DOHA: Cigarette packets carrying graphic images warning against the health hazards of smoking have hit the local market, following a GCC ban on the sale of cigarettes without such visuals. Popular brands including Rothmans and Malboro have introduced the newly designed packets, while other brands like Davidoff are still coming in the old packets, enquiries in the market revealed yesterday.
The GCC states, including Qatar, have approved five visuals including damaged lungs and jaws that are to be printed on cigarette packets and these visuals must occupy at least half the space of the front and back of a pack.
For ‘sheesha’ tobacco products three visuals have been approved that need to be carried on their packs. The GCC authorities had given three months’ time beginning August 9 to wholesale distributors of cigarettes and other tobacco products to exhaust their current stocks after they made a fervent plea to extend the deadline. The Peninsula
