The usual suspects of the drivers of global food insecurity as told ad nauseam by the international gatekeeper socio-economic and health organisations, are conflict, climate change and pandemics such as the coronavirus one.
The latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (Sofi) report published jointly by five United Nations specialised agencies, for instance shows that in 2022 about 735 million people globally were facing hunger – 122 million more than in 2019 before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Now tobacco farming as a driver of food insecurity and a threat to nutrition, especially in low and middle-in-come countries, is joining the above inglorious cohort of actors – that must be a new one on an unsuspecting global general public, many of whom still erroneously perceive tobacco as a “highly profitable cash crop” thanks to the tobacco industry exaggerating its economic importance.
In reality, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), in most tobacco-growing countries, the contribution of tobacco leaf imports and exports is small – not greater than 1% of GDP, and it yields typically low net returns overall.
Brazil, China and India account for 55% of global tobacco production.
From 2005 to 2020, the area under tobacco cultivation decreased globally by 15.8%, but in Africa it increased by 19.8%. Zimbabwe with 112 770 hectares under cultivation is the largest tobacco economy in Africa, followed by Malawi and Mozambique. South Africa comes in with a modest 4 933 hectares.
The 2023 WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic with its theme “Protect People from Tobacco Smoke” published last week, is a sober reminder of the remarkable progress made by many countries in adopting health-promoting policies and reducing tobacco use in the face of a continuing uphill struggle against a wily, formidable and pernicious global tobacco cartel “towards a smoke-free generation by 2040”.
How ironic that as we marked World Youth Day on August 1-6, only two months in the shadow of World No Tobacco Day in May, WHO research has shown that increasingly sophisticated and covert forms of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship (Taps) by the industry “increases smoking initiation among youth, and even brief exposure to, can influence adolescents”.
“The more aware and appreciative young people are of tobacco advertising, the more likely they are to smoke or say they intend to. Using Taps, the tobacco industry links its products with success, fun and glamour.”
In countries around the world, the many forms of Taps create an illusion that tobacco is just an ordinary consumer product, rather than a deadly product that kills up to half of its users.
What hope for the aspiration of a smoke-free Gen 2040! The reality is that tobacco through smoking elicits a risk factor that kills an astounding 8.7 million people every year.
And even more shocking is that 1.3 million of these deaths are among people who do not use tobacco, including infants and children, and are entirely preventable.
People exposed to second-hand tobacco smoke are at risk of dying from heart disease, stroke, respiratory diseases, type 2 diabetes and cancers.
Women and children in particular are vulnerable to second-hand smoke exposure, effectively passive smoking,through no fault of their own.
Dr Rüdiger Krech Director of the Department of Health Promotion at the WHO, is adamant that: “All people have a fundamental right to breathe clean air, and governments are obliged to protect everyone’s health as a fundamental human right. Smoke-free environments save lives by reducing exposure to second-hand smoke as well as by bringing about changes in social norms.
When smoking bans work, private spaces are more likely to become smoke-free, more smokers are motivated to quit and fewer children are tempted to try smoking.”
The problem is that the tobacco industry spends billions in reinventing itself, its products including re-emerging heated tobacco products (HTPs), e-cigarettes, vapes and even shishas, and its playbook is couched in the language of corporate and societal progress and programmes – “transformational projects”, “creating winning teams”, “effective and efficient management of new pricing and promotions” – all aimed at how to innovate and stay relevant in times of change and uncertainty.
Another tactic has been perpetuating myths that smoking bans are detrimental to tourism, the hospitality industry, job creation and the wider economy.
Gatekeeper UN and international agencies are pushing back against an industry that by its very nature seems to have “a licence to kill”.
They want a total ban on direct and indirect tobacco and cigarette advertising, promotion and sponsorship, as provided in guidelines to Article 13 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).
“Such a ban can substantially reduce tobacco consumption and protect people from industry marketing tactics. To be effective, bans must be complete and apply to all marketing categories. Otherwise, the industry redirects resources to non regulated marketing channels. The tobacco industry strongly opposes comprehensive bans because they effectively reduce tobacco use,” says the WHO.
In 2008 the WHO launched MPower, an intervention protocol to promote government action on six tobacco control strategies in-line with the WHO FCTC, aimed at monitoring tobacco use and prevention policies; protecting people from tobacco smoke; offering help to quit tobacco use; warning people about the dangers of tobacco; enforcing bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship; and raising taxes on tobacco.
The 2023 WHO Report shows that 5.6 billion people – 71% of the world’s population – are now protected with at least one best practice policy to help save lives from deadly tobacco – five times more than in 2007, which has resulted in smoking rates falling.
Without this decline there would be an estimated 300 million more smokers in the world today. The tragedy remains that while smoking rates have been going down, tobacco is still the leading cause of preventable death in the world – precisely due to relentless marketing campaigns by the tobacco industry.
South Africa’s progress and trajectory in its anti-tobacco mass media campaigns is commendable, joining the cohort of highest achieving countries in 2022. But the WHO data shows that 16% of South Africans still smoke daily.
However, at 60.1% it has one of the highest taxes on tobacco in Africa, and has a very high compliance on tobacco advertising bans.
There is still much work to be done, out of 195 countries in the data universe, 44 countries remain unprotected by any of WHO’s MPower measures and 53 countries still do not have complete smoking bans in healthcare facilities.
Meanwhile, only about half of countries have smoke-free private workplaces and restaurants. The emergence of electronic nicotine delivery systems (Ends) has slowed some of the progress in MPower, with two billion people still unprotected by any regulatory restrictions.
The downside is that there is no globally common approach to addressing or regulating these products, with only 121 countries regulate Ends in some way, including 34 countries (covering 2.5 billion people) banning the sale of Ends altogether and the other 87 countries adopting (partially or completely) one or more legislative measures to regulate Ends, covering 3.3 billion people.
Parker is an economist and writer based in London
Cape Times