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Tobacco pack warnings struck down
December 19 , 2017
2405 days
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- The Karnataka High Court has struck down the 2014 amendment rules that mandated pictorial health warnings to cover 85 per cent of tobacco product packaging space, holding that they violated Constitutional norms.
- However, the court made it clear that the 40 per cent pictorial health warning rule, which existed prior to the amendment rules, would remain in force.
- A division bench comprising Justices B S Patil and B V Nagarathna passed the order on a batch of petitions challenging the 85 per cent pictorial warning rule notified by the Union Health Ministry.
- The Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labelling) Amendment Rules, 2014 (COTPA) came into effect from April 1 last year.
- The high court bench held that the Union Health Ministry violated constitutional norms as it was an "unreasonable restriction" on the right to do business guaranteed under Article 19 (1) (g) of the Constitution.
- The global average size for graphic health warnings (GHWs) was only about 30 per cent of the principal display area.
- The top three cigarette consuming countries, the US, China and Japan which together account for 51 per cent of global cigarette consumption, have only text based warnings and not adopted GHWs.
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