For non-smokers, this is very good news. The tobacco products (prohibition of advertisement and regulation) bill that will be placed in Parliament promises to have more bite than the Cigarettes (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 1975. Matched with similar legislations in the states, such as the bill being proposed in West Bengal, the drive against cigarette smoking in India seems set to get somewhere. The producers of cigarettes get the heavier punishment. The ban, once legalized, will stop the advertisement of tobacco products and cigarette producing companies will not be allowed to sponsor cultural or sporting events. The smoker will be penalized for smoking in public places, like hospitals, restaurants, parks and public offices, in airports, railway stations or in an auditorium. The limiting of smoking space is undoubtedly a good thing for the passive smoker and for children. It will mean a positive step for public health if passive smoking is reduced. Public health being the principle on display, the question is, though, what this envisaged public is. The passive smokers certainly, and they have their rights. But a ban by law brings with it a baggage that has to be looked at closely. The smoker, also included in the 'public', has chosen to smoke his brand of damnation freely. He, or she, can read the statutory warning on every packet - the letters will be enlarged henceforth. The worldwide anti-smoking movement has made available plenty of scientific and polemical material to discourage smoking. But a government ban invokes an almost criminal aura around an act. A law against smoking sticks itself into what is part of personal conduct and private choice. In effect, it gives the non-smoker's voice precedence over the smoker's under the pretext of health on the one hand, and says that the smoker is a benighted fool who does not know what is good for him on the other. Neither is acceptable. To prevent smoking in public spaces, the building up of social opinion about civic conduct through a determined awareness-raising programme could be as effective, if not more so, in the long run. If public health is the issue, then there is likely to be more smoking in permitted spaces, including the home. Besides, Indian women who smoke cigarettes seldom do so in public spaces anyway. Very few countries in the world with anti-smoking laws have registered any remarkable success in reducing the number of smokers. Of these, one of the most determined is Singapore, where a smoker can be fined up to $ 600 for lighting up while waiting for a taxi or a bus. After 28 years of increasingly stringent laws, 18 per cent of the population still smokes. That is not the end of the story. In Singapore, as in numerous other places, bans on tobacco smoking have simply hiked up the number of drug users. Addiction is a very human attribute, intricately tied in with pleasure-and-reward cycles in the brain. Even the United States, one of the most passionate witch-hunters in the anti-smoking campaign, is beginning to realize that the battle against drugs is almost lost. Throughout the US and Europe, the emphasis is beginning to shift from legislations, bans and penalties to rehabilitation. In India, a Western-style anti-smoking legislation is rather out of place. In an effort to punish the producers, the proposed law will simply undermine minority activities in the spheres of culture and sports. The impact of ITC's withdrawal from the sponsorship of sporting events is just beginning to sink in. This, together with the fact that the anti-tobacco move in effect targets cigarette smokers only, rather blunts the larger point. The economic class at the receiving end excludes the bidi smoker. Or the chewer of tobacco leaves. And many other travellers down the same primrose way. Any intervention into an area of free choice is bound to breed these anomalies. And if it is a Western model that must be followed for the sake of political correctness, India had better learn the bitter lessons of the West too. In the interests of public health, it must know how to beat the whole phenomenon of addiction, whether the kick comes from sniffing industrial glue or from a shot of cocaine.