If ads for toothpaste were to be believed, dentists will soon be out of work. Just use brand X, and you can gorge on sticky sweets to your heart's content, with no harm done as long as this brand guards you with its protective ring, says one ad while another claims its unique action can whiten teeth. It is not true as specialists warn that the whitener may actually be harmful.

Dandruff? No problem, just use brand Y, and you can have beautiful hair. Wrong again. Healthy hair is a result of several factors, including diet, heredity, environment and lifestyle.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Maharashtra, believes some of these advertisements transgress the law governing claims permissible in ads. Any product that claims to prevent disease or disorders is a "drug" under the law, but the cosmetics industry disagrees. In trying to resolve this conflict, a curious fact has come to light. Under the existing law, the FDA can only monitor claims made on the label and in package inserts, not on claims made in ads.

Advertisements, the Consumer Guidance Society of India points out, have a far greater impact on potential buyers (and a far larger number of potential buyers) than package labels and inserts. The tall claims camp, therefore, gets away merrily with raking in the moolah.

The code agreed upon (between industry representatives and enforcement officials) specifies that labels can only say "helps prevent dandruff" (or cavities). A classic case of semantic legerdemain one-upping the law. In the meantime, far more potent ads on TV continue to make tall claims, wooing adults as well as children to the cash counters.

-Sakuntala Narasimhan

State of Confusion

STOCK TAKING FAILS: Ravi

AICC General Secretary Vayalar Ravi's mission in Hyderabad was to assess a change of guard in the Andhra Pradesh Congress. Instead he got party chief Sonia Gandhi to suspend the belligerent party activist P. Janardhan Reddy for "indiscipline". Reddy had demanded the removal of state Congress chief M. Satyanarayana Rao.

Reddy's men were not off the mark with their demand. The quixotic Rao has embarrassed the party leadership in recent months with his inane statements. Rival TDP chief N. Chandrababu Naidu couldn't be more amused. After all he had once said Rao was God's gift to the TDP.

Amarnath K. Menon