The Delhi government has asked the food safety department of the Union health ministry to have raw chewable tobacco products like khaini labelled as a food and banned in Delhi under the Food Safety Act, India Today reported.

India has the highest number of khaini users in the world, with nearly 8.5 crore (85 Million) people consuming the raw chewable tobacco product, according to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) 2017, India Today said. It is also the most commonly used tobacco product in the country and accounts for 90 per cent of oral cancers in India.
The Delhi State Tobacco Control Cell had previously written to the Union health ministry two years ago requesting that khaini be defined as a food article and its use banned in the capital. “[There] was no feedback. We have written to the Centre’s food safety department again because the GATS results show a huge spike in the number of raw chewable tobacco users,” Dr SK Arora, additional director of health at the tobacco control cell, was quoted as saying.
In a letter to the Union health ministry, the Delhi government noted that the central government “may declare, by notification in the official gazette, any article as food regarding its use, nature, substance or quality […] If we can modify the definition of food by saying that ‘any substance which is put inside the mouth for the purpose of consumption fully or partially, by methods like chewing, sucking or any other as practised, it may be labelled as food item,’” the letter said.