Death Marketing-1

BATB: Eating Up Forests While Planting a Few Saplings!

With much festivity and media highlight, the multinational tobacco company British American Tobacco Bangladesh (BATB) is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its afforestation project. Members of parliament, Upazila Chairman and different government officials are being involved in this program. Extensive publicity of this program is also being conducted on mass media and Facebook. However, such promotional campaign is incapable of burying the excruciating fact that tobacco is responsible for 30 percent of the deforestation in the country each year. On average, 2.9 million trees are being burnt a year to process tobacco (The Daily Prothom Alo, 31 May 2011). Through this artificial enthusiasm for afforestation, BATB wants to hide its stained image and its role in deforestation in Bangladesh to the people and the policymakers. The company that is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and diseases in the country because of its death trade, is now considering itself as a partner in the Sustainable Development Goals. Tobacco companies’ such superficial love for the environment and opportunity for unnecessary interaction with the policymakers must be stopped by formulating and implementing tobacco control law in line with the WHO FCTC.