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Background Indian youths aged 13-15 years, are exposed to cigarette advertisements on billboards, increased from 71.6% in 2006 to 74.4% in 2009 as revealed by GYTS 2006 and 2009. In West Bengal 28.6% of adults are exposed to cigarette advertising and while 31.1 and 36.2 percent are exposed to Bidi and smokeless tobacco advertisements respectively as showed by GATS 2010. However, COTPA, 2003 prohibits advertisement, promotion and sponsorship of all tobacco products under Section 5. Methods 4 Boroughs (cluster of 10-115 Municipal wards) out of total 15 have been selected randomly keeping in mind their location- i.e. South, North, Central and East for collecting samples. The sample size has been enumerated at the level of 95% confidence interval with 50% compliance rate while the design effect of the study was 1.0. The Epi-info 7 software has been used for the purpose. The data was collected with help of the checklist prepared by The Union. The focus was on the POS advertisements only. For documentary evidences to be produced before the Kolkata Municipal Corporation photographs of POSs were taken. Results 64.1% POSs in Kolkata display various kinds of advertisements. 39% POSs display board either with colour or brand name, but only 13.7% Boards are having health warnings on tobacco out of which only 19% is written in local language. 28.3% out of them promote tobacco product through attractive messages. 19.1% POSs have a full body tobacco advertisement. In 92.6% POSs, tobacco products are visible to the minors Conclusions The findings are justifying the immediate need of effective enforcement of Section 5 of COTPA 2003. he documentary evidences led to the writing of letter by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation to 4 major tobacco companies to remove the POS boards.

Background Under the India's food legislation, adding tobacco or nicotine to anything that is consumed is prohibited, following this in May 2014, the Ministry of Health announced a ban on the sale of gutka, a popular packaged mixture comprising betelnut, condiment, lime and tobacco mixture. We conducted a compliance of the ban on gutka in the state of West Bengal, which has a tobacco use prevalence of 15% adults using smokeless tobacco (or more than 9 million people). Methods Three districts were selected purposively for the study. In every district, district headquarter i.e. municipality selected purposively while two Blocks were selected randomly. Based on population dispersion model, 450 consumers were divided in three clusters in each district and for every 5 consumers 1 vendor i.e. 90 vendors were interviewed. The interview schedule was pre-tested in Kolkata and after feasibility assessment of the same it was finalized. The study was conducted during September - December 2016. Results Effect of ban on gutka has been limited and disappointing. Only 17.8% of vendors knew that selling of gutka is punishable offence while 68.5% vendors replied that gutka is easily available to them. 75.3% vendor have sold gutka to the minors and only 1.1% vendors were raided. However, almost 90% vendors felt that gutka ban is helpful in quitting the deadly habit. 16.9% vendors answered that they faced a loss in their business due to gutka ban and 15.7% vendors shifted to other businesses after the ban was enforced. It is also true that sale of gutka declined after ban as 53.5% consumers reported that they have shifted to other tobacco products. Conclusions Gutkha ban has been ineffective in the absence of stricter enforcement at producer, wholesaler and vendor level. To make the ban effective immediate attention is required on enforcement across the supply chain.