India's Supreme Court Orders Tobacco Companies to Comply With Health Warning Rules
May 04 2016 - 9:32AM
Dow Jones News
By Preetika Rana
NEW DELHI--India's Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered tobacco
companies to comply with a new government rule requiring that
graphic health warnings cover 85% of all cigarette packs, even as
the industry pursues a legal battle against it.
Cigarette makers have filed more than two dozen lawsuits against
the measure, arguing, among other things, that it infringes their
trademark rights. Those lawsuits are ongoing. Public-health
officials say the new labels will discourage smoking in a country
where tobacco-related illnesses kill a million people a year.
At the start of April, when the new rule came into force, ITC
Ltd., VST Industries Ltd. and Godfrey Phillips India Ltd. halted
production, in a move that antismoking activists said was aimed at
pressuring the government to back down. ITC has since said it
resumed manufacturing.
British American Tobacco PLC owns roughly a third of ITC and
VST, while Philip Morris International Inc. owns a quarter of
Godfrey Phillips India. ITC, VST and Godfrey Phillips didn't
respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
Tobacco companies "should not violate the regulation in any
manner," Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose told a packed courtroom.
"Our rule was always very clear," said K.C. Samria, joint
secretary of India's Health Ministry, which ordered the larger
warnings. "Now that the Supreme Court has said it, too, nobody can
say there is any ambiguity on how to proceed."
Governments world-wide have ordered changes to cigarette
packaging -- from mandatory graphic warnings to barring
manufacturers from using their own logos -- in an attempt to curb
on smoking.
Philip Morris last year lost a costly legal battle against
Australia's so-called plain-packaging law which requires packs to
be stripped of all branding. Several other countries, including
France, Ireland and the U.K., also have approved such rules.
Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and others are currently
challenging the U.K.'s plain-packaging law.
In court Wednesday, Arvind Datar, a lawyer for the tobacco
industry, said India's larger health warnings, if implemented,
"would leave no space for any advertising" and violated companies'
trademark rights.
An attorney for public-health activists, Prashant Bhushan, said:
"Every step must be taken to come down heavily on the tobacco
industry."
At one point, the proceedings became so heated that Justice
Ghose intervened. "There's too much smoke," he said. "The court has
become smoky now."
Write to Preetika Rana at preetika.rana@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 04, 2016 09:17 ET (13:17 GMT)
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