Public Health on Top

Marking the national budget, the tobacco companies are too active like the past years. They are adopting diverse tricky measures to mislead the policymakers and even they are impeding implementation of the theme for the World No Tobacco Day of the year– Stop Illegal Tobacco Trade by suggesting the government not to impose tax on tobacco products. They are influencing the NBR to implement the ineffective tax system by deploying few tobacco control researchers and couple of mass media outlets. Changing the meeting date twice, the tobacco companies had met the NBR secretly twice on April 9, 2015 but following the Framework Convention of Tobacco Control (FCTC) directive, the government cannot hold any secret meetings with the tobacco company representatives. Besides, the British American Tobacco Bangladesh (BATB) had donated Tk 5 crore to the labour welfare foundation under the Labour and Employment Ministry which is clearly violation of the tobacco control law. They are adopting such activities to make government perplexed so that it could not take any effective tax measures on tobacco. Besides, to attract the customers, BATB is promoting its Wills Kings brand by violating the tobacco control law. It is collecting information of the smokers including their cell phone numbers with the allurement of sending them different small gift items. Let us come forward to unveil the mask of the tobacco companies and play role in public health protection.