Mumbai: social media giants including Facebook, attacked for hatred speech and wrong information, can now deal with heat on public health accounts as well.
The tobacco industry uses Facebook to facilitate BIDI sales, openly utilizing the social media platform to advertise dangerous products, which violate the Indian tobacco control law, a study said.
‘Selling Death on Social Media: How Bidis Achieves Online Consumers’ by Vital Strategy, Global Public Health Organization, Digital Media Monitoring Data Details with 344 Instance of Bidi Marketing in Social Media Between December 2020 and August 2021, almost exclusively Facebook (98 %).
This study highlights social media marketing by tobacco and Bidi companies as the attention of public health, especially as evidence shows that it leads to an increase in the possibility of tobacco use among young people.
Of the 267 million tobacco users in India, more than four fourth of the Bidis, with almost half (47%) of their first bidi smoking users before their 10th birthday.
Easily accessible throughout the country and cheaper than cigarettes, it is estimated that eight times more bidisa as cigarettes are sold in India.
Under the National Tobacco Control Law of India, Cigarettes and other tobacco products, 2003, advertising, promotions, and tobacco sponsors are prohibited from crossing the platform, including marketing on the internet.
Ironically, all tobacco products are marketed on the internet where restrictions are more difficult to enforce, even though the marketing strategy used for each product varies.
Bidi companies tend to use direct marketing to sell their products online.
This is a problem because Bidi’s marketing exposure leads to an increase in the possibility of use among new consumers and today, the study said.
Facebook hosts at least 30 different pages for Bidi companies, with many of these companies seem to use the Facebook page to facilitate sales, the study was found.
An openly bidis marketed on social media with clear product images in almost 80% of cases.
Conversely, most tobacco products are promoted unprobed or in a more clandestine way, to comply with the existing law, the report said.
This is because the Bidi industry continues to be set up more than cigarettes, and therefore face less supervision.
NANDITA MURUKUTLA, VP, global policy and vital research strategy, said: “The proof is clear: tobacco marketing increases tobacco use.
This evidence forms the basis for national and international regulations that prohibit or limit tobacco advertising.
When the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
It came into force in 2005, …
the use of social media is in the period of growth.
When advertising regulations in traditional media have been detained, this industry migrated its marketing online where national regulations were less clear.
This report is a call to act for the government to surveillance and Overcoming Tobacco Marketing on Digital Media Yakit the lung says, “We must overcome the marketing of Bidi Online so that offline enforcement is more effective ”.
India is the second largest producer and consumer tobacco products throughout the world.
Bidi Smoke provides more tar, carbon monoxide and nicotine than other cigarettes, and greatly increases the risk for some cancer, coronary heart disease and heart attack, some global studies have warned.
Our findings confirm that smokeless tobacco products are marketed most often on Instagram (42%), followed by Facebook (39%) and YouTube (12%), when smoking tobacco products are marketed on Facebook (53%), followed by Instagram (31) %) and Twitter (10%), add.
Over the past few years, the use of social media has grown among Indian countryside – a place of midwise is very popular up to 299 million active internet users.