Still Off Track

Source from:  Tobacco Reporter 08/27/2018

Any track-and-trace system linked to ‘Codentify’ simply cannot be trusted, according to a story at eurekalert.org citing two new studies from the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath, UK, published in the BMJ journal, Tobacco Control. Codentify was described as a track-and-trace system developed by the major tobacco companies.

The first study, Tobacco industry’s elaborate attempts to control a global track and trace system and fundamentally undermine the Illicit Trade Protocol, is said to draw on leaked documents to highlight ‘the elaborate lengths the industry has gone to control a global track-and-trace system and to undermine a major international agreement – the Illicit Trade Protocol [the Protocol to Eliminate the Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, which is the only protocol to have come out of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control] – designed to stop the tobacco industry from smuggling tobacco’.

“This has to be one of the tobacco industry’s greatest scams: not only is it still involved in Tobacco smuggling, but big tobacco is positioning itself to control the very system governments around the world have designed to stop it from doing so,” Professor Anna Gilmore, director of the Tobacco Control Research Group and senior author on both papers, was quoted as saying. “The industry’s elaborate and underhand effort involves front groups, third parties, fake news and payments to the regulatory authorities meant to hold them to account.”

The second study, Tobacco industry data on illicit tobacco trade: a systematic review of existing assessments, which was published this week, is said to examine the quality of the data and reports on illicit tobacco that the tobacco industry has funded, and to raise further concerns about the tobacco industry’s conduct. It finds that industry-funded data routinely overestimates levels of tobacco smuggling.

“Governments, tax and customs authorities around the world appear to have been hoodwinked by industry data and tactics,” said Gilmore. “It is vital that they wake up and realise how much is at stake. Tobacco industry funded research cannot be trusted. No government should implement a track-and-trace system linked in any shape or form to the tobacco manufacturers. Doing so could allow the tobacco industry’s involvement in smuggling to continue with impunity.”

Meanwhile, Andy Rowell, co-author of the first paper was quoted as saying that governments needed to be alert to what the tobacco industry was doing and to realise it was now operating via a complex web of front groups and companies. “Any track-and-trace system linked to ‘Codentify’ simply cannot be trusted,” he said.  Enditem