CTC urges govt not to fall for tobacco industry’s misleading claims

Islamabad

The Coalition for Tobacco Control Pakistan (CTC-Pak) has urged the government not to compromise the health of Pakistan’s youth by falling for the misleading claims of the tobacco industry, which is vigilantly lobbying to pressurise the government and is providing misleading information to it in order maneuver less effective policy measures.

While Pakistan’s neighbouring countries and the rest of the world is implementing strict policies to protect public health, the government of Pakistan is sympathetic towards the tobacco industry to the extent that this year, fears abound that taxes on cigarettes may be decreased, rather than increased. 

In 2015, when the government of Pakistan announced the new enhanced 85% Pictorial Health Warning (PHW) to promote awareness on health hazard from tobacco use, the industry retaliated, using all kinds of pressures on the Ministry of Health. In lieu of following events, a committee was constituted that recommended only 50% increase to accommodate the industry’s interests over health. 

This decision to compromise health over business was challenged by tobacco control advocates in the Islamabad High Court. The tobacco industry also intervened to become party to the case, making same claims as made by the four major multinational tobacco companies British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Japan Tobacco and Philip Morris, and a tipping manufacturer (manufacturer of paper for cigarette filter tips) in 2016 in the High Court of Justice of England and Wales, UK. The UK Court not only dismissed all those claims in its milestone 386-page decision but also ordained that with effect from May 20, 2017, before World No Tobacco Day, the law for plain packaging of cigarette packs will come into effect.

“Not just the United Kingdom, but Australia, Nepal and India along with the rest of the world realized the importance of larger pictorial health warnings in protecting the health of their youth as new potential smoker. But in Pakistan, we are protecting the interests of the tobacco industry by softening policies or reducing taxes so their sales to youth and children could flourish,” Khurram Hashmi, the National Coordinator of CTC-Pak said. 

“Measures like large pictorial warnings cut smoking trends and reduce sufferings and avoidable deaths; this is a fact no matter how delusional we choose to remain. We lose approximately 300 lives on a daily basis because of tobacco use,” Nadeem added.

Pakistan ratified and signed the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2004 and in 2010, introduced pictorial health warnings on cigarette packs, replacing text-based warnings. Studies have shown that tobacco use trend dropped significantly since the introduction of pictorial health warnings. 

“A bigger pictorial warning educates people better. It forces some to quit and others not to smoke in the presence of their loved ones. It reduces tobacco-related diseases, leading to reduced health costs,” Faraz Ahmed, the Associate Coordinator, CTC-Pak, stated.