Scary pictorial images on cigarette packs delayed by a year

Cigaratte manufacturers given a year’s breather after Cabinet agreed to delayed to implement scarier pictorial warnings on cigarette and bidi packs untill December 2011.

Decision means cigarette packs will continue with the current pictorial warnings,scorpion on bidi packs and a cancer affected lung on cigarette packs for another year. Also, the interregnum will give the industry time to pressure the government against implementing harsher images.

Two major manufacturers had allready stopped production from 1st December, resulting in crores of rupees losses every day in taxes.

Union Health Ministry decided to go to the Cabinet after a GoM headed by Pranab Mukherjee met Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad last month and disapproved the new picture.The new warning was cleared by the Health Minister earlier this year.

A GoM set up in 2008 had approved the current warnings with the condition that they be replaced with scary images of a cancer-affected mouth from December 1, 2010.