UN Chronicle | Taking the World Up in Smoke: A Tobacco Peril

Taking the World Up in Smoke
A Tobacco Peril
By Namrita Talwar, for the Chronicle

Article

Every eight seconds one person dies of tobacco-related diseases, which kill 4 million people annually. The worldwide demand for tobacco is expected to continually rise for at least another decade.

While tobacco consumption is expected to decrease in developed countries, developing countries could face an increase, according to a report entitled "Projections of tobacco production, consumption and trade to the year 2010", published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

Over the past forty years, medical research, anti-smoking campaigns, increasing health awareness and initiatives by the World Health Organization (WHO) to promote health and encourage tobacco control policies have exposed the dangers of smoking to the world. This resulted in a substantial drop in the number of smokers in developed countries, from a peak of 34 per cent in 1998 to its current level of about 29 per cent for tobacco consumption. Yet, despite considerable scientific evidence, consumption in developing nations is expected to escalate to 71 per cent by 2010, the report states.

"Population levels and incomes are growing more rapidly in the developing countries, and these are driving an increased consumption of tobacco", Brian Moir, senior commodity specialist in the FAO Commodities and Trade Division, told the UN Chronicle. Part of the reason why clamping down on consumption has not met with much success is that reduction in support of tobacco farmers in the United States and the European Union has led to reduced production, which resulted in a production shift from the developed to the developing world, he said.

Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

"Agriculture production support in developed countries generally is under pressure from the international trade negotiations and also because of internal budgetary pressure", according to Mr. Moir. For tobacco in particular, "Governments and tax-payers are additionally concerned that they are supporting the production of an unhealthy product, which then imposes further costs through the health care system". World production is projected to reach over 7.1 million tonnes of tobacco leaf in the year 2010, up from 5.9 million tonnes in 1997/1999. Although this is lower than the record production of 7.5 million tonnes in 1992, the number of smokers is expected to increase by 1.5 per cent annually. In recent years, multinational companies have turned their attention to new markets abroad. China alone accounts for over 35 per cent of world production and some 320 million smokers. Taking advantage of the growing trends in trade liberalization and globalization, these companies have gained access to previously restricted markets in Asia and Africa.

The supply of tobacco is expected to increase in countries where there are no production restrictions, production costs are low, and good transportation systems and access to international markets are easily available, FAO reported.

There are, of course, ways to allay this epidemic. WHO is taking new initiatives to counter the growing problem of tobacco consumption, and one such endeavour is the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which offers a multilateral network for control and regulation. The World Health Assembly adopted the treaty in 2003, which was opened for signature in June 2003 and requires the ratification of 40 countries to go into effect. However, as the report makes clear, regardless of tobacco control efforts, global consumption will continue to increase in the foreseeable future due to population growth and increased consumption in many large countries.

Heather Selin, Tobacco Control Advisor with the Pan American Health Organization/WHO, told the Chronicle: "In one sense, the FAO report is good news. Countries can aggressively pursue tobacco control, confident that there will be no major medium-term disruptions in the tobacco economy." In fact, it will further help countries in lowering the healthcare burden. "The economic productivity will increase due to fewer people, per capita, getting sick and dying young from tobacco", she added.

But that is easier said than done. Like walking a tight rope, tobacco advertising and funding for implementation of the FCTC were among the most precarious and difficult issues for countries to agree upon. "The tension on advertising was between countries wanting a total prohibition and others that felt that their Constitution placed limitations on advertising restrictions", Ms. Selin said. However, in the end, a "constitutional care-out" was negotiated, where countries were expected to go as far as their Constitution allows in restricting advertising, and those without constitutional limitations must ban all advertising within five years of ratification.

There was also concern by many countries that unless the FCTC addressed it, the World Trade Organization and other trade agreements may relax the treaty if tobacco companies challenged control measures under those agreements. "In the end, the treaty is silent on this issue, but the health and trade debate raised awareness about the challenge of increasingly liberalized international trade with regard to a product that kills people", Ms. Selin said. Likewise, "funding for treaty implementation remains a challenge".

The FCTC does not contain a mandatory funding mechanism. During negotiations, Ms. Selin said that many developing countries felt the need for developed countries to take on the responsibility to fund tobacco control, not only due to their ability to do so but also because the tobacco epidemic has been spread mostly by multinational tobacco giants based in developed countries. However, "the developed countries were reluctant to be tied to a mandatory funding formula", she added.

The focus of some recent work has been on the tobacco industry itself. In this context, Ms. Selin emphasized, efforts should be undertaken to "create public policies that cost virtually nothing and have an immediate impact, like advertising bans, 100-per-cent smoke-free environments and higher taxes". To understand the driving force behind tobacco consumption and to combat its pervasiveness, she said, "the challenge is to get all countries, rich and poor alike, to recognize that tobacco control is a good investment".

Tobacco Troubles

More tobacco deaths occur in developing than developed countries.

By 2030, 70 per cent of all tobacco deaths will occur in developing countries.

The poorest households in Bangladesh spend half as much on tobacco as on health, and almost ten times more on education.

In Bangladesh alone, over 10.5 million children could be saved from malnutrition if parents redirected expenses from tobacco to food.

In many countries, scarce land is used for growing tobacco instead of food.

Net income from tobacco crops is less than for food crops. Also, deforestation occurs due to flue curing of tobacco, which burns wood. This is a significant problem in some parts of Africa; for example, in southern Africa alone, an estimated 140,000 hectares of woodlands disappear annually to cure tobacco.

Most cigarettes consumed worldwide are international brands, and many countries lose foreign exchange dollars on tobacco. For example, in 1997/1998, Bangladesh earned $5.5 million in foreign exchange from exporting tobacco, but spent $20.5 million importing the product, resulting in a net foreign exchange loss of $15 million.

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