Anti-tobacco laws gain currency as UN endorses tough control measures

By John Oyuke

A crucial conference on tobacco in South Korea that proposes serious restrictions in production of the crop could spell death knell the lucrative tobacco farming.

Tobacco farmers are closely monitoring outcome of the conference backed by United Nations with bated breath whose proposals could put serious restrictions on tobacco growing and threaten incomes to its farmers.

The negotiations in Seoul have already produced a unanimous adoption of what World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Margaret Chan called a “game-changing” global pact to combat illegal tobacco trade, which feeds worldwide tobacco epidemic.

 “This is a game-changing treaty,” Chan said in an address to a meeting in Seoul of the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which has been ratified by 176 countries since coming into force in 2005.

“This is how we hem in the enemy,” she added, and termed the new pact as a major step towards “eliminating a very sophisticated criminal activity”.

The pact, which required four years of intense negotiations, marks a departure for the FCTC, whose main focus so far has been on curbing demand for tobacco products rather than controlling the supply chain.

Treaty

The treaty adopted by more than 170 countries last week envisages a global tracking and tracing system to reduce illicit trade of tobacco products through control of supply chain and international cooperation.

It also hopes to trim down the smuggling and counterfeiting of tobacco — a trade which accounts for 11 per cent of the total tobacco market and costs governments an estimated $40 billion in lost tax revenue.

The protocol gives signatory states five years to establish a tracking and tracing mechanism on cigarettes and every other tobacco product.

The system will use non-removable markings and will be coordinated globally to detect illegal tobacco trading. Agents, suppliers and tobacco manufacturers must be licensed. Manufacturers will have to carry out checks on customers to ensure they are genuine or whether they have association with criminal organisations.

Adoption of the protocol is just one of many outcomes expected from the Fifth Session of the FCTC (COP5), which ended on Saturday.

Other highlights of the COP5 included guidelines on price and tax measures to reduce demand for tobacco and policy recommendations with regard to economically viable alternatives to tobacco growing.

Also discussed during the six-day FCTC meeting were related to smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes, as well as a review of resources and mechanisms of assistance to promote implementation of the convention.

Watching closely the proposals are tobacco industry players and farmers across the East African Community (EAC) countries who are worried that some of the proposed restrictions have devastating effect on them and their communities.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Kenya Association of Manufacturers (Kam) Chief Executive , Ms Betty Maina said tobacco industry continues to play a key role in generating government revenue and job creation.

She noted that any development towards controlling its activities must be sensible and administered according to individual country laws.

 “Other than tax revenues, tobacco growing represents an important economic activity in Kenya. It cuts across the tobacco leaf processing and agro-processing industries in terms of source of employment and income,” explained Maina.

In East Africa, Kenya leads with 40,000 contracted farmers and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says seven per cent of Gross Domestic Product comes from tobacco growing - or $65 million in exports. 

Uganda on the other hand has some 75,000 farmers under contract, while Tanzania has a high of 95,000 farmers growing tobacco. In both cases, tobacco contributes five per cent of the respective countries’ GDP.

The tobacco farmers have largely been left out of the conversation on the push to migrate them from growing tobacco to other cash crops.  There has not been sufficient research or impact assessment on the proposed alternatives.

Although FCTC has been pushing for a gradual migration of farmers from tobacco as a cash crop, KAM, which represent manufacturers, fears that such a plan would increase poverty levels among the region’s tobacco growing areas.

Such an idea, according to the industry’s trade lobby group, would adversely impact more than 1.5 million tobacco farmers in EAC and Comesa countries, like Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda and Tanzania.

But the International Tobacco Growers’ Association (ITGA), which represents an estimated 30 million tobacco growers, sees the move by the WHO as a part of a wider anti-smoking campaign aimed at cutting tobacco production.

“Tobacco is an easy scapegoat,” said Francois van der Merwe, Africa Chair of the ITGA. “It’s an industry where they can go in and regulate and tax and try to show the world that they are doing good and we do not accept that.

“We will keep on doing what we believe is right to do. It’s a legal product with harmful effects so governments should rather focus their attention on educating people rather than going and trying and demonize the industry,” he says.

Commenting on the controls discussed at the Seoul meeting, ITGA Chief Executive Antonio Abrunhosa, said FCTC is putting the livelihoods of millions of growers at risk, while refusing to hear their perspective.

He said the majority of the delegates know very little or nothing about agriculture and even less about tobacco farming yet they are deciding on measures that would lead Governments to force tobacco farmers out of tobacco without proposing any alternatives.