REDUCING tobacco farming and its use remained the biggest challenge for a healthy nation with at least 156 people dying and another 1,095 becoming disabled every day throughout the country due to smoking. The successive governments raised tax every year on tobacco as an intervention to cut consumption but it proved ineffective to cut consumption, production, export and import of cigarette. According to a report in a daily, many farmers are switching from crop cultivation to tobacco farming as farmers can get upto Tk 2 lakh more by cultivating tobacco in one hectare of land. Cigarette companies with clever campaigns are targeting young consumers. To face it the government has to walk a long way to ensure public health and a greater safety from tobacco use and tobacco borne diseases.
Data show that tobacco production in Bangladesh rose to 60,000 tons in 2009 from less than 40,000 tons in 1980. In 12 years from 1997, cigarette consumption rose from 50 billion sticks to 70 billion sticks and bidi consumption from 45 billion to over 80 billion. According to the Department of Agricultural Extension, tobacco was grown in 108,000 hectares of land in last year, up from 70,000 hectares the previous year.
Bangladesh is a signatory of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) since 2003. The fight against tobacco is important because it causes cancer, stroke, heart disease and respiratory problems, among other deadly diseases. It also affects sex life and cause gangrene disability. Data from 2009 data show, nearly six in every 10 men aged 15 years and above and three in every 10 women of the same age group use tobacco and the death tolls stood at 57,000 in tobacco-attributable diseases every year.
Tobacco tax in Bangladesh is fairly high (about 70 percent) but the tax system is complicated and far from best practices. Bangladesh has different tax structures for different tobacco products – cigarette, bidi, and smokeless tobacco (Gul, Jarda). While this makes it easier for the companies to evade higher taxes just by readjusting the prices and changing packages, many tobacco users simply change brands or shift to lower-quality cigarettes.
Bangladesh has its own achievements in the fight against tobacco. In 2000, nearly 62 percent men aged 15 and above used tobacco against about 6 percent women of the same age group. In 2010, it came down to 46 percent and 1.2 percent respectively.
Smoking has been banned in selected public places and public transports but advertisement on bad effect of tobacco products must be accelerated at all level to cut its production and use. Bangladesh has the Tobacco Control Act-2005, but challenges remain because the number of tobacco users is still many. The government should take rational and easy steps to control tobacco production and its use by limiting lands for tobacco cultivation, imposing higher tax and compelling cigarette companies to run campaign against smoking.
