Tobacco.org

• Out of Africa: The Tobacco War's New Battleground 

Africa is already beleaguered by infectious diseases, such as AIDS and malaria, but now the continent's residents face growing health threats from preventable illnesses brought on by lifestyle changes, such as from poor diets and smoking.

In an effort to stave off these maladies, advocates have turned their sights on tobacco use, which is on the rise throughout Africa and projected to double by 2021. Of the approximately one billion people across the world who use tobacco, 60 million to 80 million live in Africa.

Along with lobbying for higher tobacco taxes and broader public health messages, advocates are hoping to eliminate smoking in public places in an effort to protect people from both first- and second-hand smoke.

About a billion people worldwide live in municipalities where smoking is outlawed in public places, according to a report published Tuesday by Global Smokefree Partnership (a joint initiative backed by the American Cancer Society, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and 14 other entities) and announced in time for the African Organization for Research and Training in Cancer's (AORTIC) "Cancer in Africa" conference taking place this week in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Reducing secondhand smoke exposure can reduce the rates of lung cancer, heart attacks and breathing trouble in populations.

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• Cancer Experts Meet to Head Off Rise in African Tobacco Use 

Health officials say they have a "golden opportunity" to head off an epidemic in tobacco use in Africa and prevent many cancer cases.

While rich nations have taken action to reduce smoking, the World Health Organization says tobacco consumption in Africa is expected to grow by than four percent a year. That's why cancer experts are holding a major conference this week in Tanzania (Nov 11– 14).

Among those attending is Dr. Thomas Glynn, Director of International Cancer Control for the American Cancer Society and acting head of the Global Smokefree Partnership.

"This is really the first time in the history of public health that we have the opportunity to prevent an epidemic…. There's no doubt tobacco is on the rise here, but it's the one continent where we are ahead of the ball at this point," he says.

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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Smoking: The law they love to flout 

Smoking in public is prohibited by law to protect non-smokers but that law is violated with impunity in Dar es Salaam, according to a two week survey by The Guardian.

From bus stands, makeshift kiosks to five star hotels, Tobacco Products (Regulation) Act (2003), which prohibits smoking in public places, is flaunted routinely.

Smokers rule the day in public places, where they inhale their fags in total disregard to non smokers. This takes place in all parts of the city.

The violators of the law range from the common man to the police. In the spot check, some city residents were found smoking even at a police station! And it is not only adults who smoke.

In the survey it was discovered a small section of primary and secondary school students also do smoke.

Smoking at institutions like health centres, schools and child care centres is common place though illegal. In hotels and pubs smoking is but a way of life.

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• Tabora developing at a snail's pace 

There are two schools of thought in the minds of people regarding the way they perceive about the growth or development of Tabora region as a whole.

There are those who perceive that the region is heading towards patial collapse or dying, due to extensive shifting cultivation of tobacco. These people have reasons for believing the region is dying a natural death.

They mostly bank on assumptions that the region lacks industries, both light and heavy ones, poor infrastructure, specifically roads and dependence on only one commercial crop-tobacco, which again, is the biggest threat to the environment.

Tobacco cultivation has left many areas naked and barren because trees have been cut like nobody's busisness. The trees are cut for tobacco curing, firewood and charcoal.

The environment in many of these tobacco growing areas where massive tree cutting has taken place, have been eroded to an extent that they appear as if they were deserts.

Tobacco farmers keep shifting and thus causing more damage

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• Tobacco companies ordered to take care of land 

Rukwa Regional Commissioner Daniel Njolay has directed all tobacco companies operating in the region to establish tree nurseries and distribute seedlings to tobacco farmers in the coming rainy season.

The move aims at providing the farmers with sustainable source of firewood for curing tobacco crop in the long run instead of overdependence on natural forests, a practice blamed for causing severe deforestation in the region.

Njoolay was briefing the press at his office on Tuesday and held responsible both tobacco companies and farmers for damaging the land through reckless harvesting of trees for tobacco cure.

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• TCC pumping Tsh 200m into tobacco land annually 

The Tanzania Cigarette Company (TCC) will yearly commit Tsh.200 in supporting tree-planting programme around tobacco growing areas in Tanzania.

The pledge was announced last week by the President and CEO of JT International, Mr. Pierre de Labouchere in the presence of the Minister of State, Vice President Office Responsible for Environment, Prof Mark Mwandosya. JT International (JTI) is TCC's parent company.

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• Tobacco production threatens food cultivation 

Production of tobacco in the country threatens the availability of food, particularly in the communities, which the crop is highly grown.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with The Guardian, the Tanzania Tobacco Control Forum (TTCF) General Secretary, Lutgard Kagaruki, said the agricultural activity threatened food security because the farmers use most of their time working in the tobacco farms.

''The farmers spend very little time in food crop production, and as a result they end up having no enough food,'' Kagaruki observed.

She said that the areas where tobacco is grown most are fertile and allowed the cultivation of other food crops as well.

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• EDITORIAL: Ban smoking in public places 

A Damning report by an influential British NGO has accused cigarette manufacturing multinational giants of using methods that are illegal in UK and European Union to promote tobacco products in the East African region.

The giants are also accused of manipulating local politicians to defeat the enactment of effective tobacco control legislations.

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) accuses governments in the region for not doing enough to protect the environment and the citizens by enacting legislations that would restrict and control the cultivation, sell and consumption of tobacco. . . .

It is worth noting that Tanzania has already signed the World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which broadly calls on governments to take measures that would protect the public from the dangers posed by tobacco.

Therefore, the government is duty bound to incorporate the Convention in the country's laws.

The government ought to take deliberate action to protect innocent members of the public, especially children and youth from the devastating effects of tobacco. . . .

In fact, our prescription is not a blanket ban of tobacco consumption, but enactment of legislation that would legitimise restriction on smoking, advertisement and cultivation of the crop.

This, we affirm, is a prerequisite in environmental protection and securing a healthy life for the non-smokers and a sustainable environment.

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• Cigarette Firm Injects $66m Into Economy 

The Tanzania Cigarette Company (TCC) contributed about US$66 million to the Tanzania government coffers in various taxes in the previous fiscal year.

Presenting the firm's performance for the financial year 2005, Mr Jorge da Motta, TTC's Chairman and General Manager, said in 2004, the company paid taxes amounting to $58.3million.

The 2005 performance therefore reflected a 13% increase from 2004. The gross turnover rose from $120,520 in 2004 to $135,640 million last year.

Motta, however, said the company's net profit declined slightly to $17.05 million in 2005, down from $17.82 million in 2004, a drop he attributed to the depreciation of the Tanzania shilling and inflationary pressures on imported raw materials.

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• Dar gets tobacco smoke filtering machines 

Dar es Salaam now has the latest technology for filtering cigarette smoke.

However, this will only be possible if the smokers will agree to puff while inside special 'houses', specifically fitted with the filter machines.

Sweden based Roksugen Company introduced the new technology in Dar es Salaam yesterday.

The new initiative would boost up national and international drive to reduce the effects of tobacco products on human health, said the Permanent Secretary in the Vice-President Office (Environment) Raphael Mollel, in his inaugural address. . . .

Officials said the equipment could be housed in or out of the office, where about five cigarette smokers can be at time.

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