Ban of Smoking
The long gestating new rules for the ban of smoking will be implemented starting today - smoking tobacco in public will be banned.
According to the The 'Prohibition of Smoking in Public Places Rules', consumption of tobacco in all government or private buildings will become a punishable offense. Sweating over what 'public places' means? Well the list is this - small cafes, restaurants, schools, colleges, pubs or discotheques, stadia, airports, hospitals, bus stands, cinema halls, railway stations, markets and shopping malls.
In you're caught smoking in the above places, you'd have to to shell out Rs 200. And that's just the first few days, because the fine would later be revised to Rs 1,000.
And the public places that allow employees to smoke within their building premises would have to cough up Rs 5,000 per employee caught smoking.
Smokers' only refuge would be the road or parks.
Also, under the new rules, cigarette and bidi packs will feature either a glossy photo of infected human lungs or an X-ray plate of the chest of a cancer-sticken man. Packets of chewing and smokeless tobacco products will flaunt a graphic image of a scorpion that depicts cancer.
Smoking on the road or the park will save others from the wrath of passive smoking. 250-300 million Indians consume some form of tobacco. And around 14.1% of school-going children have started to smoke. Smoking kills 900,000 Indians a year, a figure expected to rise to a million by 2010.
So if you're a smoker and you think Mr Ramadoss is merely blowing smoke, you can expect the Smokeys showing up in your face brandishing Rs 200 chalans as smoking guns
