Pictures of a corpse and mouth cancers will
be displayed on cigarette packets in India from June in a bid to shock
people into stopping smoking, health officials said on Tuesday.
Other packs will show a toddler with tubes running up his nostrils with the caption "Your smoking kills babies", rather than the milder, pictureless warning "Cigarette smoking is injurious to health" currently displayed.
Corpse, cancer images to confront Indian smokers - Reuters
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
By Kamil Zaheer
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Pictures of a corpse and mouth cancers will be displayed on cigarette packets in India from June in a bid to shock people into stopping smoking, health officials said on Tuesday.
Other packs will show a toddler with tubes running up his nostrils with the caption "Your smoking kills babies", rather than the milder, pictureless warning "Cigarette smoking is injurious to health" currently displayed.
More than 2,500 Indians die every day due to diseases linked to consumption of tobacco products, according to official figures, and the health ministry admits laws banning smoking in public places have had little impact.
"Tobacco consumption is one of the main villains in our country," Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said at a conference aimed at curbing tobacco use.
The pictorial warnings will also be plastered over packs of bidis -- popular handrolled cigarettes that are cheaper than filtered brands -- and packets and tins of chewing tobacco, which are popular with millions of Indians.
All tobacco products will also have to show a skull and crossbones image on their packaging, besides messages such as "Tobacco causes a slow and painful death", officials say.
More than 200 million Indians use tobacco products regularly.
The World Health Organization says chewing tobacco is addictive and linked to cancers of the head, neck, throat and esophagus.
In India, more than 45 percent of adult males consume tobacco products and officials say smoking is becoming more popular among younger people.
The country, burdened by a surfeit of health problems ranging from HIV/AIDS to polio to child malnutrition, reports over 800,000 deaths annually due to tobacco-related diseases.
Officials say given that a third of India's 1.1 billion people are illiterate picture warnings are vital.
"We need to shock people. Nothing else seems to help," a health ministry official who could not be named said.
Australia, Singapore and Canada are among countries to have already made it mandatory to have pictorial warnings on cigarette packets. Belgium plans to launch a similar campaign from May.
Studies in Canada have shown that such warnings encouraged many smokers to cut down and others to quit.
Ramadoss said that with hundreds of millions of young people, India needed to step up its anti-tobacco campaign, especially as Bollywood often glamorized smoking.
More than 50 million Indians are dependent on the tobacco sector and the cigarette industry, which provides billions of rupees as revenue to the government each year.
India's biggest cigarette-maker, ITC Ltd., said it would comply with the June deadline for pictorial warnings.
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