India: Tobacco Firms Still to Follow New Health Warning Norm

Source from:  The Times of India  04/02/2013

The new law making it mandatory for all tobacco products to carry stricter pictorial warnings came into force on Monday but its implementation was not visible on the ground. Tobacco product packs of various forms failed to carry the new pictorial health warnings and were seen carrying the old pictorial warnings.

According to the new Cigarette and other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labelling) Amendment Rules, 2012, notified on September 27, 2012, all tobacco product packs in the country were to carry new pictorial warnings which focussed in detail the portion of the human body affected by tobacco use.

The health ministry had also for the first time inserted the word 'Warning' in the new pictorial warnings and mandated that this word be printed in 'red' colour along with the messages - 'Smoking kills' and 'Tobacco kills'.

The new notification makes it mandatory for all tobacco makers both smoking forms and smokeless to maintain pictorial warnings in the states format and also to place the health warning in at least 40 per cent of the principal display area of the tobacco package.

Though three sets of pictorial warnings comprising images of diseased mouth, lungs and throat have been notified for smokeless and smoking forms each, the same are not found depicted on any tobacco product packs available in the market.

Sources say the industry is asking for more time for implementing the notification and have already met and represented before health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and other top ministry officials. The health ministry is examining the request but the notification has not been kept in abeyance. Any contravention of the new law entails penalty in the form of fine and/or imprisonment. Enditem