Pictorial warning: Tobacco companies fight notification in SC

NEW DELHI: The tobacco industry objected to a petition challenging a new central government notification on mandatory pictorial warnings on tobacco products and asked the Supreme Court whether it would be better to completely ban tobacco rather than stifle the industry with all kinds of restrictions.

Appearing for the tobacco industry, senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi and Sajan Poovayya told a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud that in January, the SC had stayed a Karnataka HC order reducing the pictorial warning to 40 per cent of the pack size and restored the 85 per cent norm. "What more do the petitioners want?" he asked.

The bench said, "The government has only changed the photograph to be displayed on tobacco product packets. They want the pictorial message to be such that it would inform consumers about the evil effects of the product." Rohatgi said the SC must take into account that people had a right to carry on a business under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution. "If it is so bad, why not ban tobacco products altogether? Why not ban industries producing alcohol and even sugar, which is responsible for diabetes," he said.

The bench said the petitioner wanted consumers to take informed choices when buying tobacco products as "incidence of oral cancer are increasing". Rohatgi said, "Chocolates should also be banned and there should be pictorial warning that consuming five chocolates a day could cause diabetes." The SC said that there was no link between sugar and diabetes.

On January 8, the SC had restored 85 per cent pictorial warning on packets of tobacco products while staying a Karnataka HC judgment which had reduced it to 40 per cent. "Keeping in view the objects and reasons of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003 we think it appropriate to direct stay of order passed by the high court of Karnataka," a bench led by CJI Misra had said. Tobacco product manufacturers had made attempts to thwart a stay on the HC judgment but the bench accepted that pictorial warnings conveyed the hazardous effects of tobacco products even to the illiterate.