31st May 2022
Own Correspondent
This year World Tobacco Day in Gaborone, Botswana was held under the theme “Tobacco: Threat to our environment,” to raise awareness amongst the public that tobacco kills over 8 million people every year and destroys our environment.
Further, the cultivation, production, distribution, consumption, and post-consumer waste of tobacco are deleterious to human health. The campaign also highlighted that throughout its lifecycle tobacco pollutes the planet and damages the health of all people.
More significantly, the campaign aims to expose tobacco industry’s effort to “greenwash” its reputation and products by marketing themselves as environmentally friendly. With an annual greenhouse gas contribution of 84 megatons carbon dioxide equivalent, the tobacco industry contributes to climate change and reduces climate resilience, wasting resources and damaging ecosystems,” said Sethomo Lelatisitswe, Assistant Minister of Health and Wellness.
He said, “In this respect, the first law in tobacco control in Botswana was developed in 1992 (Control of Smoking Act – CSA) of 1992). The initial Act was repealed in 2021, making way for a more comprehensive compliant law to the WHO FCTC known as the Tobacco control Act of 2021. The law has been assented and awaiting commencement after the completion of the regulations.”
The Tobacco Control Act 2021 is aligned to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This Act seeks to establish the Tobacco Control Committee which provides oversight in the implementation, to regulate the demand and supply for consumption of tobacco and tobacco products; to control the production, manufacture, sale, labelling, advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco and tobacco products.
Botswana has also signed the Protocol on Elimination of Illicit Trade on Tobacco Products and it is in the process of being ratified. This was in recognition of the rampant illicit trade on tobacco products in Botswana.
The Ministry of Health has undertaken several surveys to determine the level of tobacco use in Botswana since 2002; the latest being the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) of 2017.
Its findings indicate that on average, daily cigarette smokers smoke 8 cigarettes per day while smokers aged 65 and above smoke 20 cigarettes per day.
“Tobacco is usually the first substance that children use, followed by marijuana and alcohol. Research shows that the earlier one starts using substances the more likely they are to use harder substances like crack cocaine by the time they are in their early 20’s. Tobaccco is killing our children,” said Prisca Mokgadi, Acting Director of BOSASNet.
This clearly indicates that people need to be assisted to stop the use of tobacco. In the same breath, GATS also shows that 83.9% of smokers wish to quit the use of tobacco and 57.8% even tried quitting on their own. Indeed, what the GATS results show are an indication of the graveness of the tobacco burden in Botswana, therefore surely an urgent issue to address immediately.
in 2014, the Tobacco and Tobacco products Fund Order was established, and its primary purpose is to fund tobacco control initiatives. My Ministry has finally sent out for the first calls for proposals for disbursement of Grants to Non-Governmental and Community Based Organisations.
These grants are to assist in the provision of tobacco control interventions and I therefore urge all that are interested to get in contact with your nearest District Health Management Team office to respond to these adverts because tobacco control is a multi-stakeholder initiative and Governments alone cannot win the battle.
“I would like to conclude by saying, it is a disturbing factor that tobacco remains one of the permitted products sold in public trading places, in many countries, including Botswana, yet it is among the most harmful products for users or smokers and pollutes the environment,” said Lelatisitswe.
Tobacco is extraordinarily dangerous to human health and highly damaging to national economies. Research on tobacco use indicate that nearly one billion people in the world smoke every day, with more than 100 million of them being in Africa. The already over-burdened health systems are caring for countless people who have been disabled by cancer, stroke, emphysema, and the myriad other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) caused by tobacco.
Tobacco-related illnesses and premature mortality impose high productivity costs to the economy, because of sick workers and those who die prematurely during their working years.
As informed by several studies, between 2002 and 2030, tobacco related deaths are projected to double in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
On the other hand, tobacco companies are increasingly targeting emerging markets, like Africa, where they are taking full advantage of lax regulatory environments, growing populations, and increasing incomes which also increase cigarette affordability.
The tobacco companies’ revenue dwarfs the Gross Domestics Product of many countries in the Region, and the combined profits of the top six tobacco companies were $55 billion in 2018. The industry uses this wealth to battle for market share in the developing countries and fight any attempts by Governments to impose laws that reduce tobacco use.
“Despite 24 African countries instituting bans on smoking in public places and 35 banning tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, our estimates are that one in every 10 African adolescents use tobacco. The emergence of new products, such as electronic nicotine and tobacco products, are also proving attractive to youths, compounding the concerns, said Dr Jospehine Namboze, WHO Representative in Botswana.
She said, “With 44 of WHO African region’s 47 countries having ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which commits them to adopting effective and evidence based measures to curb tobacco consumption, the growing need to address related environmental damage has seen WHO redouble its efforts to help them counter this specific aspect of tobacco damage,”
The environmental impacts of tobacco forming for example include massive amounts of water, which is a scarce resource across most of the continent, along with large scale deforestation and contamination of the air and water systems.
Land used for tobacco could be used more fruitfully to address food security as is evidenced by the Kenyan Government in partnership with WHO and Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO) of the United Nations through the Tobaccco Free farms projects.
Tobacco is responsible for 12% of all deforestation in Southern Africa and exposes farmers to several health risks including ‘green tobacco sickness,’ which is caused by nicotine absorbed through the skin during the handling of wet tobacco leaves.
Cigarette butts are also the single biggest category of litter with research showing that cellulose acetate cigarette filters are largely non-biodegradable.
