Trouble ahead for tobacco companies

Government to increase size of pictorial health warnings on cigarette packs, from the existing 30 to 50 per cent.

ISLAMABAD: The government will increase the size of pictorial health warnings on cigarette packs, from the existing 30 per cent to 50 per cent, said Yusuf Khan, Director General Tobacco Control Cell, Ministry of Health.

He was addressing a day-long workshop on banning tobacco advertisement, promotion and sponsorship.

Meanwhile, the size of text-based warning on cigarette packs will also be increased from the existing 10 per cent, he added.

“An estimated 1,200 individuals under the age of 18 take up smoking every day in the country,” Khan revealed, leading to about 5,000 people being hospitalised with tobacco-related diseases daily.

Tobacco kills approximately 100,000 people in Pakistan every year, about 274 per day. Alarmingly, the country’s youth are being targeted by the tobacco industry so that replacement smokers could be recruited, Khan added.

Shahzad Alam Khan, representing the World Health Organisation (WHO), said that laws are being revised to control the use of tobacco in the country and to regulate tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.

Under WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), there is prohibition on all forms of tobacco advertising that promote the product through false, misleading or deceptive means. The current steps are part of the effort to follow the FCTC.

Complete ban on tobacco ads, strict smoke-free legislation, increase in taxes and efforts to curtail smuggling of cigarettes were cited among other prospective solutions to control the epidemic of smoking.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 11^th, 2010.