Bring on the poison pouch

Gutkha brands are disregarding the government's directive to tobacco companies to display pictoral warnings on products

Cigarette brands have done it and now the gutkha companies are doing it too. Disregarding the government directicve tou00a0 carry pictorial warnings on tobacco products that is.

According to the government notification, which came into effect on May 31, 2009, all tobaccou00a0 products should implement the new packaging and labelling rules with gory pictures and pictorial warnings against the consumption of tobacco products. The few gutkha brands that have launched packets with the new warnings have played it smart, using very small, unnoticeable pictoral warnings. Most packets carry a smallu00a0 picture of the mandatory scorpion image (depicting poison) and it doesn't cover the entire area as specified by the rules.

MiD DAY picked up samples of a few leading gutkha brands and they clearly showed that manufacturers had violated the rule as the pictorial warnings on most of the packets were significantly small, not covering more than 20 per cent area of the packet. Theu00a0 rule says the warning should cover 40 per cent of packet size.

Bhavna B Mukhopadhyay, senior director, Voluntary Health Association of India, said, "Tobacco companies are not implementing the Supreme Court order and the government's notification in the right spirit. As a matter of fact, they are in gross violation of specifications that have been clearly communicated to all manufacturers.

Even 10 days after the passing of the implementation date, cigarette, bidi and many gutkha companies are yet to introduce the new packets. Strong enforcement drives should be initiated by the government to prevent further dilution of packaging and labelling rules."

Also, most of the gutkha brands have the health warning written only in one language, which is against the packaging and labelling rules. The rules say such warnings must be printed in English and the language in which the brand name of the product has been written.

The delay in executing these health warnings has been strongly criticised by NGOs and healthcare professionals. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), India records about 8,00,000 tobacco-related deaths every year or 2,200 a day.

The rule says
As per the undertaking given by the Central Government in the Supreme Court on May 6 2009, it is very clear that the law makes it compulsory for all packages of tobacco products to display pictorial warnings on 40 per cent of the total area on one side of the packets. The latest pictorial warnings as seen on gutkha sachets clearly violate the law since they are significantly less than 40 per cent of the area.