New Delhi, June 6: The Union health ministry has directed civil aviation authorities to ban the sale of tobacco from shops near "smoking rooms" in airports, a new move to implement provisions in the country's tobacco control laws.

A senior health official has written to the civil aviation ministry and the Airports Authority of India to "take necessary steps to ensure that tobacco shops at any airports are not located near smoking rooms". However, the note does not specify the distance that the shops need to maintain.

The health ministry letter says it has observed that provisions of India's Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce) Act, 2003, (COTPA 2003) are violated by shops selling tobacco at airports.

"These shops, in contravention of the provisions of COTPA, display tobacco advertisements and are located just outside the smoking room or in food courts, thus facilitating tobacco use and also enticing non-smokers, especially children to these shops and to the smoking room," the health official wrote.

In some airports, tobacco products are also sold from shops selling souvenirs, food items, books and comics, thus enabling "easy access to non-smokers, especially children," to these shops and tobacco products. The shops also do not display the message: "sale of tobacco products to a person below the age of eighteen years is a punishable offence," the health ministry said, calling these practices a "direct violation" of rules.

The May 26 letter calls on the aviation authorities to implement across all airports rules that would ban the sale of tobacco adjacent to smoking rooms and would require other shops maintaining tobacco products to display the message that such items are not sold to children below 18 years.

"This is a significant move to discourage smoking in even the smoking lounges in airports," said Binoy Mathew, an anti-tobacco campaigner with the New Delhi-based Voluntary Health Association of India. "Many of our airports have cigarette shops just next to smoking lounges - they provide easy access."

The health ministry had on May 23 issued a notification that prohibits the delivery of any "service" in smoking areas, a move anti-tobacco campaigners has effectively banned hookah bars across the country.

"The directive sent to airports appears to be a similar effort to discourage tobacco use," Mathew said. Public health surveys have estimated that tobacco-related diseases kill about a lakh Indians every year.