Supreme Court Restricts Tobacco Advertising

Rajesh Nirgude/Associated Press Cigarette packets displayed at a shop in Mumbai, Maharashtra, on Nov. 27, 2007.

The Supreme Court of India has overturned a lower court’s suspension of a law regulating the promotion of tobacco products and criticized the central government for doing nothing to get the interim order revoked since it was issued in 2005.

Parliament passed an anti-tobacco law in 2003, and in the following year it introduced a set of rules that made it mandatory for all shops and kiosks selling tobacco products to display signs that warned about their health risks. The vendors also could not display tobacco advertisements that were bigger than 60 by 45 centimeters (24 by 18 inches).

The Indian tobacco lobby objected to the new regulations, and in 2005, the Bombay High Court granted a stay on the enforcement of the law.

On Monday, the Supreme Court, which was responding to a petition filed by the nongovernmental organization Health for Millions, canceled the Bombay High Court’s order, effectively reinstating the limits on tobacco companies’ ads displayed at shops and kiosks selling such products.

The Supreme Court criticized the government for not working to overturn the Bombay High Court’s interim order. The government’s inaction “had a huge ramification on society at large, particularly weaker and poor sections who are the largest consumer of tobacco products,” the court said, according to Press Trust of India.

Tobacco products kill an estimated 2,500 people in India every day according to one global study. India is a signatory to the World Health Organization’s framework convention on tobacco control, which calls for price and non-price measures to be adopted to reduce the demand for tobacco. It also cites “global marketing, transnational tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship” among the factors that have contributed to the increase in tobacco use around the world.

Shyam Dev Sharma, who has been delivering cartons of cigarettes to roadside kiosks in central Delhi for 30 years, said he was skeptical that the new measures would make much of a difference.

“The prices of cigarettes and the laws about the sales of cigarettes have been changing every other year,” said Mr. Sharma, who is in his 50s. “Every new ruling has an impact on the cigarette sales for a few days, and then people resort to old habits.”