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| Only 9 penalised, smoking in public still remains rampant | | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Sept 3: Just one month from today it will be full one year since the ban on smoking in public came into force but the results in Jammu and Kashmir are strange –either people have completely stopped smoking in public places or penalizing process is too weak to check the menace.
Smoking still continues to be rampant and the cigarette packets are still being sold without the mandatory pictorial warnings. The official ban on smoking has, however, done one great help that it has made smokers the new social outcasts in the society as one with cigarette in the hand is not looked down at with respect at the public places.
According to the State Home Department that only nine persons have so far been penalized under laws for smoking at public places. Details of individual cases were not immediately available.
The state administration says it has penalized eight persons for smoking in public places during the current financial year while it maintains that strict measures have been taken to implement the ban.
In a population of over 10 million people and a larger junk of it familiar to puffing, the issue remains that whether the ban enforcing agencies have done enough to realize a fine of RS 1800 in last nine months.
Apart from ban on smoking at public places, interdictions of pictorial warnings on tobacco products, to warn its users on the health hazards, also remains at its dismal low in the state.
Reports said that most of the tobacco products are sold without the mandatory pictorial warnings, even if the deadline for displaying it has also elapsed prior to more than three months.
Shocking pictures of diseased lungs, a brain damaged from a stroke and other disturbing images on tobacco products were intended to create an effective awareness about the harms of smoking and motivating smokers to quit.
The Union ministry of health and family welfare had set May 31—world no tobacco day— as the deadline by which all tobacco companies were supposed to display graphical health warnings to increase consumer knowledge about the harmful effects of consuming tobacco.
“A notification was issued vide SRO-239 in December last year with respect to the section-4 (prohibition of smoking in public places). According to the notification, officers were authorized to compound the offence committed under this section while a fine of Rs 200 is levied on defaulters.
Subsequently, another notification for the implementation of Section 28 (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulations of Trade and Commerce production, Supply and Distribution) act 2003 and section 12 and 13 (Power of entry and Search and power to seize), was issued on 13th August last.
However, many vendors in the valley continue to sell cigarette and the tobacco packs that do not carry the mandatory warnings.
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