1Intern, Strategic Institute for Public Health Education and Research (SIPHER), India
2President and Director of Public Health, Strategic Institute for Public Health Education and Research (SIPHER), Former Director Health Services and Director of Chemical Examiner Lab Govt. of Punjab, Chandigarh, India
Objective: The objective of the study is to advocate the necessity of Tobacco Vendor Licensing (TVL) for supply reduction in view of the poor compliance with Anti-tobacco laws, evidence of which was found in the compliance study done in three Jurisdictions in North India.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among the various tobacco vendors in Chandigarh, Shahabad-Haryana and Sri Muktsar Sahib-Punjab. The sample was selected randomly and no informed consent was obtained from tobacco vendors since this was an unobtrusive study. The total points of sale surveyed were 753, 149 from Chandigarh, 200 from Shahabad and 404 from Sri Muktsar Sahib district, respectively. MS Excel was used to retrieve the data collected in Google forms and further analysis was done to calculate the percentage and frequency of POS (Points of sale) showing noncompliance to Anti- Tobacco Laws.
Result: The three jurisdictions overall represented that 6.11 percent of the total sample of Points of sales only had some kind of license under Municipal Corporation or Street Vending Scheme for the sale of Tobacco, the rest were in non- compliance. Another finding was that 11.02% of the Tobacco Vendors that had a FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) license and were selling tobacco along with food products. The third criteria measured was the Sales Tax number and only 5.05% of the total sample of POS had a sales tax number.
Conclusion: Tobacco Vendor Licensing (TVL) is a good strategy to reduce the supply of Tobacco products and is a step towards Endgame Tobacco. It helps in effective monitoring of the number of tobacco vendors and denormalization of the use of tobacco. It leads to better implementation of anti-tobacco laws against selling tobacco to minors and limiting the number of vendors in any jurisdiction.
Keywords: FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India); Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003 (COTPA); Tobacco Vendor Licensing, Point of Sale (POS); Compliance; Tobacco Vendors; Chandigarh; Shahabad; Sri Muktsar Sahib
Ratnakshi Kant and Rakesh Gupta. "The Need for Tobacco Vendor Licensing (TVL) for Supply Reduction in View of the Poor Compliance with Anti-Tobacco Laws- Evidence from Compliance Study in Three Jurisdictions in North India." EC Clinical and Medical Case Reports 6.6 (2023): 69-73.
© 2023 Ratnakshi Kant and Rakesh Gupta. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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