The Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 2003 (COTPA, 2003) is an Act of Parliament of India, specifically Act No. 32 of 2003, designed to regulate the tobacco industry and discourage consumption. The Act was enacted in 2003 and commenced on May 1, 2004, primarily to give effect to the 39th World Health Assembly Resolution, which urged member states to protect non-smokers from involuntary exposure to tobacco smoke. It replaced the earlier Cigarettes (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 1975, which was criticized for not regulating non-cigarette products like bidi or gutka.
The mechanism of COTPA, 2003 is based on several key provisions that apply to all tobacco products. Section 4 prohibits smoking in public places, though it initially allowed for designated smoking areas in places like airports and large hotels. The Act prohibits all forms of direct and indirect advertisement of tobacco products. Furthermore, it mandates that tobacco products cannot be sold to any person under 18 years of age, and their sale is prohibited within a 100-yard radius of any educational institution. Packaging is regulated by requiring pictorial health warnings that cover 85 percent of the front and back panels.
COTPA, 2003 is India’s principal tobacco control law and connects directly to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), to which India became a Party in February 2005. A significant recent change is the prohibition on the production, manufacture, import, export, transport, sale, distribution, and advertising of e-cigarettes. Additionally, the central government has proposed the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Amendment) Bill, 2020, which seeks to raise the minimum age for sale from 18 to 21 years and increase the penalty for smoking in restricted areas from ₹200 to ₹2,000. Some states, like Jharkhand, have already enacted amendments, such as raising the minimum age to 21 and increasing the public smoking fine to ₹1,000 in March 2021.