We observe tobacco-free days, conduct stage and road shows, run awareness programmes, clamp down on illegal sellers and so goes the list of control measures. But the number of people who end up in hospitals is increasing alarmingly, and nothing seems working towards making an ordinary man understand that it not only kills but tortures one to his or her last breath. Still they smoke and chew and administer tobacco products to keep their nicotine index balanced. This is a fix. We need to develop a new approach to tobacco control.

I used to smoke some 10 to 20 sticks a day, and had been a smoker for nearly 20 years, and when it came to the stage when there was no U turn for me but to get killed by this menace, I took a U turn out of my will, and I succeeded in it, and it is my sixth smoke-free year.

Today, I am healthy and hearty enough to live a longer life than I would have if I had succumbed to the coils of smoke I used to exhale. With this track record on my hat, I would like to suggest a few punch lines to all those who wish to say either goodbye to this health hazard, or do not want to get addicted to it.

• Think of a day in which you are not in this marvelous world of beauty.
• Prove that you are intelligent. It is simple. Look at your habits.
• Smokers are disgusting; they stink, and they advocate abhorrence.
• A smoking man presents a weird look.
• Evaluate how you look at your days. Is tomorrow yours? Check.
• Look around and see for yourself whom all there to worry about you.
• Find out what is more important; living somehow, or living, loving it.
• Is your entire earning going to give you a day longer than you expect.
• Please know that ill health is worse than death. It is indignity.
• One who is able to take healthy breaths is wealthier than a billionaire.
• Everybody dies, and death is fine, if it comes as a natural development.
• If your habits invite death, you are bound to live dying.
• If it is the other way round, you can die living life to the full.
• Forget about those addicted. They are damned. Don’t be one of them.
• You can say, ‘yes’ to anything. But it is hard to say ‘no’. Still say ‘no’
• If you are a girl take a decision, I will never marry one who smokes.
• If you are male, take a decision ‘I will never get married to tobacco.
• When you go selecting friends, make it a point that they don’t smoke.
• He who kills oneself out of habits is bound to hell, and that hell is here.
• Life is a one-time chance, but every day of life offers you a new chance.
• Listen, smoking is a sin; sin against you, your family, and humanity.
• Good habits make your life better. Smoking makes your life bitter.]
• A smoking (wo)man is death most visible.
• Even death hates smokers. It takes their life very reluctantly.

I recommend the government to print the above pointers on the first page of all the academic publications of school children. This may be taken to periodicals, and government press releases aimed at the public. A copy of the same can be displaced in train compartments, transport buses, and similar public modes of movement. And wherever there is a gathering of say, 100 people, there should be stickers conveying the same.

Government hospitals should stop admitting patients suffering from tobacco- related ailments. Let them treat on their own at super-specialty hospitals. And medicines against tobacco-related ailments need to be highly costly and their marketing needs to be controlled.

Simply displaying pictures, warning death, and messages, carrying the same do not work. We need to make people hard-pressed and aware of the misery they are going to face. It is the same thought that made me quit smoking, and I think intelligent people will respond to the same.