-PTI NEW DELHI: As India is set to defer its April 1 deadline for increasing size of pictoral warnings on tobacco products after pressure from various lobbies, head of a parliamentary panel on Monday said there was no Indian study to confirm that use of tobacco products leads to cancer. Dilip Gandhi, head of parliamentary panel on subordinate legislation examining the provisions of Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003 which had...

Smoking kills, but most smokers still don’t know how. One in two Indian smokers isn’t aware that tobacco addiction can lead to stroke and 38% that it can cause heart disease.   These are some of the startling findings of a World Heart Federation report that will be released at the World Congress of Cardiology (WCC) in Dubai on Saturday. India is high on tobacco addiction. It has 138 million smokers and 28%...

Nearly 138 million Indian smokers do not know that smoking tobacco causes stroke. As many as 92 million on the other hand aren't aware that tobacco causes heart disease. According to a report released on Friday by the World Heart Federation, half of all Chinese smokers and one-third of Indian and Vietnamese smokers are unaware of the risks tobacco poses to our heart. Awareness of the risk of second-hand smoke is even lower. Around...

Finally, gory Pictorial warnings like that of rotting mouths, hanging gums and infected lungs, will appear on cigarette, bidi, cigar and smokeless or chewing tobacco packets from December 1. The Union health ministry issued the notification on Saturday after years of buckling to resistance from the all-powerful tobacco lobby. The latest notification contains a set of four pictures each of lung and oral cancer. The warnings, which will be rotated every two...

-The Telegraph   Packets of chewing tobacco sold across India after December 1, 2011 will have to show graphic images portraying the disfiguring effects of oral cancer, but cigarette and bidi packets may show milder pictures, the Union health ministry said today. The health ministry has notified two new sets of Pictorial warnings — harsher images for packets of chewing tobacco — that will replace the existing pictures, scorpions on chewed tobacco...