Introduction: Tobacco is one of the leading causes of premature deaths worldwide. India has adopted and put forward Act/Legislation to carve the menace of its harmful effects towards the end. Awareness about the hazards of tobacco has been increased overtime with an increasing media but its role alone remains questionable to make India free from tobacco.

Materials and Methods: This is a cross sectional, descriptive study to measure the status of health literacy on hazards of tobacco and cigarettes and other tobacco products act among students of selected colleges, Puducherry. For this purpose, 525 college students were selected as study sample by multistage cluster sampling technique. Kupuswamy scale were used for collecting socio-demographic variables and Health Literacy questionnaire and awareness of COTPA implementation questionnaire were used to measure the health literacy and COTPA. The data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics.

Results: The result showed that among 525 samples, 294 (56%) students had desirable health literacy, 215 (40.95%) had moderate and 16 (3.05%) had poor knowledge of health literacy on hazards of tobacco. The overall status of health literacy among the college students were found to be adequate in 340 participants which is 64.8% and not adequate among 185 participants (35.2%). Participants residing within 3 kilometres of medical institution (p=0.018) has shown statistically significant association with status of health literacy. Awareness of COTPA implementation was found adequate among 390 (74.3%) and not adequate among 135 (25.7%). College students who belonged from professional background (P=0.051) and those whose residences is within 3kms of medical institution (p=0.053) has shown statistically significant association with COTPA implementation.

Conclusion: The present study concluded that measuring health literacy is an important tool to predict an individual’s health status and is significant component of his/her health behaviour, health quality and access to health care.