Smoking in Public: FDA fined only 23 between April-Oct

Although Mumbai has a larger population than Amravati and Nagpur, the latter have reported higher cases of penalisations, with 139 people fined in Amravati and 129 in Nagpur, during the same period.

Data collected by Newsline from the Tata Memorial hospital (TMH) shows that 758 patients from Mumbai were admitted for lung cancer treatment in 2010. Smoking has been recognised as one of the leading causes of lung cancer by oncologists.

Under Section 4 of the Cigarette and other Tobacco Products (Production of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act (COTPA), 2003, 21 authorities have the power to penalise people who are found smoking in public places.

This includes school principles, station masters, hospital deans, and head of government institutions.

According to sources from the Directorate of Health Service (DHS), even its director has allegedly not fined a single smoker. The DHS director is one of the 21 notified authorities who can penalise under COTPA. Under Section 6 of COTPA, a fine of upto Rs 200 can be levied for public smoking.

Dr Pankaj Chaturvedi of the head and neck oncology department, TMH, said, “Despite HC’s order, enforcement of sections 4, 6 of COTPA is far from satisfactory in the city and the state. The Ministry of Home has given clear instructions to DGPs to include COTPA violations in their monthly crime reports. Many states such as Karnataka, Kerala and Rajasthan are already doing it.” Sanjay Barkund, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Operations), Mumbai, however, said, “We do not maintain any such data.”

According to Dr Archana Patil, assistant director at DHS, no records are maintained by the health department about the count of people fined for public smoking.

Following the lack of participation of the already-deputed authorities in COTPA’s implementation, the state public health department has now forwarded a proposal to the state health ministry to depute an ‘enforcement squad’ for this purpose. “Our proposal is to have one officer per taluka. They will be responsible for just one job, to penalise people found smoking in public spaces,” an officer from DHS said.

tabassum.barnagarwala@expressindia.com