[Intl-tobacco] Delhi bans tobacco sales to children (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

Delhi bans tobacco sales to children
Source: BBC Online, Tuesday, 9/12/00

Officials in the Indian capital, Delhi, have banned the sale of cigarettes
to people under the age of eighteen.

The new law is aimed at curbing the rapid rise of smoking among the urban
young in India: it prescribes jail terms of up to three months for those
who sell tobacco to children.

A BBC correspondent in Delhi says that half-a-million people die each year
in India from illnesses caused by tobacco.

Anti-smoking activists have welcomed the new law; but our correspondent
says such legislation is often not enforced by underpaid and overworked
police officers.

>From the newsroom of the BBC World Service