Imran Khan asked to oust tobacco

A consumer rights campaigner has urged the chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) political party, Imran Khan, to direct the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government to eradicate tobacco cultivation from the province, according to a story in the Express Tribune.

In a press note issued last week, the executive co-ordinator of The Network for Consumer Protection, Nadeem Iqbal, demanded that the PTI leadership make Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa a tobacco free province by shifting tobacco activities to non-hazardous businesses.

Iqbal hailed the PTI chairman’s decision to build another cancer hospital in Peshawar and he vowed to stand by Khan in his battle against cancer.

But Iqbal expressed concern that tobacco, which was ‘the main cause of cancer’, was cultivated on a large scale in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

He was said to have drawn Khan’s attention to hundreds of tobacco fields in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the province where PTI is currently in power.