Jump to full article: Gulf Times (qa), 2009-11-23
Author: Kamran Rehmat/Islamabad
Intro: Pakistan has finally decided to stub it out, so to speak. Beginning next February, cigarette packs will have pictorial warnings to wean smokers away from, well, ending up in a smoke.
Until now, any official attempt to check the menace was limited to observing the annual World No-Tobacco Day with sound and the odd fury but little action.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Health has now mandated that cigarette packs will have picture-based health warnings that cover 40% of the principal display area on both the front and back of the packs.
The decision has been hard-fought and hard-earned on the part of those campaigning for control given the clout of the tobacco industry, which still managed to pressurise the ministry into reducing the original recommended size of half the display area to forty per cent.
The decision to make graphic health warnings mandatory was announced at a seminar arranged in connection with World No Tobacco Day on May 31 this year.
At the time, the ministry had announced January 1, 2010 as the deadline for the implementation of the decision.
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