India: gutka plastic pack ban

One of the most interesting developments in India recently has been the temporary banning last December of the sale of gutka, ground tobacco and flavourings sold in pouches, sucked by millions of Indians and known to cause cancer and other serious diseases (see India: advocates hit back at smokeless industry. Tob Control 2007;16:165–6; Gupta PC. Gutka: a major new tobacco hazard in India. Tob Control 1999;8:132). Even though the ban was made by the Supreme Court of India, with venerable judges intoning strident condemnation of government and society for not protecting India's youth from the product, it may not be the ban itself that is of most importance—and most potential for public health advocates in other countries—but the case that led to it. This was a case brought under a law designed to protect, not children, nor health, but the environment.

Gutka smokeless tobacco is banned from sale in India from March 2011 because its plastic packaging is harmful to the environment. The case was brought under the country's Plastic Management and Disposal Rules, 2009. Indian health advocates reckon that colleagues around the world can help make life difficult for ambitious Indian tobacco companies with an eye on increased gutka exports, such as those to the large south Asian populations of Europe. In addition, they suggest, other countries' environmental protection laws may provide opportunities for similar action to be taken, based on, for example, pollution caused by dumping billions of tobacco packs in landfill sites every year.

Whatever the roots of the decision, the utterances of some of India's most senior judges provided stirring copy for news media. Hearing that gutka manufacturers claimed a ban would cause the whole industry to come to a standstill, one judge, Justice Ganguly, said, “Let it come.” He told the …