New Delhi: All the harmful health effects of tobacco like cancer, deformity and sterility would be highlighted in the form of pictorial warnings on tobacco products starting Sunday, May 31.
Sunday is 'World No Tobacco Day' and the Health Ministry has decided to use pictorial warnings like the skull and cross-bones or a cancer-disfigured face or diseased lungs on the packaging of tobacco products.
These warnings would occupy 40 per cent of the space on the front of all packets of tobacco products.
While usage of strong warnings like skull and cross bones or a cancer-disfigured face is optional, it is mandatory to have scorpion and diseased lungs on all tobacco products.
''The Health Ministry is going ahead with implementing the pictorial warning,'' ministry sources said here.
The advertisements announcing implementation of the move has appeared in many newspapers today.
The Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products (Packing and Labelling) Rules 2008 are being implemented after a long drawn battle between health activists, NGOs and tobacco lobby under whose pressure the move was earlier deferred for six months.
The move finally came on a plea in the Supreme Court earlier in May by NGO Health for Millions, which alleged that powerful tobacco lobbies were to blame for coming in the way of the law over the last three years.
Flouting the rules would attract fines up to Rs 5,000 with or without two years of imprisonment for the manufacturer. The dealer or seller can be fined up to Rs 1,000 with or without a year's imprisonment.
On subsequent offences, the fine would be Rs 10,000 for the manufacturer and he could be jailed for five years. The fine would be Rs 3,000 for the seller and may be jailed for two years.
India records about 800,000 tobacco deaths every year or 2,200 deaths a day. About 57 per cent men in the age group of 15-49 years use tobacco in some form and 10.9 per cent women in this age group use tobacco, according to a National Family Health Survey conducted in 2005-06.
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