Pictorial warning on cigarette packs by May 31

The pictorial warning on cigarette and tobacco products highlighting adverse effects of smoking and using tobacco products will be implemented from May 31.

The Central government informed the Supreme Court after the latter sought explanation from the former on the allegation of delaying statutory pictorial warning on cigarette and tobacco products on Wednesday that the regulation for pictorial warning on cigarette packs will be implemented from May 31.

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Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium appearing for the Central government gave the undertaking before a bench of Justices B N Agrawal and G S Singhvi that health warning would be displayed on 40% of the front side of the cigarette or beedi packs.

Entertaining the petition filed by a Delhi based NGO that government was deliberately delaying the implementation of pictorial warning under the pressure of tobacco lobby, the apex court yesterday pulled up the government for delaying its own decision.

The NGO had also charged the government for not implementing the 2006 Rules “Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labeling)” making it mandatory for all tobacco products to display statutory pictorial warnings under pressure from the tobacco lobby.

Also in the backdrop of the allegation laid by former Union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss, who vigorously campaigned against smoking, that the government had altered the original GoM (Group of Ministers) resolution, which required pictorial warnings to be displayed on 50 per cent on all sides of packs including wholesale-packs, the Court sought the record of Feb 3 GoM meeting chaired by Pranab Mukherjee.

The Court after scrutinizing all the records today supported the government’s stand and recorded the undertaking to implement the health warning by May 31.

The dream of the smoke-free environment, however, cannot be completed unless or until the government put blanket ban on manufacture and sell of cigarettes in the country like Bhutan and Ireland.