Denounce names and shames of countries comfortable with Big Tobacco

The global tobacco industry has aggressively lobbied governments during the COVID-19 pandemic to expand markets and take forceful measures designed to curb its business, a report by watchdog groups aligned with the World Health Organization stated on Tuesday.

A ranking of 57 countries based on their willingness to keep Big Tobacco at bay places Japan and Indonesia at the bottom of the list, with Romania, China and Lebanon among the 10 worst offenders.

The United States is the lowest-ranked Western nation, and Malaysia, Spain, Germany and India are also deemed too complacent, according to the report by nonprofit groups based in France, England and Thailand.

“The tobacco industry has a well-documented history of deception and capitalization on humanitarian crises, and is using the pandemic to try to improve its deteriorating public image,” said Adriana Blanco Marquizo, head of the World Organization’s Framework Secretariat for the Health. Tobacco Control Agreement.

Tobacco claims about eight million lives each year from cancer and other lung diseases, one million in China alone.

In several countries, strict tobacco control measures were rejected or watered down.

Philip Morris International (PMI), for example, “lobbied for the promotion and sale of its heated tobacco product in a dozen countries,” resulting in the lifting of bans, lower taxes, and a voice in deliberations. government-led regulation on tobacco products, the report found.

Taxes on these new nicotine delivery devices are now lower than cigarettes in France, Germany and Japan.

Costa Rica, Zambia, and Bangladesh also eased the tax burden for tobacco companies.

Big Tobacco has a long history of lawsuits blocking plain packaging of cigarettes, sponsoring cultural events or sports teams, and questioning the legality of smoke-free zones.

$ 850 billion industry

During the pandemic, tobacco companies have been distributing personal protective equipment, ventilators, and hand sanitizers in countries around the world.

“While publicizing its charitable acts to resurrect its image as part of the solution, the industry simultaneously lobbied governments not to impose restrictions on their businesses,” the report says.

In Kenya, the government listed tobacco products as “essentials” during the pandemic, and in Jordan, cigarettes with bread and other foods were delivered directly to neighborhoods.

By contrast, India and South Africa banned the sale of tobacco products during the pandemic.

More generally, the countries considered least susceptible to the influence of tobacco interests were France, Uganda, Great Britain, New Zealand and Iran.

Peru, the Netherlands, Kenya and Ethiopia also scored well.

The report, released by the STOP association, was produced after former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg awarded researchers a $ 20 million three-year grant to track how the industry markets its products across the world, especially in developing countries.

“This is the only product I know of where if you use it as advertised, it will kill you,” Bloomberg told AFP in 2018, when he awarded the grant.

More than 80 percent of the world’s 1.3 billion tobacco users live in low- and middle-income countries.

Smoking has stagnated in most wealthy nations, but in the developing world the total number of tobacco users, the vast majority of them men, especially the young, continues to rise.

The size of the global tobacco market was valued at nearly $ 850 billion in 2019.

Groups collaborating on the report included the University of Bath’s Tobacco Research Group, the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control, and the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases.

© 2020 AFP