Why it is in news?

• The Supreme Court stayed a Karnataka High Court order reducing the size of pictorial warnings on packages of tobacco products to 40% of the package space.
• The court foregrounded the health of citizens over the concerns of the tobacco industry and favoured a government regulation requiring packets of tobacco products to sport pictorial warnings covering 85% of their packaging space.
• A Bench  said it is mild to say that tobacco consumption and use causes “deterioration of health”.
• The apex court said “destruction of health” is a more appropriate phrase to explain the harm caused by tobacco.
• The Division Bench of the High Court had struck down the amendment to the Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labelling Rules) 2008, as amended in 2014.

Better impact

• Centre challenged the High Court decision to reduce the size of pictorial warnings saying in a country where illiteracy is rampant the more prominent the warning the better impact it would have on the minds of the people.
• Life sans health is not worth living and the chewing of tobacco or smoking of cigarettes or bidis, etc., causes irretrievable hazard to health
• It is the obligation of the State to make the people aware as regards the injurious nature of these indulgences.
• Apart from the victim of the habit, the family suffers. The whole society faces peril,

Ban tobacco

Counter vie

1. Instead of a ban, the government is using “absolutely horrifying” pictures with no named source or scientific value on the tobacco packets.
2. The use of such pictures on 85% packaging space is a violation of their fundamental right to do business under Article 19 (1) (g)
3. parliamentary standing committee has already recommended pictorial warnings on 50% space and this should be adopted till March 31, 2018, when the issue would be re-examined.

THE HINDU