Pictorial warnings on cigarette packs to be increased : Health Minister
"Health Ministry's stand is that we want to reduce use of tobacco as its use is related to cancer. Cigarette material coming into India will have pictorial warnings," he said.
The Health Minister's statement comes after several leaders of the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) made controversial comments on the effects of smoking.
The government is mulling a proposal to increase the size of pictorial warnings on cigarette packs to convince the buyers to limit smoking. But BJP MPs Dilip Gandhi and Shyam Charan Gupta, who are members of Parliamentary Committee of Subordinate Legislation looking into the rules regarding tobacco sale in the country, claimed that there is no clear proof that cigarette smoking causes cancer.
Gupta said the pictorial warnings should remain at 40 per cent and the demand to make it 80 per cent was not genuine. Gupta also said that sugar causes diabetes and should be banned by the same logic.
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