Public Health on Top

Tobacco farming season is on. The tobacco companies have been continuing their clever tricks and aggressive activities to expand tobacco cultivation across the country. They adopt different ill activities including - alluring the farmers with attractive offers like loan and free agro-inputs, grabbing lands for Dhoincha (a skinny plant) cultivation, secret meeting with local administrations for managing fertilizers in advance to be used in tobacco farming, illegal penetration of fertilizers by participating in social activities in the name of so called corporate social responsibility (CSR) and even threatening the government officials etc. are some of the common forms that the tobacco companies adopt to sustain their business growth across the country. Recently, the ill plays of tobacco companies marking the current tobacco farming season have been unmasked on media. Notably, after the Department of Agricultural Expansion (DAE) sources, tobacco was grown on 108,000 hectares of lands across the country in the last season (2013- 14), and it was 70,000 hectares altogether in 2012 – 13 farming season. Undoubtedly the tobacco companies have seized more croplands in the current season for tobacco farming than the earlier years. Moreover, a few fresh facets have been added in the tobacco farming process. A certain tobacco company has made it mandatory for the tobacco farmers to buy cigarettes if they collect fertilizers as loan from it. The company is entrapping the farmers by distributing fertilizers as loan to them and compulsorily they (the farmers) are to buy the specific cigarette brand from the company regardless their needs. Besides, tobacco companies are attracting consumers in remote rural areas in exchange of daily necessary household items. They are employing unemployed youths including males and females to advertise their products in the urban streets. Concerts are being organized for the promotion of newer cigarette brands among the youths and university students of the capital. However, it is positive that the anti-tobacco platforms and the victims are gradually raising voice and protesting against such tricky activities. Additionally, in the current season, tobacco farming prone areas like Kushtia, Bandarban and Lalmonirhat has experienced protests like rallies, human chain, and sit-ins by tobacco farmers demanding alternatives of tobacco cultivation on their croplands. Recently, Phillip Morris International (PMI), one of the globally leading tobacco giants, had to stop its illegal promotional concert confronting difficulties for the stringent activities of the tobacco control activists and media. Time-befitting steps and united efforts are the very best ways to prevent evil tactics of the death-marketers. Let us join together in unveiling masks of tobacco companies for the better implementation of the amended tobacco control law. Let us stop deaths, everyday.