President's Endorsement Appeal Renews Debate on Celebrity Ads for Harmful Products

President Droupadi Murmu's appeal to popular artistes to steer clear of promoting substances that harm health has revived a long-running debate over celebrity endorsements, with public health experts pressing for a firmer legal framework.

Speaking at the 72nd National Film Awards in Gujarat on Tuesday, the President urged artistes — especially those who influence children and young people — to encourage disciplined lifestyles and to refrain from endorsing products detrimental to health.

Her remarks came against the backdrop of action by the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is examining whether a Vimal Elaichi campaign amounts to surrogate advertising for Vimal Pan Masala. Show-cause notices have been issued to actors Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgn and Tiger Shroff, alleging that the advertisement builds an association with a pan-masala product whose manufacture, storage, transportation, distribution and sale are prohibited in Maharashtra.

The matter has also reached the courts. On September 14, the Delhi High Court declined to entertain a challenge to the FDA notices on territorial-jurisdiction grounds and directed the petitioner to approach the appropriate court in Maharashtra. It did not rule on whether the advertisements constituted surrogate advertising.

This is not the first time film personalities have drawn scrutiny over such endorsements. Amitabh Bachchan, Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Akshay Kumar have, at various points, been linked to advertisements for pan masala or similar products. Kumar stepped away from a Vimal campaign in 2022 after criticism.

Arun Gupta, convener of Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest (NAPi), said appeals to celebrities must be matched by a clear legal framework governing the endorsement and advertising of harmful products, including tobacco and ultra-processed foods. He said the government should act on the President's appeal and enact a clearly worded law prohibiting the marketing of unhealthy products, arguing that the existing framework relies largely on self-regulation and has proved ineffective.

Sandeep Nayak, chairman of Oncology and executive director of Surgical Oncology and Robotic Surgery at KIMS Hospitals, Bengaluru, said the President's remarks underscored the public-health consequences of celebrity endorsements of tobacco-linked products. He said oncologists see the impact of pan masala, alcohol and tobacco addiction in their clinics, and that high-profile figures who lend their names to such brands inadvertently glamorise carcinogenic products for impressionable young people. Dr. Nayak said products such as silver-coated cardamom and flavoured mouth fresheners marketed under tobacco-associated brand names can function as surrogate advertisements, noting that identical brand titles, logos and colour palettes create a strong association with the primary brand. He called for tighter regulation of such brand extensions.

The scale of the problem is significant. The National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-21) found that 21.4% of Indians aged 15-49 used smokeless tobacco, with prevalence higher among men (29.6%) than women (12.8%). The Global Adult Tobacco Survey (2016-17) estimated that 28.6% of Indians aged 15 and above — nearly 267 million people — used tobacco, with smokeless tobacco the most common form.

A World Health Organisation study put the economic cost of diseases and premature deaths attributable to tobacco at ₹1.77 lakh crore in 2017-18, more than 1% of GDP, while treatment of tobacco-related diseases accounted for 5.3% of total health expenditure. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has estimated that smokeless tobacco and areca-nut use caused more than 120,000 oral-cancer cases globally in 2022, with 88% of them in South-Central Asia.

The renewed debate raises a broader question: whether advertising rules are keeping pace with the influence of celebrity endorsements, particularly when advertisements for apparently permissible products create associations with restricted or harmful ones.