Spanish Version

There was an article published in the GALA Gazette Volume III, Issue IV which gave an insight regarding the new development in the provisions concerning to use of tobacco in public places and in advertisements of the same to children. We now take this opportunity to update the readers with the recent development in the provisions of “Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Rules, 2004”, as amended 2011.

Smoking is the most wide spread addiction. India is on top in tobacco addiction. The recent statistics clearly depict the

picture of the Indian smokers, which reveals that there are 139 Million smokers among which 48% use Bidis (hand made tobacco wrapped in dried leaves without filter), 38% chew tobaccoand 14% use Cigarettes. It is to be noted that among the said total number of the smokers, 28% of them are of age under 15-49 years.

It is clear from the Global Smoking Statistics that between 80,000 and 100,000 children worldwide start smoking every day and among the said number of children, roughly half of them live in Asia. In view of this, smoking among teens is an issue that affects countries worldwide.

According to the survey conducted by World Health Organization (WHO) and health ministry, it has revealed that India being the world’s largest producer of movies, i.e. more than 1,000 films are made in several languages annually, 76% of Indian movies show the use of tobacco in them, and 52.2% of children have started smoking under the influence of the movies which show tobacco usage.

Further, it has been revealed that “tobacco kills more than five million people per year. Each day approximately 100,000 young people take up smoking. Restricting smoking in movies will go a long way towards stemming the tobacco epidemic.”

It is now clear from the above mentioned results; one of the major influences on the rise of teen  tobacco use is due to the depiction of glamour of smoking in both films and on television, and therefore it is the need of present time that policies to severely restrict smoking imagery in all film media is enforced.

In order to bring down the usage of tobacco in the movies and television programmes, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare brought a notification, which came into effect on November 14, 2011, wherein the said ministry amended the rules of “Cigarettes and other  Tobacco Products  

Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Rules, 2004” by inserting set of rules after Rule 6 in the said Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products Rules, 2004 which had made it mandatory for all Old/New Films and Television Programmes to provide health warnings at the bottom of the screen all through the duration of the scenes pertaining to smoking or tobacco use.

Recently, it was revealed that the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has asked the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) to “maintain status quo and adhere to the certification process as was being done before the issue of latest notification” and asked the Union health ministry “to keep the notification in abeyance till the time the practical difficulties faced by the film industry are resolved amicably.”

Due to this recent activity, Bollywood (Hindi Film Industry) is now free from any foundation of screening health warnings at the bottom of the screen for the duration of the scenes pertaining to smoking or tobacco use. In other words, movies won’t have to run a scroll with anti-tobacco messages each time a smoking scene is shown.

Keeping into consideration that there are large fan followings for Bollywood movie stars in India, which exerts tremendous influence on the behavioural attitudes of adolescents, a representative of Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI) has expressed the grievance by stating that, “We are deeply disappointed to learn that the Information & Broadcasting ministry has issued directives to CBFC to defer the implementation of the rules on the grounds of practical difficulties, overlooking the public health benefits. This stand is unfortunate, especially when there can be no difficulty in implementing these rules.”

Further, the director of WHO's Tobacco Free Initiative, had said, "The more smoking adolescents see on screen, the more likely they are to start smoking. These simple policies can save generations of young people from a lifetime of addiction and an early death from tobacco." In view of this, the WHO report recommends that movie studios should stop displaying tobacco onscreen and strong anti-tobacco advertisements should be screened before all movies that have tobacco imagery.

Tobacco is known to be a SILENT KILLER and every year more than 5 million smokers die due to tobacco addiction in which Heart Disease is on top.

So keeping all the above facts into consideration, does it still need to be considered whether such exemption to Bollywood movies is in the interest of healthy India?