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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Tobacco notice an eyewash, fear docs -GS Mudur

Tobacco notice an eyewash, fear docs -GS Mudur

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published Published on Oct 12, 2015   modified Modified on Oct 12, 2015
-The Hindu

New Delhi:
Public health experts fear that a new health ministry notification that says pictorial health warnings must cover 85 per cent of tobacco packs from next April may be a "face-saving exercise".

The September 24 notification was due six months ago and seems aimed at allaying the anger of Rajasthan High Court, which had asked the government to explain its delay in introducing the 85 per cent warnings, health experts and anti-tobacco activists say.

"My worry is that the government may be playing pranks to gain time," said Pankaj Chaturvedi, an associate professor and cancer surgeon at the Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai.

"There is time between now and April for the government to change or dilute the notification."

Under existing rules, pictorial health warnings on tobacco packs in India must cover 40 per cent of the display area. The health ministry had last October issued a notification saying the warning area would be expanded to 85 per cent from April this year.

But through a "corrigendum" issued on March 26, the ministry kept the expansion of pictorial warnings in abeyance after members of a Lok Sabha panel on subordinate legislation questioned the link between tobacco and cancer.

"Some of us are asking ourselves, 'Is this (new) notification a face-saving exercise by the ministry to face the court?'" said Radhika Shrivastav, deputy director of Hriday, a non-government agency in New Delhi that has been campaigning against tobacco for over two decades.

Health ministry officials involved in tobacco control issues were not immediately available for comment.

Rajasthan High Court had earlier this year, while hearing a petition seeking implementation of the larger health warnings, asked the health ministry to explain the delay or face contempt proceedings.

"If the health ministry is intent on implementing the expanded warnings, they could do it even before April 2016. It's been about a year since the ministry announced this intention -- so the (tobacco) industry should have been prepared by now," Shrivastav told The Telegraph.

Doctors and anti-tobacco activists seeking larger pictorial warnings fear that the tobacco industry will use the next few months to lobby against the proposal.

In March this year, members of the panel on subordinate legislation had claimed that the evidence linking tobacco with cancer and other illnesses was based on studies outside India.

Doctors and public health experts say there is abundant evidence of the harm tobacco is causing within India.

"The health ministry should go ahead with implementing the larger warnings regardless of pressure from the (tobacco) industry. This is in the public interest: tobacco kills about a million people across India each year," Chaturvedi said.

A coalition of 65 anti-tobacco organisations had last month written to the presiding officers of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha requesting that members of parliamentary panels declare any "conflict of interest" and that appropriate decisions be taken about their participation in the panels.

Members of the coalition say that some of the members of the parliamentary panel that stalled the expanded pictorial warnings have financial interests in the tobacco industry.

"We fear that they will continue to try and convince the government to again postpone or dilute the proposal for larger warnings," a member of the coalition said.

"A size below 85 per cent, or a rule that the warnings should cover 85 per cent on only one side of the tobacco packs, would weaken the impact."

Public health experts say there is abundant evidence that pictorial health warnings do curb tobacco use.

The Hindu, 11 October, 2015, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1151012/jsp/nation/story_47544.jsp#.VhsWJCs1t_k


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