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Zimbabwe faces a unique challenge of having to support the worldwide anti-tobacco lobby, while simultaneously having to defend and grow the backbone of its agriculture sector, tobacco farming.
The crop is our single most lucrative crop. In the 2012-13 season, it was grown by 65,000 farmers, while in the 2013-14 season, 85,000 grew it. Last year, they earned $771 million from exports. At least 99,000 have registered to grow the golden leaf in the forthcoming season. So far this marketing season, farmers have sold 196,6 million kilogrammes of tobacco and earned $625 million. .
It is obvious that tobacco growing, processing, financing and marketing support a billion dollar industry in the country. It employs not only the farmers directly and their immediate families who work on the farms chiefly in Mashonaland region and Manicaland, but also transporters, producers of inputs, thousands at auction floors and contractors, tobacco processors and many more in financial institutions that support the production and beneficiation of the crop.
While tobacco is a pivotal crop for our economy, it also sickens and kills. It causes some cancers, tuberculosis, asthma and cardio-vascular diseases in direct smokers. Its impact is greater because tobacco smoke can also cause cancer in non-smokers through passive smoking. In this category, children, including the unborn, can be victims if pregnant mothers get in contact with its smoke.
The Ministry of Health and Child Welfare Routine Monitoring System on the number of deaths and causes in 2008 found that deaths emanating from respiratory conditions that could be associated with smoking were 1,500, followed by those from viral infections at 1,320. The figures are not too high, but one human death is too many, if it can be prevented.
Because of the possible health risks associated with its consumption, there has been a huge anti-tobacco campaign that has the support of the UN. In recent years, the world body, through the World Health Organisation has coordinated the multi-faceted campaign to discourage smoking. Some of the strategies being used are banning tobacco advertising and its consumption in public places. Imposition of taxes on cigarettes is also being used. It is believed that banning its advertising and imposing limits as to where it can be taken would discourage smoking. The tax increases the price of tobacco, which, would put off particularly new, younger and the poorer smokers.
For Zimbabwe, this presents a conundrum whether to support the ban or not. Supporting the anti-tobacco lobby fully would have negative implications on tobacco farming and processing and ultimately the economy while at the same time, opposing it means more illnesses and deaths. That Zimbabwe has not yet ratified the WHO Framework Convention for Tobacco Control, an international treaty composed of obligations to address the health and economic impacts of tobacco use but has at the same time complied with some elements of the anti-tobacco lobby highlights the difficulty we face as a country.
Our circumstances demand we adopt this middle-of-the-road approach.
It is a basic law of economics that as the price of a commodity rises, the quantity demanded of that product will fall. In the past, researchers argued that tobacco’s addictive nature made it an exception to this rule. They thought that smokers are so addicted that they will pay any price and continue to smoking. However, a growing volume of research now shows that this argument is wrong.
Research has proved that tax increases in Canada between 1982 and 1992 led to a steep increase in the real price of cigarettes, and consumption fell substantially. The same has happened in South Africa, Britain and China.
This is proof that indeed, a higher price of cigarettes, occasioned by taxes, can discourage people from smoking, thus save lives.
So indeed the government’s proposals to boost tobacco tax, as enunciated by Deputy Health Minister Dr Paul Chimedza last week can help.
But, a decline in tobacco smoking in Zimbabwe and globally would mean depressed demand for our economic lifeline and a possible collapse of it if the campaign holds.
We feel that for us, a total ban in tobacco smoking as some western lobbyists want, is bad, but the approaches we have taken to tell people of the possible health implications of their habit, imposition of no-smoking zones and promotion of voluntary quitting or reduction of consumption is the correct way to address the positive economic impacts and the negative health effects.
Online Reporter