Urban District Health Officer Rajani
M. has called for an amendment to the Food Safety and Standards (Prohibition
and Restrictions on Sales) Regulations, 2011. This in the light of the fact
that though the government has banned the sale of gutka and pan masala that
contain tobacco or nicotine on May 31, companies are subverting the ban by
selling sachets of tobacco separately.
According to her, the gutka industry
was exploiting a loophole in the law and selling tobacco leaves separately.
Explaining the loophole, she said
that the Food Safety and Standards (Prohibition and Restriction on Sales)
Regulations, 2011, prohibits the sale of food items containing tobacco and
nicotine. “But loose tobacco is being sold to people who are later mixing them
with other products. Since the law prohibits the sale of gutka with other food
items, the industry lobby is contending that loose tobacco can be sold. There
is a need to amend the regulations so that tobacco is not sold in separate sachets,”
she said here on Saturday during the drive to weed out illegal advertisements
pertaining to tobacco products.
Health Minister U.T. Khader, City
Police Commissioner Raghavendra Auradkar and Additional Police Commissioner
Kamal Panth inspected four tea shops on Infantry Road and its surroundings as a
part of the drive to get illegal advertisements removed from shops selling
cigarettes and pan masala. Mr. Khader directed the shopkeepers to display
pictorial warnings of the consequences of consuming tobacco and its products.
Section 5 of the Cigarette and Other
Tobacco Products Act (COTPA) places restrictions on the advertisement of
cigarettes or any other tobacco product and also makes it mandatory for a
health warning to be placed in each of the stalls.
“Several youngsters consume tobacco
that has dangerous health hazards. There is a need for vendors to place boards
that convey the message that consuming tobacco is harmful to health so that
youngsters will at least think twice before falling prey to it.”
At one of the stalls on Cunnigham
Road, a vendor was selling Super Zerda, a tobacco product and there was no
clear pictorial statutory warning on the sachets and the Minister directed
officials to initiate action against the company.
And, the Health Minister collected
six pan masala sachets and directed the officials to get them checked in
laboratories to find whether they contained tobacco.
To a query, Mr. Khader said, “After
the ban, sale of gutka has reduced significantly.”
He added that similar drives against
the sale of tobacco products would be carried out in all districts.
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