Two leading tobacco companies in India have halted production in a row over new health warnings they are required to put on their packaging.
In May, India’s health ministry ordered that all tobacco products must depict a cancer-stricken mouth from 1 December.
ITC and Godfrey Phillips India say they are unclear over the pictures they are to carry on their packs. The health ministry denies there is any confusion and says the new warnings must come into force immediately.
It said earlier warnings of an infected lung and a scorpion sign were too mild to be effective. Manufacturers and vendors would be penalised if they continued to show the earlier warnings, its order said. Tobacco smoking kills nearly a million people a year in India.
‘Ambiguity’
Tobacco manufacturers ITC and Godfrey Phillips India say they stopped production at all their units on Thursday.
“Units [for making cigarettes] are shut because of the ambiguity in pictorial warnings to be carried from 1 December onwards,” the Press Trust of India news agency quoted an ITC spokesman as saying. ITC makes popular cigarette brands such as India Kings, Gold Flake and Navy Cut. Output is on hold at all five of its units across India, PTI said.
An official at Godfrey Phillips – which makes brands like Four Square, Red and White and Cavanders – said work had stopped at its two India units.
A health ministry spokesman told the BBC that the image of a cancer-stricken mouth had been in its notification to tobacco companies of 5 March 2010 and there is no reason for confusion. The government order on the new pictorial warnings has faced stiff resistance from tobacco manufacturers and the deadline for implementing it has been postponed a couple of times.
In the past few years, India has come up with stringent rules to curb the use of tobacco.
Tobacco-related advertisements are banned and the sale of tobacco products to minors is also an offense.
A countrywide ban on smoking in public places came into effect two years ago – although correspondents say it is blatantly flouted and poorly enforced.
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