Public Health on Top

BATB-operated front organization Prerona Foundation presents itself as a development partner of the Government of Bangladesh, claiming its mission is "to assist the government by extending full cooperation to accelerate the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).” But in reality, tobacco production and use frustrate most of the sustainable development goals. (Tobacco or Sustainable Development Goals, PROGGA, 2016). SDG-3 pushes for ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing for all at all ages while tobacco causes 126,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of disabilities. A WHO estimate informs that 5% of the total income of a tobacco-user family is spent on tobacco consumption and 10 percent of its monthly expense goes to the treatment of tobacco related diseases. The health costs of tobacco use amount to Taka 30,500 crore. This is how tobacco use makes the poor even poorer and hinders achieving SDG-1: No Poverty. Moreover, the expansion of tobacco cultivation throughout the country is gradually putting the achievement of food security and sustainable agriculture (SDG-2) in jeopardy. Quality education (Goal 4) and Gender Equality (Goal 5) are the preconditions of sustainable development. But women and children constitute the majority of the workforce in bidi and smokeless tobacco factories. These children are deprived of basic education and the women workers are deprived of minimum livable wages and subject to inhumane work environment. Besides, women get exposed to passive smoking at home, public transportation and workplaces. In Bangladesh, about 30 percent of the total deforestation occurs for curing tobacco leaves that is increasing the climate change risks (SDG-13). So, the overall estimation of the damages caused by tobacco production, marketing and consumption suggest that tobacco industry, in reality, is hindering the efforts we put to reach each and one of the sustainable development goals. Considering the devastation caused by tobacco, the Honorable Prime Minister has already declared tobacco as one of the largest impediments towards achieving SDGs. In addition, SDGs monitoring authority UNDP has already rejected all types of association and involvement with tobacco companies. (page 4, table 1, column 5). BATB's so-called interest in the implementation of SDGs is just a cunning strategy to manage publicity. Tobacco companies like BATB try to create a fake image among public that it is in partnership with the government and policymaking bodies and using its association in development issues, these companies pave the way to infiltrate into the government and administration. Any "goodwill" organization, run by tobacco companies which itself is source of deaths and devastations, can never go alongside the vision of development and affluence. To build a tobacco-free Bangladesh by 2040, such infiltration into the state mechanism must be stopped.