When Health Minister Dr Anbumani Ramadoss announced a ban on showing smoking in movies and television, he exceeded his legal powers under the guise of ‘‘plugging loopholes.’’For, the law under which he purportedly took the action gives him powers only to ban advertising and regulate the business of cigarettes. This is evident even from the name of the law that Dr Ramadoss loosely referred to as the ‘‘Tobacco Control Act.’’ Its actual name is the ‘‘Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 2003. The preface to the law says that it was enacted in pursuance of a WHO resolution, which among other things, urged all member states to ‘‘eventually eliminate all direct and indirect advertising, promotion and sponsorship concerning tobacco.’’ Moreover, the Act defines advertisement as something that ‘‘includes any visible representation by way of notice, circular, label, wrapper or other document and also includes any announcement made orally or by any means of producing or transmitting light, sound, smoke or gas.’’ The intention of the law is further clarified by its imposition of a penalty of imprisonment upto five years on anybody who violates the prohibition to ‘‘sell a film or video tape containing advertisement of cigarettes or any other tobacco product.’’ But, going beyond the scope of the law, Dr Ramadoss declared two days ago that his ministry had brought in rules ‘‘to plug the loopholes in the existing provisions under the Tobacco Control Act.’’ The rules that are due to take effect from August 1 include: • ‘‘Ban on display of tobacco products or their use by characters in movies and television.’’ • ‘‘Mandatory display of prominent scroll containing health warning when programmes containing scenes with smoking situations and use of other forms of tobacco have been produced before this notification and later on screened.’’ Apart from compromising the creative freedom of filmmakers, these two rules framed by the Health Ministry under the Tobacco Control Act are liable to be struck down by the judiciary as they clearly exceed the ambit of the legislation. The Ministry would be hard pressed to explain how it could crack down on the very depiction of smoking in movies when all that the Act empowers it to do is to forbid promotion of cigarettes in any form. Also, the Ministry would hardly be able to justify its presumption that the display of smoking in movies or TV serials, no matter what the context, would amount to advertisement of cigarettes.
