PANJIM: Tobacco product packets will now come with scarier pictorial warnings, grim messaging and a toll-free telephone number for help in quitting.
The Health Ministry released a new set of pictorial health warnings for mandatory display covering 85 per cent on both sides of packets of cigarettes, bidis and chewing tobacco with effect from September 1.
“For smoking and smokeless forms of tobacco products, the word “tobacco causes cancer” and the word “tobacco causes painful death” shall appear in white font colour on a red background and the words “quit today call 1800-11-2356” shall appear in white font colour on a black background,” the notice says.
Two images of specified health warnings as notified in the schedule shall be displayed on all tobacco product packages and each of the images shall appear consecutively on the package with an interregnum period of 12 months.
National Organisation for Tobacco Eradication president Dr Shekhar Salkar said that tobacco not only causes direct cancer but also affects other organs causing peptic ulcers, oesophagus cancer, prostrate, urinary bladder, and pancreas.
