Asian Tobacco Growers Oppose Ban on Tobacco Flavours

Asian tobacco growers on Tuesday condemned the World Health Organization (WHO) for suggesting ingredients such as cloves and other flavours be banned from cigarettes like Kiss, Eva, Karelia and many other flavoured brands.
The International Tobacco Growers' Association (ITGA) said a ban would cost millions of jobs by eliminating the market for blended cigarettes, which account for about half of global sales.
"We urge all governments to reject the proposal to ban tobacco ingredients and to investigate other alternatives that can achieve public health goals while also protecting the millions of jobs that are dependent on tobacco growing," ITGA president Roger Quarles said at a tobacco conference in Jakarta.
ITGA and the Indonesian Tobacco Community Alliance (AMTI), representing four million growers across Asia, have formed an Asian lobby group to fight the WHO proposals.
AMTI chairman Soedaryanto said that, as the world's biggest producers of clove cigarettes, Indonesian tobacco growers stood to lose most from a ban.
"Some of these agricultural communities are already among the poorest in the country. No other crop currently exists that can provide similar economic benefits to those communities," he said.
Indonesia is the only country in Asia not to have ratified the WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which sets policy recommendations and benchmarks for countries concerned about the health impacts of smoking.
Cigarette consumption in the Southeast Asian archipelago of some 240 million people soared 47 percent in the 1990s and about 400,000 Indonesians die every year due to tobacco-related illnesses, according to the WHO.
Indonesia's biggest cigarette manufacturer, PT HM Sampoerna, is an affiliate of Philip Morris International.
The government in Jakarta has failed to regulate the tobacco industry, which pays more than six million dollars a year in excise taxes alone even though cigarette prices remain among the lowest in the world.

Global Tobacco Association Hits WHO’s Proposals on Cigarette

The International Tobacco Growers’ Association (ITGA) has expressed outrage over the devastating impact the latest set of recommendations from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) would have on the jobs and livelihoods of millions of tobacco growers around the world, according to a statement released this week in Dar es Salaam.
The statement said draft guidelines of articles 9 & 10 of the FCTC recommend a ban on ingredients used in manufacturing tobacco products like Red & White, Camel etc.
"If implemented it would virtually eliminate traditional blended cigarettes which account for approximately half of the global market," says part of the statement. The impact on growers who supply tobacco varieties used in these products would be dramatic.
“These recommendations have been made by bureaucrats, mostly from wealthy countries who know nothing about tobacco growing.
Their recommendations could wipe out the livelihoods of millions of tobacco growers all over the world,” the statement quoted António Abrunhosa, the CEO of ITGA, as saying. He said for some inexplicable reasons, tobacco growers, the very people most affected by the guidelines, are officially excluded from any discussions, adding that even ministries in charge of agriculture or economy seem unaware of the discussions taking place within the FCTC.
According to Mr Abrunhosa, numerous countries, including some of the poorest nations such as Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania now face the prospect of seeing millions of jobs lost and a huge decline in the export of tobacco. Tobacco cultivation is critical for the economy in these countries and one of the few agricultural activities to have remained buoyant during the recent global economic crisis. The latest guidelines drafted by bureaucrats in Geneva threaten to undo such gains for unclear benefits.
He warned that it will be a disaster for farmers who grow leaf for traditional blended products, noting it’s not just tobacco growers whose livelihoods are threatened. “These guidelines are just plain wrong whichever way you look at them. Nobody has explained to me how banning some cigarette products and ignoring others will have any benefit for people’s health,” said Roger Quarles, president of the ITGA. In some parts of the world, entire communities depend on the tobacco-growing sector.
"I want to know what these bureaucrats have to say to the people whose lives they are going to ruin for no good reason. ITGA represents more than thirty million tobacco growers across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America." “We call on governments all over the world to support growers by adopting a common sense approach and discarding these irrational and potentially economically-devastating guidelines.