New Delhi: Sunday was celebrated as the world No Tobacco Day. The government chose the day to issue guidelines to all the companies making tobacco products to carry graphic pictorial warnings like the skull and cross bones or a cancer-disfigured face or diseased lungs to highlight the hazards of tobacco intake.
This was a clear instruction to the smokers - think before you light up. So, now those who smoke will have to choose between sexy Shah Rukh Khan puffing away his tension during a match, or a picture of what tobacco does to your lungs. The government thinks it will be enough to make people want to quit smoking.
"It has worked in 17 countries and India is the 18th country to implement it. This year the theme for World No Tobacco Day is pictorial warnings, and it is good co-incidence that the law comes into force from this day," said Vineet Gill Munish, NPI, Tobacco Free Initiative, WHO.
The Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products, Packing and Labeling Act 2008 comes into force after a long battle between NGOs and the tobacco industry.
From World No Tobacco Day, all packs of tobacco products will have to carry advisory images. Though the new packs are yet to reach the shelves, it's easy to see why manufacturers lobbied hard against it.
"We sell some international brands like Davidoff with these pictorial warnings but nobody buys this cigarette packet," said a vendor.
Such pictorial warnings will occupy 40 per cent of the space on a pack of any tobacco products. But for addicts like Vidyashankar, who is on a staple diet of seven packs a day, will these warnings be enough?
"A person who smokes, smokes. Why would you look at the packet? You would look at the cigarette," he said.
Worldwide, countries who have implemented such warnings have had reasonable success. But they have followed it up with other anti-smoking measures and the pictures they have carried are more horrific.