Amitabh Bachchan Requested To Withdraw From Pan Masala Advertisement! Here’s The Matter

Shekhar Salkar, President, National Organisation for Eradication of Tobacco, has written a letter to Big B.

Amitabh Bachchan, the Bollywood star, was asked by a national anti-tobacco organization to stop promoting pan masala. They claimed that it would help to wean youngsters away from tobacco addiction.

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Shekhar Salkar (President, National Organisation for Eradication of Tobacco), wrote to Bachchan saying that medical research has shown that tobacco addiction and pan masala use can harm the health of citizens, particularly the youth. He also suggested that Bachchan should stop appearing in the pan masala ads because he is the ambassador for the government's high-profile pulse polio campaign.

"Pan (betel leaves) can be a carcinogenic. Recent research has shown that betel quid's ingredients could cause cancer in the body. According to the letter to Amitabh, both the World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the scientific evidence suggests that chewing betel quids (pan), is carcinogenic for human beings."

Salkar wrote that he was an oncologist who is a member of an NGO in the field tobacco cessation and felt aggrieved by the dubious embellishments made by famous Bollywood actors such as Shah Rukh Khan and Ranveer Singh, which led to increased tobacco use among students. He also stated that students are now a target audience of cigarette and tobacco companies.

NOTE has repeatedly targeted celebrities for smoking in public over the past decade. NOTE intervened in 2010 and Ajay Devgn was fined for smoking in public at the Panaji International Film Festival of India.

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