Under flak for watering down pictorial warnings on tobacco products, and for coming under pressure from the tobacco lobby, for the first time the government is focusing on beedi smokers.

It has planned a new ad campaign to start from Monday and wants to set up 5 labs to test beedi content.

The Health Ministry's latest initiative to spread awareness on the ills of beedi smoking is a new ad campaign called Campaign Heartbreak that changes the focus from cigarettes and gutka to beedis.

Health Secretary BK Prasad said, "In our country 8-10 lakh people die of tobacco related diseases."

"When we look at the consumption pattern, it is mainly the low socio eco group for cigarettes, they are informed consumers, but with beedi, people don't know what they are consuming," said Tobacco Control Program CMO Dr Jagdish Kaur.

In fact, according to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey beedi is the second most highly consumed tobacco product in India. 16 per cent Indian males smoke beedis compared to nearly 10 per cent who smoke cigarettes.

In fact, beedi smoke contains three times the carbon monoxide and nicotine and

five times the amount of tar that cigarette smoke does.

The NGO World Lung Foundation helped pre-test and develop this ad campaign.

Nandita Murukutla of the World lung foundation said, "The first problem is that there are no regulations, secondly the tobacco lobby is very strong in India. But we applaud this project by the government because we know from our studies that these mass media campaigns do work."

The government has now identified 5 labs across the country to test tobacco products and will set up one lab dedicated for tobacco research. In December, the long-awaited pictorial warnings on all beedi products will also come into effect.