I came into close contact with Neil Collishaw when he was a part of about two-and-a-half person army of tobacco control in the Geneva Headquarters of the World Health Organization. To my mind, he was the first international tobacco control person who understood the specific tobacco problems of India – smokeless tobacco use and bidi smoking. This gave me a great encouragement that here is someone who appreciates the tobacco problems rather specific to us. Because of the size of India, he also understood importance of these problems in global tobacco control.

Even after his return to Canada, he did not forget our tobacco problems. He encouraged me to produce informational material on gutka, a manufactured and intensely marketed smokeless tobacco product and bidi, the most common tobacco product in India used for smoking. Although somewhat outdated, those booklets are still informative.

Neil’s contributions to global tobacco control are quite noteworthy. He will be remembered for a long time for his contributions to advancement of global tobacco control.