Ramadoss kicks butt, says ask before smoking

WAR OVER WARNING: Ramadoss differs from his Cabinet colleagues over pictorial warnings on cigarette packs.

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New Delhi: Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss seems to be differing from his Cabinet colleagues over the issue of pictorial warnings on cigarette packets.

While the Union Cabinet has announced that cigarette and beedi packets need not carry the image of skull and crossbones, the Health Minister thinks otherwise.

Ramadoss has not only said that the pictures will remain but also wants to make it mandatory for a person to seek the consent of his or her spouse and domestic help before smoking inside the house.

The Health Minister emphasised that smokers should ensure that those around them do not suffer because of their smoking.

“In any workplace employees who wish to smoke should go out and smoke. Also at home one should take permission from his or her spouse and maid before smoking,” Ramadoss said.

Meanwhile, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry last week sought four weeks' time to develop alternative designs instead of the skull and crossbones on cigarette packets.

Several MPs and political parties from states like Andhra Pradesh, which has a large bidi industry, had opposed the move saying it would affect the industry. It is estimated that around one million people work in the bidi industry.

Bidi manufactures had raised concerns that their business would suffer and this could lead to shutting down of factories, leading to many becoming jobless. But the Health Ministry remained adamant saying tobacco was the leading cause of cancer in the country.

The pictorial warnings are part of the tobacco legislation passed by Parliament in 2002. The same legislation demands a ban on smoking in films.

For once, the Health Minister has been politically correct in putting health before politics and has raked up a controversy with his own Cabinet ministers.

But controversies apart, the big question now is whether the Government will buckle before the tobacco lobby or side with the Health Minister.