Little home-grown data linking smoking and cancer

India has little independent evidence to link cigarettes and cancer, according to a statement apparently made by the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) MP Dilip Kumar Gandhi during a New Delhi Television report.

“Does this [smoking] cause cancer or does [it] not? What are the impacts? We have never done our own survey,” he reportedly said.

The MP is the head of a committee that last month recommended that further discussions take place in respect of a government proposal to require health warnings covering 85 percent of cigarette packs.

Tobacco companies had been told late last year that the starting date for the new warnings would be April 1 this year.

It is up to the government to decide whether to accept the parliamentary panel’s recommendation for further discussions, but activists say the missed deadline does not bode well.

“This is just a front for the tobacco industry; it’s going to affect the bottom line of companies and that’s the smoke screen they have put up,” said Bhavna Mukhopadhyay, executive director of the Voluntary Health Association of India.

“In a country like ours, where a large section of the population cannot read or write and more users are coming on board, pictorial warnings are the need of the hour,” she said.

Meanwhile, plans to increase the minimum tobacco purchase age to 25 have not progressed either.