India released draft changes to its tobacco-control law over the weekend to ban smoking zones in hotels, restaurants and airports. The proposal also calls for increasing the minimum legal smoking age from 18 to 21.
The draft changes have also tightened existing provisions to ban advertising at kiosks and prohibit sale of loose cigarette sticks, which form the bulk of the sales, health activists said.
If implemented, the plan is seen hitting sales of companies such as ITC, Godfrey Phillips India and a unit of Philip Morris International which operate in the country’s $12 billion cigarette market, executives said.