Ahead of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) biannual meeting in New Delhi in November, International Tobacco Growers’ Association Chief Executive Antonio Abrunhosa on Wednesday urged the global policy-makers to involve farmers, the main stakeholders, in the deliberations.
Mobilising the tobacco growers from across Prakasam district for a meeting to articulate their concerns, he said that the draft proposals should first be released well in advance to ensure a wider debate on the entire gamut of issues involved, including livelihood of 30 million tobacco growers across the globe, which was now at stake.
The global leaders should come out with policy measures to help farmers diversify into economically viable alternative crops and realise that harsher regulations would be counter-productive, he added.
“We are not against reasonable regulations, which can be imposed after discussing their implications on our lives. It is unfortunate that the health officials unilaterally took decisions on issues concerning other ministries too without realising that they can be addressed well by experts in the respective fields,” he said.
Adverse impact
The larger pictorial warning on cigarette packs adversely impacted farmers, farm labourers, traders, and also the State and national exchequer, said Federation of All India Farmers’ Associations (FAIFA) general secretary P.S. Murali Babu.
“Cigarette packets will become virtually unbranded, giving a boost to illegal and smuggled cigarettes, thus reducing the demand for legal cigarettes and affecting the livelihood of 2.60 crore farmers and farm labourers in the country,” he added.
The contraband cigarettes accounted for 1/5th of the legal cigarette industry and caused a loss of Rs.9,000 crore revenue to the government and the problem would get aggravated further because of 85 per cent graphical health warning on cigarette packs, he explained.
The U.S., China and Japan, which accounted for more than half of tobacco consumption in the world, did not have pictorial warnings, the FAIFA functionary said, adding that the average warning size was only 20 per cent in the tobacco growing countries, including Brazil, Malawai, and Zimbabwe, while the average warning size across the globe was around 31 per cent.
He appealed to the Centre to continue with the warning size of 40 per cent.
