Madras High Court — challenge to Tamil Nadu's ENDS ban (2018)
AVI organised, funded and ran this litigation end to end: it commissioned the first draft, briefed a consumer petitioner, a former smoker who had switched to vaping, and engaged local counsel to file and argue it. The petition challenged the Tamil Nadu government order of 3 September 2018 banning the manufacture, sale, distribution, trade, display, marketing, advertisement, use, import and possession of ENDS. It argued that the ban was arbitrary, rested on no study and breached Articles 14, 19(1)(g) and 21 of the Constitution.
Outcome: Withdrawn, with liberty to refile, once the national ban under PECA made a state-level challenge moot. This was a considered decision AVI made with the petitioner, not one forced by the court.
The petition sought to quash G.O. Ms. No. 384 of the Health and Family Welfare Department, dated 3 September 2018, and asked for an interim stay. The respondents were the State of Tamil Nadu and the Director of Public Health and Preventive Medicine. The supporting affidavit was affirmed on 29 October 2018.
Its main grounds were:
- the order gave no reason for banning ENDS while cigarettes stay on sale;
- an RTI reply showed no study had been relied on before the ban;
- nicotine replacement gums and patches are sold freely, which undercut the order’s stated concern about young people’s access to nicotine; and
- a blanket ban was disproportionate when regulation was available.
The typed set of documents filed with the petition included two articles by AVI’s director and a rebuttal published by AVI’s press team. The affidavit also cited the pending challenges in Karnataka and Jammu & Kashmir.
Once PECA, 2019 imposed a national ban, AVI and the petitioner withdrew the petition, with liberty to refile.