bdnews24.com :
Bangladesh, among the top five countries in tobacco consumption, stands at a “critical juncture” in controlling it, president of the US-based Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (CTFK) has said.
Matthew Myers told bdnews24.com in an exclusive interview that tobacco industries were eyeing Bangladesh market like the other developing countries for their future profit-making after rich countries imposed stiff tobacco controls.
“So vigorous implementation of the new (tobacco control) law is truly a matter of life and death for Bangladesh,” he said on Friday.
The CTFK, being a key recipient of the Bloomberg Philanthropies funds, works actively in Bangladesh for tobacco control.
Myers said, tobacco industry lobbies were “very powerful” in Bangladesh, but the parliament showed it could stand up against them by passing the law last year in April.
But he lamented that it was more than a year that regulations for its implementing the law could not be enacted.
He said, the Ministry of Health has proposed strong regulations while the Ministry of Law has proposed to somewhat dilute it.
“If the law ministry has its way, millions in Bangladesh will be exposed to passive smoking,” he said.
The new law kept the provision of pictorial health warnings covering 50 percent of the package, banned advertisements in any form and restrict indoor smoking which harms others.
But the industries were lobbying hard to delay regulations, without which a key provision of graphical warning cannot be implemented.
Media reports suggested that industries wrote to government arguing that they would need at least two years time to start using the pictorial warnings in the package.
The CTFK President said in every country tobacco industries come up with similar arguments. “It’s just delaying tactics”.
Myers helped found the CTFK in 1996 and became its President in 2000. Initially, he served as its Executive Vice President and Legal Counsel and oversaw its legal and advocacy efforts.
In his more than 30 years of anti-tobacco activism, he has won many awards including the highest award of the Harvard School of Public Health and that of the American Cancer Society.
He said, Bangladesh was their top priority in tobacco control because it had 41 million smokers, which is nearly one-fourth of the country’s population.
World Health Organisation estimates that tobacco kills 57,000 people in Bangladesh every year and affects more than 350,000 people.
“If many people continue smoking 15 years from now, it will become evident that the government has taken care of the tobacco industry and neglected the health concerns of the people,” he said.
“I think that won’t happen,” said Myers.
He appreciated the new law and said it was for the first time Bangladesh has a law that brings it “much closer” to compliance with the WHO FCTC.
But he was quick to add-“if and only when it is fully implemented”. Bangladesh was one the first countries who signed the FCTC that guides countries on how to control the tobacco menace.
“None can afford the fallout on public health if a country had 41 million smokers,” Myers said.
But he said the new law, if fully implemented, has the potential “to save literally millions of people from dying prematurely of tobacco use”.
The CTFK has advocated strongly in Bangladesh using all stakeholders to pass the law.
