had the highest number of diabetes in the world. While more than 101.3 million people have diabetes, more than 315.5 have high blood pressure.

According to the Ministry of Health, the ban on tobacco and cigarettes can help reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases by reducing the stress of health care in the country.