India to impose 85 percent warnings

Indian tobacco manufacturers are likely to have been dismayed by a statement that the government is to go ahead with a February 19 notification requiring tobacco product packaging to carry graphic health warnings that take up 85 percent of the back and front surfaces.

Proposals about the size of the warnings have been going up and down like a yo-yo in recent times but it would appear from a Livemint story relayed by the TMA that the 85 percent ruling will be effective as of April 1.

Manufacturers had earlier opposed as too harsh a non-binding proposal by a parliamentary panel earlier this month that the warnings be increased from 40 percent to 50 percent.

The most recent issue of the BBM Bommidala Group newsletter reported the Tobacco Institute of India (TII) as having said that the panel’s recommendation did not seem to have accounted for the devastating consequences of big warnings on the livelihoods of the millions of people who were dependent on the tobacco industry.

‘Domestic tobacco farmers are already facing unprecedented hardships and a continuous drop in demand for their produce due to the dwindling domestic legal cigarette industry on account of high taxation,’ the TII said.

According to the Livemint story, the panel’s proposal faced opposition too from anti-tobacco and health advocacy groups. In a March 22 letter to Health Minister J.P. Nadda, Doctors for Tobacco Control in India described the panel’s recommendation as ‘hugely disappointing’ and urged the minister to implement 85 percent warnings.

The minister received similar requests from international organizations such as the American Cancer Society, the Nossal Institute of Global Health at the University of Melbourne, and the World Health Federation.