Public Health on Top

British American Tobacco Bangladesh (BATB) has recently released a report titled Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Report 2021 where it claimed that the company has been contributing significantly to eight (08) of the seventeen (17) Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations (UN). The report also reiterates BATB's company motto "A Better Tomorrow" and claimed how it always puts sustainability at the center of all of its activities. However, tobacco cultivation and use create impediments to achieving each of the SDGs . Tobacco, which claims about 161,000 lives and causes hundreds of thousands of disabilities every year in Bangladesh, is in grave conflict with achieving SDG-3 (Good Health and Well-Being). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in families with tobacco users, 5 percent of total monthly expenditure goes to tobacco use and around 10 percent to treating tobacco-related illnesses. 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 (SDG-4) and Gender Equality (SDG-5) are preconditions of sustainable development. Women constitute the majority of the victims of secondhand smoke. Each year, contract tobacco farmers use 2046 family labor hours as opposed to 952 hours for never-tobacco farmers, limiting scope for education, entertainment and engagement in other income-generating endeavors. Besides, in Bangladesh, about 30 percent of the total deforestation occurs for curing tobacco leaves that is increasing the climate change risks (SDG-13). Besides, a massive amount of cigarette butts, discarded boxes of jarda and gul end up in the ocean (SDG 14) each year. So, from leaf cultivation to marketing and use, tobacco hinders sustainable development. Being the largest player in Bangladesh's tobacco market, BATB must take responsibility for this trail of devastation.

Re-branding CSR, promoting itself as a partner of the govt. in achieving SDGs, and publishing the latest ESG report are all charade is to hide the disastrous impact tobacco industry leaves on public health, and to create liaisons with influential personalities and major govt. bodies to extract benefits, a relatively new strategy of BATB. All such activities of BATB should be stopped through an amendment to tobacco control law.