Tobacco smoking could be banned, rather than restricted, in restaurants, bars and cafés in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, if a high-power committee on tobacco control has its way, according to a story by Sunitha Rao R for the Times of India.
Last month, the committee suggested that designated smoking zones should no longer be allowed in bars, restaurants and cafés.
It said that providing such zones provided the opportunity for establishments to violate the rules.
“No restaurant has maintained the designated smoking zone as per norms,” said committee member Dr. Vishal Rao U S. “In some cases, smoke from these zones is being let into children’s play areas, resulting in passive smoking. The recent Global Adult Tobacco survey data shows India has high exposure to second-hand smoking.”
Section 3 of the Karnataka Prohibition of Smoking and Protection of Non-Smokers Act 2001 prohibits smoking in public places.
“We’ve suggested to the BBMP (the administrative body – Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike) to ban smoking in bars, hotels, restaurants, pubs and cafés and not allow any designated areas for smoking,” he added.
The BBMP’s joint commissioner for health, Sarfaraz Khan, said notices would be issued to all pubs, bars, restaurants and hookah bars in the city about implementing the relevant act. Simultaneously, inspections would be conducted.
Khan said that during inspections of many hotels and pubs, it was found that their smoking zones were not compliant with the act. Smoking zones could be created in restaurants with more than 30 tables, but they should “ideally” have exhaust fans and be such that smoke did not enter other rooms. These provisions were being violated everywhere, he said.
G Honnagiri Gowda, president of the Karnataka Wine Merchants’ Association and representative of the Karnataka Pub Owners’ Association, said the associations would support the ban. “It has become a nuisance for other customers every time a person smokes inside pubs,” he said.
And K Shamaraju, treasurer of the Federation of Hotel and Restaurants Association of India, said many hotels had already banned smoking. “We have implemented the rule,” he said. “Customers who want to smoke are told to go outside. Smoking is not entertained within restaurant premises.”
Tag: India
Ban sought in Bengaluru
Prices ‘reasonably good’
Flue-cured tobacco growers in the Indian state of Karnataka are being paid ‘reasonably good’ prices during the ongoing 2017 selling season, according to a story in the latest issue of the BBM Bommidala Group newsletter.
After 132 days of sales, growers were said to have sold 80.54 million kg against an authorized crop of 99 million kg.
Bright grades were said to have attracted an average price of about Rs162 per kg, while medium grades had earned an average of about Rs148 per kg and low grades an average of about Rs115 per kg.
Overall, the tobacco sold so far had gone for an average of Rs140 per kg, up from Rs134 per kg during the previous auctions.
Meanwhile, flue-cured tobacco auctions in Andhra Pradesh are due to start on March 8.
The Tobacco Board of India authorized a crop size of 136 million kg for the current season, but, according to official estimates, unhelpful weather means that it is likely to come in at about 120 million kg.
Andhra growers, faced with increased costs, are said to be demanding a price of at least Rs140 per kg.Trading rights under threat
The Indian government is asking the Supreme Court to apply a rarely-used classification to the tobacco industry that would strip it of its legal right to trade, according to a Reuters story.
The move is said to be aimed at deterring tobacco companies from challenging new regulations.
But the government reportedly is not seeking to ban tobacco.
According to a Reuters review of a previously-unreported court filing by the Health Ministry on January 8, India’s top court is being asked to classify tobacco as res extra commercium, or a thing outside commerce.
If applied, the classification would have far reaching implications in denying the industry’s legal standing to trade and in giving authorities more leeway to impose restrictions.
The Supreme Court’s application of the classification to the alcohol industry during the 1970s paved the way for at least two Indian states to ban alcohol completely and provided for stricter regulations.
R. Balasubramanian, a government lawyer who is acting on behalf of the Ministry of Health in pursuing the classification implied that the effects on the tobacco industry would be greater than they were on the alcohol industry. “It will be a fillip to this drive against tobacco,” he said.
Balasubramanian said, however, that the government was not discussing banning tobacco and the goal of invoking the classification was only to curtail the industry’s legal rights.Looking to quit
Some flue-cured tobacco growers in the Prakasam district of Andhra Pradesh, India, are willing to quit the crop if the union government will compensate them to the tune of Rs1,000,000 per barn, according to a story on The Hindu Online.
Having suffered four consecutive years of drought, some of the growers operating in the traditional Southern Black Soil (SBS) and Southern Light Soil (SLS) areas of Prakasam are keen to quit flue-cured tobacco growing if the government provides compensation for dismantling the barns permanently.
The SBS and SLS areas account for 50 percent of the tobacco grown in Andhra Pradesh.
YSR Congress Party’s chief whip in Parliament, Y.V. Subba Reddy, is due to lead a delegation of farmer leaders to New Delhi to press for a suitable financial package to be included in the Union Budget.
The proposal is being presented as being in line with the strategy of reducing tobacco production laid out by the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
And it is being seen as almost inevitable as drought-hit growers have been forced already to cut down tobacco curing per barn by about 20 percent and fear that further reductions could render cultivation and processing unviable.
Any tobacco reduction strategy that did not include a reduction in the number of barns would be a futile exercise, the growers say.
The Hindu story said the clamor for quitting tobacco growing had gathered steam since 2015 when the sector saw a spate of suicides among growers, forcing the-then Union Commerce Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, to visit the area and help growers by offering compensation of Rs20 per kg for low-grade tobacco that had no takers on the regular market.Warnings case to continue
India’s Supreme Court on Monday put on hold a lower court’s order that quashed federal rules mandating larger health warnings on tobacco packages, according to a Reuters story.
The Karnataka High Court last month struck down the Cigarette and other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labelling) Amendment Rules, 2014, which had enlarged the warnings to 85 percent of the two principal faces of packages of cigarettes and other tobacco products. The rules had been in force since 2016.
The Supreme Court, which heard petitions brought forward by tobacco-control activists, stayed the Karnataka court’s order on Monday, citing the need to protect the health of citizens.
The case is due to be heard next on March 12.
The introduction in India of bigger tobacco-pack health warnings has seen a number of false starts and U-turns.
The government issued a notification on October 15, 2014, requiring the printing of graphic health warnings on tobacco packs covering 85 percent of each of the two main surfaces. But the policy was referred to a parliamentary committee that recommended in March 2016 that, instead, the warnings should be set at 50 percent.
The government, however, decided at the end of March 2016 to go ahead with its requirement for 85 percent warnings from April 1 of that year.
In response, ITC, India’s dominant cigarette manufacturer, announced on April 2 that it had halted production at its cigarette factories because it was not ready to print the bigger, graphic warnings on its cigarette packs. The company said that its factories would be shut till clarity emerged on the matter.
The country’s other manufacturers also halted production on April 1 and bidi manufacturers followed their lead sometime later.
ITC said on April 2 that because the question of the legality of the new warnings had been and continued to be pending before the courts, it had not committed to investing substantial resources in creating the large number of printing cylinders and other tools necessary for a change to the warnings. The implementation of health-warning changes was an elaborate process entailing months of preparation and involving substantial costs.Small retailers cry foul
More than 1,000 tobacco retailers yesterday protested outside the Union Health Ministry in Delhi, India, demanding a reduction in the size of cigarette-pack graphic health warnings, New Delhi Television has reported.
According to the retailers, protesting under the banner of Akhil Bharatiya Pan Vikreta Sangh (ABPVS), which represents about 7,500,000 retailers across India, the smuggling of tobacco products has increased in the country since the graphic warnings became mandatory.
Smuggled cigarettes carried no warnings, giving the impression that they were less risky than were tax-paid products.
The protest came days after the Karnataka High Court struck down the Cigarette and other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labelling) Amendment Rules, 2014, which had enlarged the warnings to 85 percent of the principal area of packages of cigarettes and other tobacco products.
The court, however, rejected the challenge made to the rules laid down in 2008. The 2008 rules, which had required 40-percent warnings, would remain in force until the union government framed fresh rules or amended the 2008 rules.
The government is expected to appeal against the decision.
The president of the ABPVS, Ram Ashrey Mishra, said the anti-tobacco policy was being driven by vested interests promoted by various NGOs that were receiving huge sums of money from international players and that were hand-in-glove with large retailers.
They had been targeting small retailers to prevent them selling other, non-tobacco items, pushing customers to their large shops and closing out all the sources of income of small retailers.
The report said the Union Health Ministry, on September 22, sent an advisory to the Rajasthan government that sought to prevent shops selling tobacco products from selling other products such as candy, chips, biscuits and soft drinks: ‘products essentially meant for children’.
Huge warnings struck down
A court in India on Friday struck down regulations that have required tobacco companies to cover 85 percent of their packaging with graphic health warnings, according to stories in The Hindu Online, the Times of India and Reuters.
The companies were said to have won an important but partial legal battle against the union government.
The Hindu said that the Karnataka High Court on Friday had declared as unconstitutional the Cigarette and other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labelling) Amendment Rules, 2014, which had enlarged the warnings to 85 percent of the principal area of packages of cigarettes and other tobacco products.
The court, however, had rejected the challenge made to the rules laid down in 2008.
The 2008 rules, which had required 40-percent warnings, would remain in force until the union government framed fresh rules or amended the 2008 rules.
A special division bench comprising Justice B.S. Patil and Justice B.V. Nagarathna delivered the verdict on a batch of petitions filed by the Tobacco Institute of India and tobacco manufacturers before the high courts of Karnataka, Calcutta, Delhi, Bombay, Gujarat, and Rajasthan, challenging the 2014 rules. All these petitions were transferred by India’s Supreme Court to the Karnataka High Court.
The Times report said that some public health experts felt that the court’s decision might cause harm to India’s global image.
According to Reuters, the government lawyer in the case, Krishna S. Dixit, confirmed the rules had been struck down but said he would appeal to the Supreme Court.
Limiting contacts in India
The Health Department of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu is setting up an empowered panel to implement measures recommended by the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), according to a story in the latest issue of the BBM Bommidala Group newsletter.
The panel will be focusing in particular on dealing with interactions with, or any kind of interference from, representatives of the tobacco industry.
The panel will reportedly comprise secretaries with the state government’s ‘Health, Home, Finance, Commercial tax, Registration and Law departments.
The Tamil Nadu government has already issued a protocol for its employees in dealing with the tobacco industry.
The protocol limits their interactions with tobacco-industry representatives and forbids them from accepting from the industry any contributions or services for themselves or their families, relatives or friends, including funds for research, policy drafts or legal advice.
Meetings between government employees and representatives of the tobacco industry must be cleared with the panel in writing.
Tobacco use down in India
Tobacco use in India has dropped by six percentage points in under 10 years, according to a story in the New Indian Express.
Figures from the Global Adult Tobacco Survey, 2016-2017, indicate that tobacco use fell in India from 34.6 percent to 28.6 percent between 2009-10 and 2016-17.
Three North-eastern states, Assam, Tripura and Manipur, however, saw increases in tobacco use despite anti-tobacco laws and a ban enforced by militants, the Express story said. In Assam, tobacco use rose from 39.3 percent to 48.2 percent, while in in Tripura it increased from 55.9 percent to 64.5 percent, and in Manipur it went up from 54.1 percent to 55.1 percent.
India’s other states saw falls in tobacco use. In Nagaland, it fell from 31.5 percent to 13.2 percent, and in Sikkim, it fell from 41.6 percent to 17.9 percent.
Meanwhile, smoking prevalence in India has fallen from 14 percent to 10.7 percent.
And the chewing of smokeless tobacco (SLT) has gone down from 25.9 percent to 21.4 percent nationally.
‘The remarkable achievement has been in reduction in exposure to second-hand smoke at home, which is from 52.3 percent to 38.7 percent, and in any public place from 29 per cent to 23 percent,’ the report said.
India wants an end to ENDS
India’s Union health ministry is planning to issue an advisory note to all states about what it sees as the health risks of vaping, according to a story on indianexpress.com.
The story said the note was likely to say that products such as ‘e-cigarettes, electronic nicotine-delivery systems (ENDS), nicotine and flavoured hookah’ were ‘extremely harmful to health’ and that they had not been approved in any form by the ministry of health and family welfare.
“The public will be advised, in their own interest, not to use any such products, sold or marketed in any form and under any name or brand,” a senior ministry official said.
But, according to a senior health ministry official, the health ministry is in a quandary over whether to ban e-cigarettes under the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA), the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, or the Poisons Act 1919.
Some states, including Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana, Kerala, Mizoram, Karnataka, and Jammu and Kashmir have already banned e-cigarettes as an unapproved drug. While some of these states have banned e-cigarettes under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, some have used as well the Poisons Act.
And, just for good measure, the official said that nicotine had been declared a ‘lethal and hazardous’ substance under the Environment (Protection) Act and Insecticide Act.
In 2013, the Ministry of Health formed an expert group to assess and report on various forms of ENDs, which, in its final report in July said that scientific evidence clearly indicated that any form of nicotine use, or the use of ENDS, was hazardous. The group reportedly said, too, that, ‘besides, causing many forms of health disorders, nicotine is also classified as a poison and is fatal for human beings even in small dosage’.
Meanwhile, the Express reported that three sub-committees formed to examine the legal, advocacy and health aspects of e-cigarettes had strongly recommended a ban on them, stating that they had cancer-causing properties.
“Though companies claim that e-cigarettes help [smokers] give up smoking, but in reality they help initiate cigarette smoking as they deliver nicotine in an attractive way and attract youth,” the official said.
