Indians reluctant to stub it out with 186 million tobacco users

India has the largest tobacco-chewing population in the world and the second-largest population of those who smoke it, reveals Global Burden of Disease 2019 by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

With over 186 million tobacco users in India, two in every three people who chew dry snuff tobacco the world over are Indians — 22.4 per cent men in the age group of 15-54 years in the country are tobacco smokers.

One in every two men and two in five women smoke more than five bidis (cigarettes made from tobacco wrapped in leaves) a day.

Tobacco use is