Cigaratte manufacturers got a year's breather after the Union Cabinet on Tuesday agreed to defer the move to implement new, scarier pictorial warnings on cigarette and bidi packs till December 2011.

The decision means cigarette packs will continue with the current pictorial warnings - a scorpion on bidi packs and a cancer-affected lung on cigarette packs - for another year. Also, the interregnum will give the industry time to pressure the government against implementing harsher images.

Sources…

The European Union is proposing a full-scale ban on branded cigarettes, forcing tobacco companies across the continent to sell their products in generic, plain packaging.

Under the new rules, packs would carry nothing more than a health warning and the name of the brand, both in a standardized format with a specified typeface.

Since cigarette advertising was outlawed across Europe in 2003, packaging -- known as "the silent salesman" -- has been the only way for cigarette manufacturers to keep…

The Union health ministry has notified that all tobacco product packages in India will, with immediate effect, have to carry pictorial health warnings depicting a cancer-stricken mouth.

Putting to rest all doubt that government had changed its mind, Union health ministry confirmed to TOI on Thursday that as per original notification, the earlier warning of an infected lung and a scorpion sign will be replaced by gory image of a cancer-stricken mouth from December 1.

Uncertain over what…