Cancerous mouth pictures on tobacco products from June 1

New Delhi, March 15 (IANS) Come June 1, packets of cigarettes and other tobacco products will display pictures of cancerous mouths as health warnings, health officials said Monday.

The "grotesque" picture will occupy at least 40 percent of the packet area and will be displayed on the top portion so that people could be dissuaded from using tobacco which causes cancer, and is one of the top 10 killers in India.

 The health ministry, as per provisions of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labelling) Rules, 2008, and amended in 2008 and 2009, notified the new pictorial health warnings March 5, a health ministry
official told IANS.

The new specified health warnings for both smoking and smokeless forms of tobacco will come into effect from June 1, the official added.

These pictorial warnings will also be displayed on packets of cigars, cheroots, bidis, pipe tobacco, hookah tobacco, as well as pan masala or any chewing material that contains tobacco.

Officials said violation of the provision  will invite to the manufacturer imprisonment extending to two years or a fine up to Rs.5,000, or both, while violations by seller or distributor will also be a punishable offence with imprisonment which may extend to one year, or fines up to Rs.1,000 or both.

"Tobacco is the foremost cause of preventable death in the world today. In India, the tobacco attributable deaths currently range between 800,000 to 900,000 per year," the health ministry official said.

"The cost of the tobacco attributable burden of just three groups of diseases (cancer, heart disease and lung cancer) was estimated Rs.30,833 crore in 2002-03," the official said.

According to Binoy Matthew of Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI), an NGO which has been very active in carrying out anti-tobacco campaigns in the country, field tests of these pictorial warnings conducted in seven states - Orissa, Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh - were found effective.

"The pictorial warnings on tobacco products were enforced May 31 last year. However, they were found to be ineffective. Further, the rules mandate that the pictorial warnings should be rotated every 12 months - thus the new
warnings, which show a picture of oral cancer, will be implemented in June," Matthew said.
 
According to the WHO, cancer is one of the top 10 killers in India. The world health agency has said India will witness over 50 per cent growth in deaths due to cancer, that is over 666,000 people will die every year in
India by 2015 due to the disease.