Anti-smoking lobby threatens a luctative African export sector

The tobacco war is heating up, with one of the latest restrictive moves taking place just over the border in Namibia. It’s a massive trade with billions of cigarettes being exported and imported around the world. Tobacco is a major export item and supporter of gross domestic product (GDP) for many of the less welldeveloped nations, many of them in Africa, including the next-door neighbour, Zimbabwe. But most of the antismoking nations are trying to stomp on this moneyspinning industry by devising and imposing all sorts of highly restrictive rulings on it. The latest is a ruling against the tobacco conglomerates, which demands that all cigarettes should be marketed in plain packaging. No brand names, no advertising logos, not even the words ‘mild’ or ‘light’ – just boring, drab-coloured packets and highly graphic health warnings. The news is that the big tobacco conglomerates have just been defeated in the Australian courts, where their bid to block government from introducing plain packaging for cigarettes was rejected. And the tobacco product distributors operating in Namibia were praying for a win in the Australian courts to strengthen their arguments against similar plans by the Namibian government – where the government has gazetted the Tobacco Products Control Act of 2010 that introduces plain packaging on cigarette boxes or any other tobacco products sold in that country. The world’s biggest and the Namibian market leader in tobacco products, British American Tobacco (BAT), has been fighting the Act. It has threatened to take the government to court if it dares to implement the Act, a move, it said, which was an expropriation of its trademarks properties. It claims that plain packaging takes away its trade rights to freely communicate to consumers the nature of their lawful products on offer. It also said that the proposed plain branding would encourage the illegal trading of tobacco in Namibia where about 225 000 cigarettes are illegally sold every day. But BAT, along with Japan’s Tobacco International (JTI) and Imperial Tobacco, are having to fight against similar laws across the world. Reports are that Canada, China, France, India, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the UK, and Uruguay are already considering implementing the plain packaging ruling. If the new legislation is implemented it would mean that advertising, promotion and any public relations activities about tobacco products would be banned. Makes me want to have another Princeton ‘king size’ fag. INSERT ‘Plain packaging could encourage the illegal trading of tobacco in Namibia.’ CAPTION Latest proposal is that all cigarettes should be marketed in plain packaging.