More than 50 percent of the space for advertising tobacco products will soon have to be devoted to warnings against using the product.

"Scare messages", or pictorial warnings of the kind in Canada, will soon have to appear on product cartons, images and hoardings publicising tobacco products, Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said here Friday.

He has steered a ban on smoking scenes in films that comes into effect in October.

"If 40 percent of health problems occur due to use of tobacco in some form or the other, India will soon have to go in for very stringent measures against its use," the minister told reporters here.