Global meet against tobacco intake planned

By Our Legal Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JAN. 7. India is trying to evolve an international convention which would create global obligations to curb the consumption of tobacco.

This was announced here today by the Union Law Minister, Mr. Ram Jethmalani, when the Director General of the World Health Organisation, Dr. (Mrs.) Gro Harlem Brundtland, called on him.

Mrs. Brundtland, who is the former Prime Minister of Norway and a global environmentalist of repute, discussed with the Minister the harm that cigarette, bidi and other tobacco products were causing to public health and the enormous financial burden which the State had to bear in dealing with diseases like cancer, heart-attack and pulmonary complications.

Mr. Jethmalani told her that the annual cost of such dreaded diseases was estimated to be about five times the cost of the recent Kargil war. He told her that India was trying to evolve an international convention on tobacco to restrict the consumption of tobacco.

He further said that India had to counteract the enormous advertising budgets of manufacturers of cigarette and other tobacco products. This called for imposing restrictions on advertising and evolving India's own system of advertisements on the hazards of tobacco consumption. He said the Constitution of India ``prohibited total ban on such advertisements or even consumption of tobacco in view of our fundamental rights.''

However, he said a reasonable restraint could always be imposed in the Indian conditions. Dr. Brundtland urged Mr. Jethmalani to devise an advertising law which entailed the dangers to human health arising out of intake of tobacco including smoking and not the cryptic sentence ``smoking is injurious to health.''

Competition Law Bill soon

The Government would introduce a Bill on the new Competition Law in the budget session of Parliament, Mr. Jethmalani said when the British Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Mr. Stephen Byers, called on him here today. The Secretary of State discussed with the Minister the need for introduction of a competition law in India to meet the requirements of emerging globalisation of Indian economy.

The discussions ranged over a wide area including some vital points of difference between Indian and English situations. In view of this, it was decided that some methods would have to be devised to prevent predatory or adversarial competition, the object of which was not to promote competition but to destroy the competitor.

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