Ms Soumita Ghose speaks to ecancer about her paper on the perception of tobacco in urban India.

She highlights some of the issues surrounding not only the amount of tobacco usage in India, but also the thought processes of the young students in the study.

Tobacco is one of the biggest global health concerns of this century with significant contribution to increasing burden of cancers, chronic diseases and associated mortality.

Tobacco related cancers are one of the commonest causes of cancer related mortality in the low and middle-income countries.

The tobacco epidemic is constantly on rise, especially affecting the low and middle-income countries due to lack of population awareness, insufficient health infrastructure and weak regulatory interventions.

India is home to the world’s largest youth population and a large percentage of them take up tobacco at a very young age leading to subsequent habit formation.

There is limited evidence in published research from India on the perceptions in youth on the use and control of tobacco.

This qualitative study has attempted to bridge that knowledge gap