No sale of tobacco products in plastic pouches from March: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has refused to relax the ban on using plastic pouches for paan masala, gutka and other forms of chewable tobacco products.

In a delayed decision on implementing the court’s direction to  ban plastic in sachets, the government early this month passed a notification to that effect.

A group of manufacturers had moved the court seeking relaxation in the ban order.

Government lawyer Gopal Subramanium said that 90% of oral cancer cases in the country are on account of chewing tobacco.

A bench of Justice GS Singhvi and Justice AK Ganguly declined to relax the December 7 deadline, while taking on record an expert panel’s findings highlighting the harmful impact of various tobacco products on human health.

A health ministry panel has said there’s no dearth of evidence that tobacco taken in any form is carcinogenic — causing oral cavity cancer besides other diseases.

The panel had leading cancer health experts as members.

The report has taken strong note of the easy availability of smokeless tobacco, which is taking a toll on the health of the millions of teenagers, pregnant women and public in general causing cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus and pancreas.

Four types of pan masala available in the market, namely plain pan masala, sweet pan masala, pan masala containing tobacco and gutka are highly carcinogenic.

Gutka is tobacco along with small quantity of pan masala.
The Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) report says, in India ‘khaini’ or tobacco-lime mixture (12%) is the most commonly used smokeless tobacco product, followed by gutka, a mixture of tobacco, lime and areca nut (8%), betel quid with tobacco (6%) and tobacco being applied as dentifrice (5%).