Difficult to Implement Pictorial Warnings
Cigarettes packages with graphic warnings are welcomed most of all by anti-smoking researchers.
The pictures, which show photos of decayed gums and diseased lungs as well as skull and crossbones, were supposed to be in place in November but were delayed after lobbying by tobacco makers.
Nevertheless, last month, the Supreme Court announced that it decided to try once again on May 31 to place on all cigs packs, beedis and gutka pictorial warnings taking up about 40 percent of the packaging area.
Anti-tobacco groups asserted that the government wanted to decelerate the rules until after the just-completed general elections.
Then more than one week after the ruling and almost three weeks after the elections, the new cigarette packs will appear on store shelves.
Mahesh Chaturvedi, who led Nai Daur, an anti-tobacco group from Bhopal, said that this is in horrible violation of Supreme Court orders, which made pictorial warnings mandatory from this month.
Even after a week of speaking about the pictorial warning on cigs packs, was no sign of photo warnings on tobacco products, because the government is not serious about the implementation of this new legislation.
Mahesh explained that the government was firmed that the new rules would spark a backlash at the polls from the more than 15m people connected to the tobacco industry in Madhya Pradesh state.
Government doesn’t know how many people are involved in the tobacco industry. Some considers that as many as 45m people could be involved from cultivation through manufacturing.
Although cigarette packs are still not carrying the warnings, some smokers are already waiting their effect.
But cigarette sellers are less concerned. Vijay Sharma, a tobacconist in New Delhi, said: “I don’t think there will be any effect on sales. Even now everybody, at least those in the cities, is aware of the ill effects of tobacco on health, but still people consume it. Nobody can drive a person to quit if he is not willing to.”
Statistics show that in India, the tobacco industry contributes more than 95 billion rupees (Dh7.4bn) annually in taxes, 80 percent of which comes from cigarette sales. A study conducted jointly by the American Cancer Society and the World Lung Foundation found, that tobacco use drains around 350bn rupees from the Indian economy in the form of healthcare costs and productivity ruins.
Tobacco manufactures in India produce more than 100bn cigarettes annually, but these only account for about 15 percent of tobacco consumption in the country. The majority of India’s tobacco users are in the rural countryside, where many smoke beedis or chew gutka and are unlikely to be affected by the new warnings.
That’s why it is very difficult to implement these rulings in rural India, which has almost 70 percent of the tobacco users in India. The government couldn’t even urge the ban on smoking in public places like hospitals and schools in rural areas.
WHO explained that: “Effective health warnings, especially those that include pictures, have been proven to motivate users to quit and to reduce the appeal of tobacco for those who are not yet addicted”.
