Tobacco.org

• Stopping tobacco production not solution to increasing cancer cases 

The government told the National Assembly that it is going to continue supporting tobacco farming despite the increase of cancer cases caused by cigarette smoking since that is not the solution to the problem.

The Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Food Security and Co-operatives, Dr Mathayo David Mathayo said that one of the factors for not stopping the production is that 85% of all tobacco produced in the country is exported, thus only the remaining 15 is consumed in the county.

"Tobacco farming and production employs 1.3 per cent of population, which is equal to 500,000 Tanzanians and their families depending on the crop for their livehoods," explained Dr Mathayo.

However, the deputy minister acknowledged that cigarette smoking has both long term and short term effects, saying that it is the reason for restrictions in cigarette advertising, health warning on the packets and not allowing it to be sold for persons under 18 years.

"I cannot choose between the economic advantages of tobacco production and the health effects that cigarette smokers get, but the precautions and warnings ensure that those using the product know its effects and are all adults, thus have the ability to make decision for themselves," he said.

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• Where smokers are a menace 

MAZENGO Madanga, a 55-year-old peasant from Chilonwa Village in Dodoma Rural District, who came into the municipality to beg recently, says he took up tobacco smoking nearly 20 years ago. He admits with resentment that tobacco is so addictive that abusers fail to kick the habit.

He says a friend with who he tended cattle introduced him to tobacco smoking. Initially, he says, he found it difficult to inhale the smoke that appeared to assail not only his chest and lungs but his nostrils too. What he was smoking was crushed, sun-dried tobacco leaves rolled in paper.

Twenty years down the road, today, Madanga can no longer kick the habit. In fact, apart from smoking raw tobacco, he sniffs snuff as well. He tucks some of it inside his lower lip, a practice that increased the foul smell that invariably emanates from his mouth.

A medical doctor with the municipality's Regional Hospital, who prefers anonymity, says that health complications, especially respiratory impairments, take many lives in Dodoma Region. . . .

. But the government has a good rule of thumb that requires warning signs posted on each cigarette advertisement saying it has been determined that "cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health."

The same advert is displayed on cigarrete packs and is designed to warn smokers and potential smokers against the habit. But the advert does not seem to have much impact on the fraternity of smokers. One reason is that smoking takes its tall after twenty or more years.

So, the law makes it imperative for tobacco companies to warn consumers of their products on underlying dangers of smoking. A former Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Health, Mr Hussein Mwinyi, told the National Assembly last June, 2006 that smoking in public places is a crime.

He says smokers sometimes pass problems to non-smokers around them through what is known as passive smoking and that parents who smoke near infants unwittingly put the child's health at risk. He also says a spouse who smokes endangers his or her non-smoking partner.

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Tanzania Cigarette Co. Says 2008 Profit Rose 27% (Update1)  

Tanzania Cigarette Co., the country’s largest cigarette maker, said profit rose 27 percent last year as sales increased.

The company posted net income of 31.1 billion Tanzanian shillings ($23.8 million) for the year to Dec. 31, compared with 24.4 billion shillings a year earlier, it said in a statement published in the Dar es Salaam-based Citizen today.

Japan Tobacco International, a unit of Japan Tobacco Inc., the world’s third-largest tobacco manufacturer, owns 75 percent

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Serengeti tobacco farmers to get 1.6bn/-  

Over 1,500 farmers in Serengeti district are expected to get 1.6bn/- from tobacco this season. Serengeti District Commissioner, Mr Edward ole Lenga, said yesterday that farmers in the district expect to harvest around 800 tonnes of tobacco.

Alliance One Tanzanian Ltd company is buying the cash crop through its branch office based in Mugumu town. " There is a big turn up of farmers selling tobacco to the Alliance One Tanzania and they are happy with the deal", said Mr Kolimba, refuting recent media reports which alleged that some tobacco growers were reluctant to sell their crop to that company.

He described the report as misleading, calling farmers to continue co-operating with the Morogoro-based tobacco firm, in developing tobacco growing in the district. He warned farmers against smuggling tobacco to the neighbouring Kenya via 'panya' routes, saying that those who would be caught doing so will be taken to task.

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African farmers turning their backs on tobacco  

MOST African farmers grow tobacco because they are poor and lack alternative ways to earn a living, but with encouragement, many Tanzanian farmers are giving the killer crop the cold shoulder.

This is according to Lutgard Kagaruki, from the Tanzania Tobacco Control Forum, addressing a panel at the World Health Organization tobacco control conference in Durban, South Africa this week.

Tanzania is the second biggest grower of tobacco in Africa after Malawi, but many tobacco farmers have been ''enslaved in permanent debt to the tobacco companies'' and want to get out, Kagaruki was quoted as saying in latest media reports from South Africa.

''The tobacco companies give subsidies and loans for them to buy fertilizer, chemicals (pesticides) and seed. But then they under-grade the crops and set low prices. The farmers can't repay the loans and find themselves enslaved in permanent debt bondage,'' said Kagaruki.

The 80,000 tobacco farmers in the country earn an estimated $1 a day, she added.

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• African farmers turn backs on tobacco 

Most African farmers grow tobacco because they are poor and lack alternative ways to earn a living, but with encouragement, many Tanzanian farmers are giving the killer crop the cold-shoulder.

This is according to Lutgard Kagaruki, from the Tanzania Tobacco Control Forum, who addressed a panel at the World Health Organisation's tobacco control conference in Durban this week.

Tanzania is the second biggest grower of tobacco in Africa after Malawi, but many tobacco farmers were "enslaved in permanent debt to the tobacco companies" and wanted to get out, said Kagaruki. . . .

While tobacco is Tanzania's second biggest foreign exchange earner, bringing about $55,5-million into the country in 2003/4, one of the country's cancer institutes, the Ocean Road Cancer Institute, reported spending $30-million treating smoking-related cancers during the same period.

However, Dr Yusuf Salojee, from South Africa's National Council Against Smoking, warned that finding alternative livelihoods for farmers does not work as a tobacco control measure.

"With the collapse of Zimbabwe's tobacco farms after land seizures, all that happened was that Tanzania, Zambia and even Mozambique started to grow more tobacco," he told the conference.

"It does not reduce tobacco demand, but rather shifts supply to another country."

Daniel Sibetchem, from Cameroon's health ministry, said there was a worrying increase in smoking among his country's young people, with 44 percent of schoolchildren having tried tobacco.

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Firms donates Sh120m to police force  

The Tanzania Cigarette Company (TCC) has donated $92,000 (Sh120 million) to the Tanzania police force.

The money will facilitate training for top officers in San Diego, California.

TCC general manager Simon Matta presented the donation to police training and operations director Paul Chagonja.

The firm donated Sh90 million to the force last year and has been sponsoring the Tanzanian delegation to the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference since 2001. . . .

However, the World Health Organisation warns that effects of smoking on human health are serious and in many cases, deadly.

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• Shelter children from smoking, parents told 

Tanzanian parents who smoke can and should play a big role in blocking the young generation from picking up the killer habit.

Public education and sensitization, strict enforcement of anti-smoking regulations and sharpening legislation against tobacco are also key facilitators of the campaign against a crop whose effects are medically and environmentally disastrous.

So says Professor Robert Machang`u, the National Professional Officer at the WHO Regional Office in Dar es Salaam and Chairman of the Tanzania Public Health Association.

He was speaking in Dar es Salaam yesterday, at a workshop for tobacco control champions - young citizens belonging to nearly 10 groups that are working closely with the Tanzania Tobacco Control Forum (TTCF). . . .

Homes are thus breeding grounds for smokers, he said, urging parents to protect their offspring by refraining from manipulating them as cigarette buyers and lighters.

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Farmers benefit from firm's initiative 

Environment and economic projects financed by Tanzania Cigarette Company (TCC) in Tabora, have helped improve the welfare of tobacco growers in the region, a district commissioner said last week. Tabora Urban DC Moshi Chang'a made the commendation during a seminar organised by the company on enhanced communication among stakeholders.

He said benefits of the projects included use of modern tobacco curing barns called rocket barns that have cut firewood demand by half. The official hailed the company for investing in the projects, saying many families have benefited from the initiative. TCC organised the seminar in conjunction with a non-governmental organisation, Total Land Care (TLC). TCC, through its parent company, the Japan Tobacco International in association with other partners, sponsors environment and economic projects in Tabora Region's five districts of Urambo, Uyui, Sikonge, Tabora and Nzega.

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Tobacco pin-pointed as big marital spoiler 

Revelations that smoking is a source of marital problems besides the commonly known medical one of causing cancerous diseases, shocked the audience at a function focused on the effects of tobacco, which was held in Dar es Salaam on Friday.

The audience comprised mostly members of the Tanzania Tobacco Control Forum (TTCF), who assembled at the Karimjee Hall for the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the NGO, which is on the forefront in the battle to curb the growth and use of a crop that destabilises health, kills, drains lots of funds, slows down human welfare and destroys the environment.

The TTCF Executive Secretary, Lutgard Kagaruki, said research conducted in Namtumbo, Ruvuma Region - a major tobacco cultivation area - showed that loss of sexual potency by men was one of the ugly by-products, which often led to divorces.

Nearly 75 per cent of peasants there smoke raw tobacco and have respiratory diseases; and some 1,500 out-of-school children in the 8-17 age bracket labour on tobacco farms.

On a happy note, however, she told the audience that steadily, many cultivators, who were not prospering but driven into destitution instead due to low prices and debt bondage through being loaned inputs like fertiliser, were abandoning the crop

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Eight in Mpanda court over theft of tobacco  

Eight suspects, all residents of Mpanda Township, were arraigned before a Mpanda District Resident Magistrate in Rukwa Region on Friday charged with breaking into a warehouse and stealing 244 bales of tobacco worth more than 19m/-.

The tobacco was property of the Association of Tanzania Tobacco Traders (ATTT). Before Resident Magistrate Richard Kasele the accused denied the charges and were remanded until August 14, this year, when the court will rule on their bail applications. The eight accused persons were Hamza Feruzi (30); Edgar Anthony (24); Abuu Juma (27) and Ramadhan Hamisi (21).

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Pay tobacco farmers in cash-Sitta 

The Speaker of the National Assembly, Samuel Sitta, has instructed tobacco buyers to pay in cash when purchasing the crop from farmers instead of the prevailing notorious payments in terms of inputs.

Sitta who is also the Urambo East parliamentarian told local entrepreneurs here that tobacco buying companies were initially accepted by the Government as buyers of the commercial crop and not suppliers of inputs.

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• Malawi presses tobacco fight 

But the country, while still pursing the diversification agenda, has not given up the fight to rescue a crop that is very much the backbone of the country’s economy as oil is to the Middle East. This time, however, Malawi does not want to continue with the battle alone. Economic Report has established that Malawi has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with tobacco producing countries of Zambia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Mozambique to help position the industry so that the countries reap more. Industry, Trade and Private Sector Minister Ken Lipenga said in an interview that the MOU was signed last November. Among other things, he said, the agreement looks at issues of collective marketing as well as value-adding.

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Alternative crops needed to swap tobacco 

THE Tanzania Tobacco Control Forum (TTCF) has urged the government to introduce alternative cash crops in tobacco growing areas because the crop's growers encountered more health hazards than direct benefits from their efforts.

The Chairperson of the forum, Ms Lutgard Kagaruki, told members of the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture and Lands and the Investment and Trade Committee at a seminar here yesterday, that tobacco was as harmful to growers as it was to consumers.

In 2003/04, she said, Tanzania earned 55.5 million US dollars from tobacco exports, but the earnings did not appear to have any impact on the lives of tobacco growers in Sikonge and Namtumbo districts, she said.

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BAT to Sponsor Jua Kali Exhibition 

BRITISH American Tobacco East Africa BAT (EA) will spend $70,000 (sh129.5m) for promotion of the Jua Kali exhibition in Dar es Salaam in December.

The commissioner of industry and technology in the trade ministry, Eng. Samuel Ssenkungu, said, "BAT has been sponsoring the event on a rotational basis.

"BAT Kenya used to sponsor the event when the exhibition used to take place in Kenya. When the exhibition became an East Africa event, BAT East Africa is sponsoring it."

Ssenkungu said the sponsorship covers publicity, souvenirs, catalogues, media exposure, hospitality in BAT's stall for VIP visitors and ground supervision during the 10 days of the exhibition.

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