The Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare revealed before the Central Information Commission that tobacco industry is putting "pressure" to relax the tobacco control policies (source: The Hindu, 14 November 2008).

The tobacco industry interference has times and again weakened and delayed the enforcement of the public health policies - for example, the tobacco industry, Indian Hotel Association and other allied agencies had filed more than 70 court cases against tobacco control policies in Indian courts in September 2008, and due to aggressive lobbying by such agencies, the Group of Ministers (GoM) formed earlier to review the pictorial warnings on tobacco products, diluted the pictorial warnings provision and postponed the implementation of pictorial warnings on tobacco products at least six-times.

The industry interference in public health policies certainly needs urgent attention to save lives otherwise it will continue to threaten to reverse the great advancements made in forging public health policies and implementing them.

Meantime tobacco continues to kill more than a million people in India every year. Indian government delegation is among the representatives of 160 countries who are currently meeting in Durban, South Africa to negotiate guidelines for a provision (Article 5.3) in the global tobacco treaty that will determine whether millions of people get the health protections they are now guaranteed under the treaty.

The negotiations center on the implementation of Article 5.3 of the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which protects the treaty and related public health policies from tobacco industry interference.

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