A marked spurt in the use of ‘mawa’, a highly addictive and carcinogenic substance, by youth in the city has concerned police and anti-tobacco campaigners.
A powdery substance with a unique flavour, mawa is prepared at roadside paan shops and sold cheap, a small pack costs around Rs 5. Though most paan shops have been selling it for about a decade, its usage was confined to a select group of North Indians till about a few years ago.
No longer. Now, youth from almost all sections of the society have taken to mawa, according to the local police who spotted the new trend during their routine vehicle checks at nights. They found over 20 per cent of the youth were chewing mawa or had it on their person.
Though the preparation is illegal, there has been no crackdown against mawa as the substance is not covered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act. As a result, the police just seize the mawa pack from the youth and let them go with a stern warning.
While the police are clueless about mawa’s ingradients, an assistant professor of psycho-oncology, Dr E Vidhubala, who heads the Tobacco Cessation Centre at the Cancer Institute in Adyar, says that it has 3,000 toxins, including 200 cancer-causing substances like powdered tobacco leaves, ammonia, ethanol, actone, phenols, stearic acid, naphthalene, vinyl chloride, arsenic, formalin, nicotine, hydrogen cyanide, nitro benzene, acetic acid, ethanol, toluene, methane, cadmium, DDT/dieldron and hexamine.
Mawa is sold to even school students by pavement vendors across the city. “These shops are found in abundance near schools and colleges,” says Vidhubala.
Although no laboratory test has been done on the substance, it is speculated that most of the ingredients that go into the making of mawa are used to make other authorised tobacco products like PanParag and Hans. Yet, the huge crowds of youth that can be spotted at paan sellers on the roadside, make police suspect that some narcotic substance is added to it.
Vidhubala feels that the police can play an active role in curbing the sale of mawa to students as the Comprehensive Tobacco Control Act, 2003 enables them to take action against paan shops that sell tobacco products within 100 metres of educational institutions or if people below 18 years of age are found buying tobacco.
But police disagree and feel that it is the responsibility of the Corporation and health department to evict unauthorised roadside paan shops.