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Noblevmy at ml.wikipedia
World No Tobacco Day 2013: a regulatory battlefield
Published Online May 31, 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ S2213-2600(13)70079-1 For more on World No Tobacco Day see http://www.who.int/ campaigns/no-tobaccoday/2013/event/en/
362
Encouraging progress has recently been made in global tobacco control. Uruguay now emblazons pictorial warnings over 80% of tobacco packaging; countries such as Bhutan, Finland, and New Zealand have affirmed their commitment to becoming wholly free of tobacco; and Nepal has banned the sale of cigarettes to pregnant women. Meanwhile, the average rate of implementation of the provisions of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) maintains its steady increase (the FCTC is the international treaty, to which 176 countries are party, which provides the legal architecture for the fight against tobacco use). Still, there is much work to be done. Worldwide tobacco sales are increasing. WHO has warned that unless current trends are arrested, tobacco products will kill more than 8 million people every year by 2030— over 80% of whom live in low-income and middle-income countries. Since tobacco use in rich nations is more prevalent in lower socioeconomic groups, there is a very real risk that the 21st century will bear witness to an epidemic of the poor. May 31 marks World No Tobacco Day. This year’s theme is “ban tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship”, which WHO reckons could reduce consumption by up to 16% in some countries. 86 signatories to the FCTC have reported that they are enforcing comprehensive bans on advertising, promotion, and sponsorship. However, under strict WHO definitions—which, inter alia, demand a total ban on cross-border advertising activities—only 19 countries, accounting for 6% of the world’s population, can be considered to have instituted comprehensive bans. Joanna Cohen (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA) believes that
targeting advertising, promotion, and sponsorship is key. “It is about changing social norms”, she explains—a process of removing tobacco products from the common current of consumer goods, so that they eventually seem to be outliers, their link with normal adult behaviour broken. Permitting tobacco products to be advertised and promoted undermines public-health messages; the sponsorship aspect is also crucial, preventing tobacco companies from latching on to sporting and cultural events in an effort to assume prominence in mainstream culture. Needless to say, it is an endeavour that the tobacco industry is keen to obstruct. A new report by China’s ThinkTank Research Centre for Health Development revealed that tobacco companies in the country have taken to social media to promote their products—using microblogs and internet messaging services to circumvent a ban on mass media advertising. The move comes as little surprise to K Srinath Reddy (Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi); roughly half of the world’s smokers live in China or India, and the tobacco industry will fight fiercely to preserve the status quo in these markets. “The tobacco industry has done a lot of surrogate advertising in India”, Reddy told The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. The country only permits point-of-sale advertising—tobacco companies responded by erecting huge billboards at these points. They responded to the ban on smoking in public places by parking mobile smoking vans outside shopping malls, and they launched vociferous objections to pictorial warnings, claiming there was insufficient space on the packet for the pictures and text. “We were able to overcome all of these objections”, said Reddy. Around half of India’s smokers prefer beedies, small and slender hand-rolled
cigarettes, and more than 3 million Indians, typically women, are employed in their manufacture. “Beedies are virtually immunised from effective taxation; the tobacco companies are now looking at mobilising politicians by saying that imposing any kind of control on the beedi industry will hurt the poor”, Reddy explained. Here too, however, public-health campaigners have constructed compelling counterarguments. “These women are in seasonal employment that does not lift them out of poverty; we can use tax funds to provide alternate, economically viable livelihoods”, said Reddy. The tactics of the tobacco industry can easily be turned back on them. Social media, for example, can be used for counter marketing. “We are learning how best to go about this”, affirmed Cohen. In an era of austerity, many countries have quietly called a moratorium on public-health awareness campaigns, but warnings on cigarette packets could at least partly ameliorate this (as long as the warnings are sufficiently striking— China’s warnings are composed solely of text, which greatly reduces their impact). And while the tobacco industry has invoked a range of arguments in support of their position, so too can public-health campaigners. Reddy, for example, points out that tobacco is a water and pesticide intensive crop. It contributes to the erosion of subsoil and deforestation. “We have to see tobacco as a threat to sustainable development”, he concluded. It is all part of a continuing battle against a well-funded and resourceful enemy. “The tobacco industry will fight every inch of the way to delay, dilute, and subvert any tobacco control regulations” said Reddy. “We have to be always prepared to counter them.”
Talha Khan Burki www.thelancet.com/respiratory Vol 1 July 2013
Noblevmy at ml.wikipedia
World No Tobacco Day 2013: a regulatory battlefield
Published Online May 31, 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ S2213-2600(13)70079-1 For more on World No Tobacco Day see http://www.who.int/ campaigns/no-tobaccoday/2013/event/en/
362
Encouraging progress has recently been made in global tobacco control. Uruguay now emblazons pictorial warnings over 80% of tobacco packaging; countries such as Bhutan, Finland, and New Zealand have affirmed their commitment to becoming wholly free of tobacco; and Nepal has banned the sale of cigarettes to pregnant women. Meanwhile, the average rate of implementation of the provisions of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) maintains its steady increase (the FCTC is the international treaty, to which 176 countries are party, which provides the legal architecture for the fight against tobacco use). Still, there is much work to be done. Worldwide tobacco sales are increasing. WHO has warned that unless current trends are arrested, tobacco products will kill more than 8 million people every year by 2030— over 80% of whom live in low-income and middle-income countries. Since tobacco use in rich nations is more prevalent in lower socioeconomic groups, there is a very real risk that the 21st century will bear witness to an epidemic of the poor. May 31 marks World No Tobacco Day. This year’s theme is “ban tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship”, which WHO reckons could reduce consumption by up to 16% in some countries. 86 signatories to the FCTC have reported that they are enforcing comprehensive bans on advertising, promotion, and sponsorship. However, under strict WHO definitions—which, inter alia, demand a total ban on cross-border advertising activities—only 19 countries, accounting for 6% of the world’s population, can be considered to have instituted comprehensive bans. Joanna Cohen (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA) believes that
targeting advertising, promotion, and sponsorship is key. “It is about changing social norms”, she explains—a process of removing tobacco products from the common current of consumer goods, so that they eventually seem to be outliers, their link with normal adult behaviour broken. Permitting tobacco products to be advertised and promoted undermines public-health messages; the sponsorship aspect is also crucial, preventing tobacco companies from latching on to sporting and cultural events in an effort to assume prominence in mainstream culture. Needless to say, it is an endeavour that the tobacco industry is keen to obstruct. A new report by China’s ThinkTank Research Centre for Health Development revealed that tobacco companies in the country have taken to social media to promote their products—using microblogs and internet messaging services to circumvent a ban on mass media advertising. The move comes as little surprise to K Srinath Reddy (Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi); roughly half of the world’s smokers live in China or India, and the tobacco industry will fight fiercely to preserve the status quo in these markets. “The tobacco industry has done a lot of surrogate advertising in India”, Reddy told The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. The country only permits point-of-sale advertising—tobacco companies responded by erecting huge billboards at these points. They responded to the ban on smoking in public places by parking mobile smoking vans outside shopping malls, and they launched vociferous objections to pictorial warnings, claiming there was insufficient space on the packet for the pictures and text. “We were able to overcome all of these objections”, said Reddy. Around half of India’s smokers prefer beedies, small and slender hand-rolled
cigarettes, and more than 3 million Indians, typically women, are employed in their manufacture. “Beedies are virtually immunised from effective taxation; the tobacco companies are now looking at mobilising politicians by saying that imposing any kind of control on the beedi industry will hurt the poor”, Reddy explained. Here too, however, public-health campaigners have constructed compelling counterarguments. “These women are in seasonal employment that does not lift them out of poverty; we can use tax funds to provide alternate, economically viable livelihoods”, said Reddy. The tactics of the tobacco industry can easily be turned back on them. Social media, for example, can be used for counter marketing. “We are learning how best to go about this”, affirmed Cohen. In an era of austerity, many countries have quietly called a moratorium on public-health awareness campaigns, but warnings on cigarette packets could at least partly ameliorate this (as long as the warnings are sufficiently striking— China’s warnings are composed solely of text, which greatly reduces their impact). And while the tobacco industry has invoked a range of arguments in support of their position, so too can public-health campaigners. Reddy, for example, points out that tobacco is a water and pesticide intensive crop. It contributes to the erosion of subsoil and deforestation. “We have to see tobacco as a threat to sustainable development”, he concluded. It is all part of a continuing battle against a well-funded and resourceful enemy. “The tobacco industry will fight every inch of the way to delay, dilute, and subvert any tobacco control regulations” said Reddy. “We have to be always prepared to counter them.”
Talha Khan Burki www.thelancet.com/respiratory Vol 1 July 2013
