From Marlboro country to Geneva

From Marlboro country to Geneva
Sunil Jain

Come next week, official delegates from around the world, and all manner of factotums representing the interests of the tobacco industry, will gather in Geneva to hammer out the beginnings of a Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). If negotiated successfully, and signed by the governments of the 191 member states of the World Health Assembly by 2003, the FCTC will be the world's first global agreement devoted entirely to tobacco control.

Once negotiated, the FCTC will have such a far-reaching impact on the tobacco industry that close to 150 petitions have already been received by the WHO protesting against the FCTC (see: www.who.int/genevahearings).

Most of these, of course, make an interesting read. Some, such as that from the Tobacco Institute of India have inspired the sundry bidi makers associations to even quote the same passage from Prime Minister Vajpayee's speech. Others, from global majors such as RJR Reynold's or the International Advertising Association, are so bizarre they'd make even a schoolboy blush.

* British American Tobacco says proposals to ban tobacco advertising could infringe upon the Freedom of Speech, and would damage tobacco firms' ability to invest in youth smoking prevention -- it is, says BAT, the tobacco firms that have the best chance of achieving real progress in these areas.

* The International Advertising Association cites a Gallup International research which says that 89 per cent of people feel that advertising has an important role to play in the health of an economy.

* Tobacco Institute of India's main concern is that 71 per cent of the population doesn't have access to sanitation, that there could be 30 m HIV-positive Indians by 2010, and so on.

Interestingly, unlike their global counterparts like BAT or Japan Tobacco, Indian majors such as ITC have chosen to stay away, directly, from the FCTC submissions. With bidis/gutka accounting for over 85 per cent of tobacco consumed here, and between 20 and 30 million people involved in tobacco farming and bidi rolling, Big Tobacco knows the government has to defend it.

While the government's fight to ensure that any convention or protocol doesn't hit these farmers and bidi workers is justifiable purely in terms of the massive number of people involved, what's foolish is how it is turning a blind eye to the health costs. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, the cost of tobacco-related diseases is around Rs 25,000 crore -- that's larger than the size of the entire Indian tobacco industry.

What's also worrying is that the government is getting so mesmerised by the arguments put out by the tobacco industry -- increased tax rates will kill industry, will cause massive unemployment and will reduce tax revenues -- that it's not even looking at some of the studies and empirical data coming out from other countries. Canada's experience in the 1980s and the 1990s, for instance, shows up all accepted logic as stupid. In the early 1980s, it sharply increased tobacco taxes, and found teenage smoking fall to a third -- tax collections also grew substantially! And when it dropped taxes equally sharply to curb cigarette smuggling, smoking in teenagers increased once again, and tax revenues fell by more than twice predicted. Based on a study of 70 countries, the World Bank has come up with a 10X10 theory: a ten per cent hike in excise taxes will reduce smoking and could prevent 10 million tobacco deaths (it will also lead to a 7 per cent increase in tax revenues).

But tobacco industry will say what about jobs? The World Bank economists calculate that the money saved on tobacco, if spent on other goods, will probably create more jobs than those lost -- for a country like Bangladesh, which is somewhat like India in terms of the number of farmers dependent on tobacco. It is estimated that closing the tobacco industry entirely will actually lead to an increase of 18 per cent in the number of jobs.

Now it can be argued that this is just data, and experiences will vary across countries. Sure, but why not at least make some moves and see how they pan out. And if you need time to wean the country's farmers from tobacco dependency, why not earmark part of tobacco taxes for this, or for taking care of the increasing health-care costs like several US states do?

India, needless to say, has no consistent policy on tobacco. Banning smoking in public places and preventing its sale in railway stations, or even stopping cable television from airing tobacco ads is clearly in response to the massive health costs of tobacco. Yet, the prime minister himself announced major tax reliefs in the Northeast which are open to misuse by tobacco firms and will allow them to `manufacture' in these areas and then sell virtually tax-free cigarettes. When the finance minister reversed this policy last year, he was asked to revoke his orders immediately.

So what's the government's policy on tobacco finally going to be -- action or inaction? The latter, of course, has a twist -- that given by Narasimha Rao during the Ram Janambhoomi agitation. That inaction is also a form of action.