Health or Cash - Zimbabwe''s Tobacco Dilemma

Source from:  Xinhua 01/26/2014

Tonderai Phiri, a cigarette smoker for the past five years, is aware of the dangers of smoking, but that will not deter him from smoking.

"Probably I will stop smoking after falling ill and the doctor says the ailment is tobacco related, but in the absence of such a diagnosis, I will not quit," Phiri said defiantly.

But tobacco does kill half of its users, according to health experts and the World Health Organization (WHO). Today, smoking kills an estimated 5.4 million people throughout the world each year, among them about 1 million non-smokers who are exposed to second-hand smoke.

The WHO warns that if little action is taken, tobacco consumption will be the leading cause of premature deaths by 2030. Smoking-related diseases include bronchitis, heart disease, and cancer.

Phiri is among more than 3 million adult smokers in Zimbabwe, a country with a 13 million population. Though smoking in Zimbabwe is not a prominent issue, tobacco is.

Zimbabwe is the world's third biggest exporter of flue cured tobacco—a high quality tobacco—after Brazil and the U.S.

Economic benefits derived from the industry have spurred the government, like in most of the major tobacco producing countries, to take less heed of the dangers it poses.

Pillar　of　Economy　

Favorable geographic position and climatic conditions earns Zimbabwe's tobacco a high reputation in the global market and Zimbabwean tobacco is ranked among the best.

Tobacco growing dated back to the country's pre-independence decades before 1980, when about 2,000 white commercial farmers grew the golden leaves into then British southern Rhodesia's most lucrative crop.

Today, even after most of the white farmers left following the turbulent land re-allocation movement, tobacco remains a pillar of the fragile economy. About 91,000 farmers—mostly black Zimbabweans now—are registered tobacco farmers.

Reports show that more Zimbabwean farmers are dumping grain to grow tobacco for quick cash as the overall economic situation remains gloomy. Big tobacco companies are giving farmers loans to buy seeds, fertilizers to grow the crop, while the cash-strapped maize farmers have a hard time to secure a loan.

Grain output plummeted as a result. The World Food Program estimated that around 2.2 million people in rural Zimbabwe need food aid or face starvation before the harvest season in April this year.

On the other hand, tobacco has been Harare's major foreign currency earner, generating 877.4 million U.S. dollars in exports last year. The revenue accounts for nearly 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product.

As the economic growth slows to 3.4 percent in 2013, the government is expected to try every means to product the country's very few cash-earning industries like tobacco.

Finance Minister Patric Chinamasa has set a target of tobacco output for 2014, or 170,000 tonnes, which represents 2.6 percent rise from last year.

Health　Hazards　Exported　

One of the reasons that tobacco's health controversy is not being debated in Zimbabwe might be that Zimbabweans are not heavy smokers.

According to figures released by the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board, 98 percent of semi-finished tobacco products are exported, while the remaining 2 percent is locally consumed.

Zimbabwe is a predominantly Christian country. Most Christian denominations in Zimbabwe believe that smoking is sinful and discourage their followers to smoke.

"Your body is a something that God gave you and you need to treat it well respecting the life that God gave you, you have to treat your body like a temple and not harm it with filthy practices such as smoking," said Learnmore Ndevele, a pastor of a Harare Christian church.

The country has also imposed tobacco control measures. A 2002 Public Health Act bans smoking in public venues like an educational or health care facility, theater, cinema, museum, library or place of worship or public meeting hall or any other public premises such aircrafts, trains and public transport or food premises.

Figures show between 40 to 60 percent of the Zimbabwean tobacco end up in China, the world's top cigarette consuming country with 350 million smokers. Belgium, South Africa, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, and Britain, are also major buyers of Zimbabwean tobacco.

But lately, tobacco control gained ground, with China's ruling party banning cadres to take the lead in quitting smoking while the government promised to impose effective smoking ban in indoor public venues by the end of 2014.

Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board chairperson Andrew Matibiri, however, expects little impact from China's recent tobacco control moves.

"As far as we are concerned, the Chinese are continuing to have a strong appetite for tobacco and personally, I don't think it will have a big effect at all on our exports," he said.

Alternative?　

But tobacco control group the Zimbabwe Framework for Tobacco Control Trust (ZFTC) warns that if the government is not careful, it would one day find itself laden with tobacco which could not be sold anywhere in the world after the anti-tobacco lobby prevailed at the United Nations.

The group also advices farmers to move away from growing tobacco and venture into other crops sooner because people should not be obsessed with making money at the expense of health.

The Ministry of Health and Child Care makes a strategic withdrawal from the debate, as it finds itself caught between a rock and a hard place. While it does not support tobacco consumption, the ministry recognizes the economic benefits derived from the industry.

The Ministry of Agriculture, instead, takes center-stage in defending tobacco growing in the country from lobbying under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

The convention, among other things, calls for tobacco crop reduction and turning to alternative crops.

ZFTCT said Zimbabwe could not pride itself in producing lots of tobacco that is dangerous to health at the expense of wheat, maize, potatoes and soya beans.

But Jeffrey Takawira, executive director of Smokers Health Awareness Protection Programme, said there is no other legal crop able to sustain livelihoods at the level at which tobacco does.

"There is no alternative crop," said Takawira, whose organization, according to him, was established not to refute the tobacco-related health hazards, but to highlight the benefits of growing tobacco.

"People die because of the choices they make, just like they die from diabetes," Takawira said, adding that due to the absence of an alternative but equally lucrative crop, "the moment we stop growing tobacco in Zimbabwe we are killing more people faster." Enditem