SC makes pictorial warning mandatory on cigarette packets

Every tobacco company will have to carry pictorial warning on cigarette packets from today as per the directions of the Supreme Court.

Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam has given an undertaking to a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice B N Agrawal that the government will make it mandatory for every tobacco company to carry the pictorial warning on cigarette packets from May 31 2009, which is observed as the World No Tobacco Day.

The government was earlier pulled up by the Supreme Court for dragging its feet on implementing its notification making it mandatory for a tobacco company to display a pictorial warning on every cigarette packet to convey a message to smokers that it is injurious to health.

According to Chronic Care Foundation, over 9,00,000 people die every year in India from smoking related diseases.

Passive smoking is also one of the major causes of people falling prey to smoking related diseases like cancer.

The directions issued by the apex court on a petition filed by an NGO will help millions seeking directions to the government to immediately implement its notification of making pictorial warning mandatory.

Pictorial warning will be big enough and occupy 40 per cent space on the cigarette packets. The Union government had imposed a ban on smoking in public places from October 2, 2008, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

The government had also imposed a ban on smoking scenes in movies, but the public statement made by new Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad saying there is nothing wrong in showing smoking scenes in movies may create a problem for the government as its appeal against the Delhi High Court judgment for lifting ban on such scenes in movies, is already pending before the Supreme Court.

The NGO had pleaded for making it mandatory to carry pictorial warning as over 70 per cent of the country’s population is either illiterate or semi literate and therefore pictorial warning will be more effective than the written one.