[Lillie_Steins]

Apparently Ramadoss discussed the issue with I & B people but
went ahead and announced the ban on June 1 (Non smoking day)
without their feed back, neither did he consult or get approval
from Censor board, some loop holes in the anti tobacco act helped
him to imply these bans, the ban and new rules is still not 100%
sure to come into effect and some modifications will probably
take place.

Many people including Sharmila Tagore feel it is not neccessary
to totally ban showing use of tobacco in movies but a caution
message can be shown before and after the movie, I think this
is quite reasonable.

On the other hand, to ban showing tobacco being used in movies
totally seems little extreme, isn't it? Why not leave the decision
to censor board to decide where it should be allowed and where
it should not, depending on the context, charecterization and
impact of the particular scene on the audience? No doubt,
when use of cigarette promotes a cool look in a particular scene,
it can encourage the fans to smoke but it is not always used
in movie for giving it a cool look, so it should be left to the
censor board to make the decision IMO.

Cable broadcast related organizations are also very worried
about this ban, since there are more than 250 cable channels
in India and growing, these channels include lots of foreign
channels including many channels that show english movies
all the time, the foreigners are not going to make movies
keeping the ban implied by India in mind, as per the new rules
new movies made post the date the ban has been applied
just cannot show use of any tobacco products, so how
are the programs shown on these foreign channels going to
be controlled?

Even sports related cable channels are concerned, many sports events have banners advertising tobacco products
and it will be difficult to elimitate those too while showing
a live action sports event, say a car racing for ex, how are
they going to control this?

As per the new rules, all movies/tv shows etc produced
before the date of the new rule announcement must show
captions along with the particular scene showing tobacco use
with warning statements about health hazards due to the
use of tobacco products, if this rule does come into effect,
most of Rajini movies will have the captions through half of the
movie.

Rgds