In Asian countries anti-smoking researchers found a lot of illegal cheap cigarettes advertisings, promotions and sponsorships, and even cigarette firms look to the region for profitable new markets.
Some 60 percent of the world’s population and about 65 percent of young people live in Asia, making it a money-spinning area for tobacco companies who have seen demand fall in developed countries.
Yet despite most countries in the region having ratified a World Health Organization convention on tobacco control, enforcement of advertising bans is patchy, allowing embrasures to be exploited.
Doctor Pankaj Chaturvedi, a Mumbai-based cancer surgeon and member of the Action Council against Tobacco India lobby group, welcomed steps to ban smoking in public places and to outlaw direct advertising by tobacco firms.
But indirect, or “surrogate,” advertising, promotion and sponsorship by tobacco companies for non-tobacco products or events was still a “very big issue” and needed to be implemented, he said.
The practice – such as producing fashion lines under the company name – keeps the tobacco product in the public mind and “legitimises” it, Chaturvedi told AFP at the 14th World Conference on Tobacco or Health.
Chaturvedi called realization and enforcement of laws against obscure tobacco advertising in places like India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
Greater public awareness about the dangers of smoking was needed, while litigation against illegal tobacco advertising would act as a deterrent to firms trying to flout the law, researchers added.
Tobacco Info
Tobacco is an annual or bi-annual growing 1-3 meters tall with large sticky leaves that contain nicotine. Native to the Americas, tobacco has a long history of use as a shamanic inebriant and stimulant. It is extremely popular and well-known for its addictive potential.
Nicotiana rustica leaves. Nicotiana rustica leaves have a nicotine content as high as 9%, whereas Nicotiana tabacum (common tobacco) leaves contain about 1 to 3%
A cigar is a tightly rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco which is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into the mouth. Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Sumatra, Philippines, and the Eastern United States.
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the fresh leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as an organic pesticide, and in the form of nicotine tartrate it is used in some medicines. In consumption it may be in the form of cigarettes smoking, snuffing, chewing, dipping tobacco, or snus.
Cigarettes are smoking products consumed by people and made out of cut tobacco leaves. Cigars are typically composed completely of whole-leaf tobacco. A cigarette has smaller size, composed of processed leaf, and white paper wrapping. The term cigarette refers to a tobacco cigarette too but it can apply to similar devices containing other herbs, such as cannabis.
The federal government projects to push tobacco companies to sell their cigarettes in packages that do not carry any characteristic brand designs focused at appealing smokers to purchase their product.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signaled in the mandate letter he not long ago provided to Health Minister Jane Philpott that he likes the project to be one of her “major priorities.”
