Mumbai: Tobacco product vendors of India will no longer be able to sell non-tobacco products such as toffees, candies, chips, biscuits, soft drinks and others any more. The move by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare intends to prevent exposure of tobacco products to children who are major consumers of non-tobacco products.
Arun Kumar Jha, the economic advisor in the Department of Health and Family Welfare, has recommended a more effective mechanism to regulate the sale of tobacco products by barring the vendors from selling any non-tobacco items. “We believe that such an initiative will prove to be beneficial in achieving the objective of preventing the children/non-user from exposure to tobacco products,” Jha wrote in a letter to states and local bodies.
The Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003 prohibits the sale of any tobacco product within 100 yards of an educational institute. Selling tobacco products, including cigarettes, to a person under 18 years of age is an offense. Every third Indian is estimated consumes some form of tobacco, even though it is a known carcinogen. Doctors estimate that 50 per cent of cancer cases reported in India are related to tobacco consumption.
“I would be grateful if you could kindly consider developing a mechanism to provide permission/ authorization through municipal authority/local authority to the retail shops who are selling tobacco products with a condition/provision in the authorization that the shops authorized for selling tobacco products, cannot sell any non-tobacco products which are essentially meant for children,” the notification read.
Ashima Sarin, Director, Sambandh Health Foundation which works in the field of tobacco prevention, welcomed the move and said it will certainly contain the flurry of unlicensed tobacco vendors which mushroom around school and colleges.
“Though the provisions to bar the sale of loose cigarettes and selling tobacco products to minors already exist in the law, they are not followed by the unlicensed vendors. This can be the perfect way to minimise the exposure of tobacco products to the children who visit the shops to buy other products,” said Sarin.
