According to statistics by WHO, approximately five million people die each year from tobacco use. If the current trend continues, the figure is expected to reach 10 million per year by 2030, with 70 per cent of those deaths occurring in developing countries like India.

India, in 2003, had passed a law to print pictorial warning on tobacco products. The law which was to be implemented in December 2006 has not been implemented yet.

Parties to WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) — the international tobacco treaty to battle the diseases caused by tobacco-are developing guidelines to implement effective packaging measures in their countries.

“It is our hope that India, which has been very proactive in formulating and ratifying FCTC, would ensure its implementation effectively,” said Dr Douglas Bettcher, Director, Tobacco Free Initiative, WHO.

Mukherjee also said that some of the warnings may hurt ‘religious sentiments’ of the people in India. Dr Prakash Gupta, Director, Healis Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health, said that a survey among two communities in Mumbai revealed that people did not associate any religious sentiments with the warnings.

According to the experts, the current global statistics of 5 million deaths from tobacco use could rise to 10 million by 2030. In India alone tobacco kills at least 10 lakh people every year.

The team of experts is in the city for the next three days to plan for the 14th World Conference for Tobacco and Health in March 2009.

The members organizing the conference said they would soon undertake measures to ensure that Mumbai becomes a smoke-free city before the commencement of the conference in March. They are in talks with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to implement the same.

Sharfudeen, secretary of Laryngectomees Welfare Association of Tamil Nadu, called for stricter implementation of the pictorial warnings so that people could be made aware of tobacco’s side effects.

In 1999, a tobacco user Sharfudeen started having problems with speech due to cancerous growth in his throat. Having lost his speech to cancer, Sharfudeen has now become an advocate of tobacco ban as he now speaks with a help of an artificial voice box.