Tough days are ahead for tobacco addicts. The state has decided to plug the loopholes in the gutka ban by prohibiting the sale of all forms of chewable tobacco except raw tobacco and raw supari.
The commissioner of food safety, Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), government of Maharashtra, has issued an order under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, banning the manufacture, storage, distribution, or sale of tobacco and betel nut, which is “either flavored, scented or mixed with any of the said additives, and whether going by the name or form of gutka, paan masala, flavoured / scented tobacco, flavored / scented supari, kharra (also known as mawa, it is a mixture of tobacco and betel nut)”.
“Except raw tobacco and raw supari, all other tobacco products will be banned,” FDA commissioner Mahesh Zagade said. Scented supari, scented tobacco and mawa too would be banned. Zagade said they had banned mawa last year too but had not mentioned it specifically.
Officials, however, said kimam and zarda used in paan will not be banned. The reason: tobacco is being consumed occasionally in small quantities. But the government will undertake a sensitization programme for such consumers.
At present, the commissioner can ban any harmful product for one year in public interest, minister of state for FDA Satej Patil said. The government wants the Centre to extend this one year period indefinitely. Twenty-eight states and five union territories have already banned gutka.
After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, the government banned gutka in the state on July 20, 2012 for a period of one year. The FDA seized gutka worth Rs20.74 crore — the highest haul in the country — and destroyed gutka / pan masala / tobacco related products worth nearly Rs13.53 crore in the past year.
The government has written to the railways as well about gutka being brought, clandestinely, into the state. A survey by NGO Salam Bombay Foundation in 2013 found that schoolchildren benefited from the ban on gutka and paan masala.
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