a much-wanted step which the central government could not take perhaps under the influence of the super-powerful lobby of cigarette manufacturers in India. Now the central government should be strict at least for not bowing to unjustified demand of cigarette-manufactures to dilute the size of pictorial warnings on cigarette packs, and should rather ensure the strike continues indefinitely. Report of Parliamentary Committee against Rajasthan High Court for diluting size of pictorial warnings seems to be rejected, rightly too if so, by central government as is evident from strike of cigarette manufacturers
India instead needs a total ban on manufacture and sale of cigarettes in like the one in Bhutan and Ireland. Even family members of smokers will support such a bold step, because it is the family which suffers from death of persons caused by smoking. Revenue loss from ban on cigarettes sale will be more than compensated by funds saved on tobacco-related diseases. If self-regulation is the policy to check human evils, then Union Government should withdraw attempt-to-suicide from Indian Penal Code. Likewise using helmets by scooterists should also be made self-regulatory rather than being forced as compulsory.
Even if some affording ones might be playing with their lives by using smuggled cigarettes in case of a ban on manufacturing cigarettes in India, yet it will definitely effectively check the start of smoking amongst the youngsters out of fashion and status even though initial puffs cause discomfort but later resulting in addiction. Influential tobacco-lobby thinks only of money minting for their companies at the cost of lives of human beings where about a million persons lose lives every year by becoming habitual of tobacco products.
Parliamentarians involved in manufacture of tobacco products must not be members of Parliamentary Committees on Health and tobacco-related aspects. Central government should also take back Padma award given in the year 2011 from Chief of India’s leading cigarette-manufacturing company for his continuous advocacy against any such restrictions on tobacco-products.
