16 November,2010 06:59 AM IST | | Priyanka Vora
The doctors have some bitter medicine for Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.
The Healis Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health and Doctors for You, organisations working in the field of tobacco control have written a strongly-worded letter to actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan advising her against the use of a promotional scene where she is seen holding a cigarette in her latest film Guzaarish.
It was in MiD DAY's November 14 edition 'Bad Girl', where we had reported about the medical community in Mumbai up in arms against this particular promotional scene.
This poster is upsetting health practitioners
"We are dismayed by the posters of your forthcoming film Guzaarish that show you with a cigarette. We are not sure if the producer and the PR agency has taken your consent to use this particular picture for the advertisement.
The doctors are worried about the larger impact of these posters on the millions of young women for whom you are The Role Model," reads the letter written by Dr Ravikant Singh from Doctors for you to the actress.
The letter further states, "Remember the final speech you made when you became Miss World, you had promised to "work for Peace, Goodwill, Harmony & compassion and to do full justice with your motto 'Beauty with Purpose'. However, this promotional scene is against the philosophy that you have been preaching."
Another letter written by Healis Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health, states, "By putting up a large number of huge billboards and advertisement panels on BEST buses all over Mumbai with your (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) picture of smoking a cigarette, though, as per my knowledge, you have never smoked in your personal life.
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This publicity campaign associating Aishwarya Rai Bachchan with smoking of cigarette, has provided strong incentives for the youths to initiate smoking following their idol."
Dr P C Gupta from the institute, said, "It was only recently when we presented a research from the Global Youth Tobacco Survey which clearly showed that children who were expose to on screen smoking were
260 per cent more at risk of getting into smoking then those children who were not exposed to on screen smoking."
The study was conducted among 52,000 children across the country in the age group of 13 to 15 years.
"In case of adults also the higher the exposure to on screen smoking the higher the person developing a habit of smoking," said Dr Gupta.
Aishwarya Rai's spokesperson said, "We have not received any letter as yet on this, so we cannot comment on this."
While Sidharth Roy Kapur from UTV production house, "We have not received any such communication and will respond to it appropriately if and when we do. All our publicity materials have been cleared for use by AMTPP, the industry body that is responsible for publicity clearance."
Story Retold
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