Decades of anti-tobacco messaging were meant to curb oral cancer. Instead, cases and deaths have climbed steadily. New evidence now raises an uncomfortable possibility: that alcohol, even at low levels of use, has been hiding in plain sight as a cancer risk.
India has spent decades warning its citizens about tobacco — on packets, on screens, in classrooms and courtrooms.
The message has been relentless, visual and unavoidable: chew, smoke, inhale, and you risk oral cancer. Yet even as these warnings have multiplied, oral cancer has not receded. It has grown — stubbornly, disproportionately, and in ways that tobacco alone no longer fully explains.
The message has been relentless, visual and unavoidable: chew, smoke, inhale, and you risk oral cancer. Yet even as these warnings have multiplied, oral cancer has not receded. It has grown — stubbornly, disproportionately, and in ways that tobacco alone no longer fully explains.