Govt asked to remove tobacco from narcotics list

MARDAN: Anjuman-e-Kashtakaran Khyber Pakhtunkhwa president Haji Naimat Shah Roghani on Sunday requested the prime minister, speaker National Assembly and minister for narcotics control to remove tobacco from the list of narcotics and give it the status of a crop.

Talking to reporters at Mardan Press Club, he said the Pakistan Tobacco Board should be handed over to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa because the province produces 97% of tobacco and provides excise duty of Rs200 billion and also paid other taxes.

He said the burden of all these taxes falls on farmers. He added that the illiterate farmers had been pushed into financial bankruptcy by the companies and tobacco mafia.

He said the majority of the farmers depend on tobacco crops because it is the cash crop. He added that the entire families of tobacco growers, including the women and kids, worked day and night for growing tobacco but the income gained from the crop couldn’t meet even their basic needs.

He alleged that multinational companies sold synthetic fertilisers and fuel wood to farmers on higher prices and demanded the government to give relief to the tobacco growers.