Shah Rukh, Aamir, Salman Khan battle the 'butt'

By Soumyadipta Banerjee / DNA

Mumbai: Today is World No Tobacco Day. This day highlights the hazards of smoking and ensures that a unified tobacco-control message resonates around the world; but amidst all this, there are three top Bollywood actors who are still fighting their battle with the cancer stick...

Three of the top actors in Bollywood — Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Salman Khan — have been fighting a hitherto unsuccessful battle against smoking. For the last 10 years, they have declared their hate for cigarettes in public many times. They have also tried kicking the butt, only to pick it up after a point of time.

Shah Rukh had tweeted recently, “They (Shah Rukh’s children Aryan and Suhana) don’t like me smoking. I see that as a blessing. If they had no objection, I would have continued smoking.”

Shah Rukh also had a public spat with former health minister Ambumani Ramadoss when the latter urged him to quit smoking. “It is just a misinterpretation that I have snubbed the Health Minister. I too want to quit smoking in real life,” Shah Rukh had said at a news conference when he was asked about the controversy. The fact remains that Shah Rukh even today is a heavy smoker and according to his close friends, can’t do without a cigarette for more than three hours. “Sometimes he still ends up smoking 8-10 packets a day,” says a close friend of the star.

Next case in point is Salman Khan. His close friends say Salman smokes lesser number of cigarettes than Shah Rukh. But one would see him incessantly lighting up the cancer sticks when he is chilling out with friends. “I am a heavy smoker but I don’t want you to write that. I don’t want your children to take up smoking just because I do. I smoke because I haven’t been able to kick the habit,” Salman had told DNA when he was promoting his last film a few months ago.

“Bhai is not proud of the fact that he smokes. But he has cut down a lot on his smoking. These days, he tries not to smoke more than 3-4 packets a day and that too the ‘Milds’ brand of cigarettes,” says a close friend of the star.

Aamir, meanwhile, remained off the butt for months on end but he too gave up one day. “I am sorry to tell you that I have smoked again,” he wrote on his blog and justified it saying it was because of the tension as his film was about to release.