BENGALURU: Vice-chancellors of universities across Karnataka have written to Union Health Minister Dr Mansukh Mandaviya requesting him to regulate OTT (Over the Top) platforms like Amazon Prime, Disney Hotstar, Netflix and others to display tobacco warning messages. They pointed out that there was an exponential growth in OTT usage among youth and urged that these platforms be regulated to protect them from being addicted to tobacco products and get negatively influenced.
Dr MK Ramesh, VC, Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, said they have witnessed an upward trend of people accessing content on OTT platforms. Raising concerns regarding this, he said displaying tobacco warning messages was religiously followed in films and TV programmes, but not in OTT platforms which was negatively influencing young people. He urged for depiction of health warnings, saying that it was their responsibility to prevent young people getting addicted to tobacco.
SJ Chander, Convenor, Consortium for Tobacco Free Karnataka, suggested that the content shown on OTT platforms must be sensitive to the requirements of public health and safety and disclaimers must be provided wherever necessary. Young people should be informed about the ill effects through the warnings, he added. He said India will be a global role model if it mandated OTT platforms to display tobacco warnings and will have a greater impact in preventing young people from experimenting with tobacco products and eventually becoming lifetime addicts.
A teenager’s parent, Padma Venu, also said OTT platforms are getting more popular with time. She was concerned about the unregulated tobacco depiction as the younger generation is more prone to experimenting with it. She urged the Union Health Minister to mandate OTT to carry tobacco health warnings.