COIMBATORE: The Higher Education department has asked all the institutions, including Arts and Science and Engineering colleges, to strictly adhere to the Union Health Ministry’s direction restraining the use of correction fluid and thinners and asked them to use it only in the pen format.
These correction fluid and thinners are widely misused by students as intoxicants or drugs as they get a stimulating effect similar to the effect of drugs by inhaling the correction fluid and thinners.
Acting on a Punjab and Haryana High Court order, the Union Health Ministry has formed a task force to devise means to regulate and control the sale of correction fluid and thinners.
The task force’s view was that one of the measures that may be effective in controlling the abuse might be to ban retail sale of these chemicals in bottled form and permit their sale in pen or a similar form.
Acting on the task force recommendation, the Health Ministry has issued an order banning the production and sale of bottled correction fluid and bottled thinners of any chemical composition both for ink erasing purpose as well as for use in nail polish removers and similar other purpose.
The Central government has permitted the sale of correction fluid and thinner in the form of pens or similar forms that allow limited amount of the chemicals to come out of them.
Apart from this, the Centre has also directed that the mandatory warning should be made on the application devices of the correction fluid or thinner regarding the effects on health on inhalation of vapour or consumption of the chemicals contained.