Tanzania: Tobacco Consumption Affects Food Budget

Source from:  TSN Daily News (tz) 01/05/2015

Passing legislations that aim at reducing cigarette smoking and tobacco leaf production will go a long way to curbing the negative health and welfare effects of cigarette and tobacco consumption.

Giving recommendations from a recent report, a professor of Economics and Statistics at the University of Dar es Salaam, Prof Asmerom Kidane said that implementing the World Health Organisation (WHO) framework on tobacco control would help reduce the impact of cigarette and tobacco smoking on food poverty.

"The report hypothesizes that the majority of smokers belong to a low income group and that any expenditure on cigarette or tobacco is at the expense of basic necessities especially food," Prof Kidane said in the report.

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) is the first international treaty negotiated under the auspices of WHO.

It was adopted by the World Health Assembly on 21 May 2003 and entered into force on 27 February 2005. It has since become one of the most rapidly and widely embraced treaties in United Nations history.

According to the WHO website, the FCTC was developed in response to the globalisation of the tobacco epidemic and is an evidence-based treaty that reaffirms the right of all people to the highest standard of health.

The Convention represents a milestone for the promotion of public health and provides new legal dimensions for international health cooperation.

Prof Kidane said that in a study that utilised the findings of the 2007/2008 Tanzania Household Budget Survey, with a national representative sample of 10464 households where 68 per cent hailed from urban areas and 32 per cent from rural setting, it found that non-smokers have higher per capita total expenditure than smokers.

The study which was supported by a grant from United States National Institute of Health - Fogarty International Centre and National Cancer Institute also showed that nonsmokers earn 10 per cent more than smokers and that per capita food expenditure is higher among non- smokers than smokers.

A Senior Lecturer of Economics at the University of Dar es Salaam, Dr John Mduma said in the report that expenditure on cigarette and tobacco as a percentage of food expenditure constitutes an average of 7.73 per cent, which is a significant amount.

Dr Mduma said that about 10.82 per cent of smokers spend more than 12 per cent of their food expenditure on cigarette and tobacco and that urban residents tend to spend more than their rural counterparts, adding that smokers tend to spend less on food because of cigarette induced low appetite.

"Higher cigarette consumption and higher per capita total expenditure (the interaction effect) appears to lead to lower per capita food expenditure."

Also those who are less educated, those who live in rural areas and those with large size households appear to spend less on food.

These attributes are characteristics of poor household in Africa," the report reads in part. Other findings of the study showed that for every one stick of cigarette consumed, per capita food expenditure would decrease by 67.7 Tanzanian shillings and that people who smoke and belong to high income group (interaction effect) tend to continue to spend less on food. Enditem