Report names and shame countries that like Big Tobacco

The global tobacco industry lobbied governments during the COVID-19 pandemic to expand markets and blunt measures designed to curb their business, a report from watchdog groups aligned with the World Organization of Health said Tuesday. healthcare.

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-scoring Western nation, with Malaysia, Spain, Germany, and India also considered too accommodating, says the report from non-profit groups based in France, England and Thailand.

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

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

In several countries, strict tobacco control measures have been defeated or diluted.

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, tax cuts and a voice in guided deliberations. by the government on the regulation of tobacco products, the report found.

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

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

Big Tobacco has a long history of taking legal action to block simple cigarette packaging, sponsor cultural events or sports teams, and challenge the legality of smoke-free zones.

$ 850 billion of industry

During the pandemic, tobacco companies distributed personal protective equipment, ventilators and hand sanitizers to countries around the world.

“While advertising its charitable acts to resurrect its image as part of the solution, the industry was simultaneously lobbying governments not to impose restrictions on its activities,” the report said.

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

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

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

Good marks also for Peru, the Netherlands, Kenya and Ethiopia.

The report, released by the STOP partnership, was compiled after former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg awarded researchers a three-year grant of $ 20 million to monitor how the industry markets its products around 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 it awarded the grant.

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

Smoking has stabilized in most wealthy nations, but in the developing world the total number of tobacco users – mostly men, mostly young people – 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 Tobacco Research Group at the University of Bath, the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control, and the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

© 2020 AFP