Hundreds of college students carried out a protest in front of the Mahatma Gandhi statue on Tuesday, demanding the government should make pictorial warnings mandatory on all the tobacco products and discourage tobacco usage among people.

The protest was organised by a consortium consisting of 22 members, including hospitals and NGOs from Bangalore, who are fighting for a tobacco free Karnataka.  The Indian government in 2003 had passed a law to carry pictorial health warnings on all tobacco products, to be implemented in February 2007. 

According to the law, the pictorial representations would contain graphics demonstrating various cancers and other diseases arising due to consuming tobacco products. But the implementation of this law has been delayed due to opposition by tobacco industries.

Says S J Chander faculty member of Institute of Public Health who led the protest, “Beedi smoking and other forms of tobacco use is highly concentrated among the illiterate and poor. These people cannot read the statutory warnings on tobacco products and don’t have access to any information on the harmful effects of tobacco. By seeing  pictures they can understand that tobacco could lead them to health hazards”. In India 2,500 people die everyday due to tobacco usage. 16 percent of them die due to cigarette smoking, 44 percent die due to bidi smoking and 30 percent loose their life by chewing tobacco products.