Selling cancer to Africans

British American Tobacco (BAT) has signed an $11.90 million deal with Malian state tobacco company, SONATAM for the production and distribution of Dunhill cigarettes in West Africa.

BAT is latching on the gullibility and weakness of African governments. It has created sneaky and illegal policies to outsmart restrictive laws, keeping Africa as one of its most lucrative markets while endangering millions of lives. According to Euromonitor data, BAT has the largest share of cigarette sales in the Middle East and Africa.  According to Financial times, it flagged a number of African countries as offering “further opportunities” for sales growth.

Late last year, a BBC investigation uncovered evidence of bribery at British American Tobacco. BAT was accused for bribery scandal in Kenya and Uganda. This was made known by Paul Hopkins who worked for the BAT in Kenya for 13 years and claims to have facilitated bribes for several individuals. In order to prove this, he released emails to Panorama showing the company’s involvement in these deals, which detail him being told that paying bribes was the cost of doing business in Africa.

In 2008, the company was the subject of a BBC documentary, in which Duncan Bannatyne investigated the marketing practices of the company in Africa and specifically the way the company targets younger Africans with branded music events, competitions and the sale of single cigarette sticks. Many of the practices uncovered were not in line with BAT’s own code of conduct and company standards. Bannatyne also interviewed Dr Chris Proctor, Head of Science and Regulation, who admitted that advertisements targeting children from three African countries were ‘disappointing’.

In 2007 the Nigerian government alleged that BAT marketing and advert campaigns were targeting the youth amongst other things. Several states in the country followed suit, taking legal action and seeking payment for future damages in anticipation of tobacco related diseases.

Bribery kills

British American Tobacco illegally paid politicians and civil servants in countries in East Africa. Paul Hopkins, who worked for BAT, a British company, in Kenya for 13 years, said he had begun paying bribes after being told it was the cost of doing business in Africa.

"BAT is bribing people, and I'm facilitating it," he said. "The reality is if... they have to break the rules, they will break the rules."

A Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), representative from Burundi, Godefroid Kamwenubusa, and a representative from the Comoros Islands, Chaibou Bedja Abdou, were both paid $3,000 (£2,000). A former representative from Rwanda, Bonaventure Nzeyimana, was paid $20,000.

The secret documents  show the company paid bribes to undermine anti-smoking legislation. In return for the illegal payment to Mr Kamwenubusa, a Burundian senior civil servant, BAT also wanted a draft copy of the country's Tobacco Control Bill. And an email from a contractor working for BAT says Mr Kamwenubusa would be able to "accommodate any amendments before the president signs".

Dr Vera Da Costa e Silva, from the WHO, said BAT "is irresponsible to say the least…It is using bribery to profit at the cost of people's lives, simple as that."

Tobacco Is Bad for Food Security

Namibia imports over 60% of required food items from South Africa and this makes Namibia a net food importer. The local food supply/the country's capacity to feed its population is deficient, because of inadequate investment in agriculture and lack of land provided for agricultural production.

Namibia’s health minister Dr. Bernhard Haufiku criticized theplanned tobacco plantation in the Zambezi Region, in the process calling on all health conscious Namibians to join the fight against it. The tobacco plantation project is being fronted by Swapo Party big shot Armas Amukwiyu and his Chinese partners through their company Namibia Oriental Tobacco cc. The company applied for 10 000 hectares in the Zambezi Region to grow tobacco and maize already. Amukwiyu is a close associate of President Dr. Hage Geingob, a relationship which could further boost his chances to get the land.

Villagers in the area expressed concern over the tobacco project saying the plantation will curtail the grazing land for their livestock.

Suspended Swapo youth leader Job Amupanda, together with George Kambala and Dimbulukeni Nauyoma, who started the Affirmative Repositioning movement which seeks to help address the land issue in the country, objected to the land being used for tobacco production.

In their objection, the trio said: “In 2005 the Namibian National Assembly unanimously ratified the World Health Organisation Framework Convention for tobacco control whose objectives include protecting present and future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption.”  They further said Namibia has a serious food problem. “It is our submission that to allocate more land for tobacco than for food is a deviation from the policy direction taken by the Namibian government through its ministry of agriculture, which leans towards eradicating the country's capacity to provide established food security and adequate levels of nutrition.” 

The three also objected the allocation of land to foreigners. Amupanda said: “It cannot be correct that our most fertile land is used to produce drugs and not food.”

He said it is also alarming that government is distributing land to foreigners even in villages, adding “that tobacco contains nicotine, correlated with a dangerous condition called schizophrenia”.  Amupanda said although government speaks of banning foreign ownership, “politicians are awarding land to foreigners under the table”. “We take this principled action on realising that our country is speedily and scandalously being sold while the future generation is tricked into singing songs and clapping hands, waiting for a fictional year called '2030' where all our problems will apparently be solved; probably by ghosts only known to the political elite,” he concluded. 

Malawi's Tobacco Child Labour

 Malawi has become one of the five largest tobacco producers in the world, largely due to low export tariffs, cheap labour and lack of regulations. Malawian tobacco is found in the blend of almost every best-selling cigarette brand available in Europe, Asia and the US. But few of the smokers who buy the end product know much about the conditions the tobacco they consume is produced under.

Malawi is one of the least developed nations in the world (ranking 153 out of 169 countries in the Human Development Index) with around half the population living below the poverty line of $1.25 a day and one of the highest numbers of child labourers in Africa – around 1.5 million.

With tobacco sales making up 70 percent of the country's income and a significant part of its industrial activity, it is sadly inevitable that many of these children (aged between five and 15) are being forced by economic necessity to work with their families in the tobacco fields, risking their health, safety, and future. There they are subjected to hazardous manual labour, physical strain, dangerous environments, and long hours; often charged with strenuous tasks such as clearing the land, building tobacco drying sheds, weeding and plucking raw tobacco.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and NGOs such as SOS Children, Plan International and others, when the children cut and bundle the tobacco leaves they are put at risk of absorbing toxic quantities of nicotine through their skin. Many suffer from a disease called green tobacco sickness, or nicotine poisoning. Symptoms include severe headaches, abdominal cramps, muscle weakness, breathing difficulties, diarrhoea and vomiting, high blood pressure and fluctuations in heart rate. Some are even given the task of applying pesticides with their bare hands – chemicals when handled incorrectly can cause serious neurological problems.

It also affects their development and education - children working in the fields cannot be at school - and so their involvement in the industry inevitably perpetuates a cycle of exploitation, illiteracy, lack of opportunity and poverty that will one day force them back into the fields as adults.

The cigarette manufacturers all insist that they are firmly opposed to the use of children working in their supply chain and that in Malawi. But critics claim that these initiatives are little more than window dressing from a multi-billion dollar industry that ultimately benefits from the country's low production costs.

Over the past two years only 49 tobacco farm owners have been prosecuted in Malawi for using child labour. Most received a $34 fine.

They are masquerading around the issue," says Mathias Burton of Malawi's Economic and Legal Social Services Centre. "To ease their consciences, that's why they have this kind of stuff. To say they are fighting child labour. And when they sell their own products ... the profits that they make, what they give out in social responsibility to these organisations is nothing at all compared to what they make."

The nicotine murderers

Despite the danger tobacco poses, the federal government of Nigeria is  yet to sign into law a wide-ranging act which will regulate the sale and advertising of tobacco products and restrict where people are allowed to smoke People under the age of 18 won't be allowed to buy cigarettes, and health warnings will have to cover at least 50 percent of the packaging. All forms of tobacco advertisements, sponsorships, promotions and endorsements will be banned. The bill, once enacted, could dramatically reduce the number of tobacco-related deaths in Nigeria, he said.

In July 2009, over 40 civil society groups, lawyers and public health advocates stormed the National Assembly in the capital, Abuja, to demand that the Nigerian legislature to sign the National Tobacco Control Bill into law. The bill had been brought before the Assembly five months earlier, but it took more than two years before lawmakers finally approved it. Since March 2011, the bill has been awaiting ratification by the federal government. The bill hasn't been enacted because of pressure from tobacco lobbying groups. One assemblyman, who only agreed to speak if his name was withheld, confirmed that the tobacco lobby has weakened the government’s resolve to introduce effective legislation.

Tola Oyebode, a doctor and a member of one of the protest groups said  "I see people die every day from tobacco addiction"

Nigeria is one of the largest markets for tobacco products in Africa. About 13 million Nigerians are smokers, and about 17 billion cigarettes are produced in the country each year. Over the past decade, there has been a steady increase in the number of smokers, he said. About 7 million cigarettes are smoked each day.

Joseph Bulus, a doctor, said tobacco kills about half of its lifetime users. About 70 million people died worldwide as a result of smoking between 1950 and 2000, and it’s estimated that over the next 50 years, 450 million may die because of tobacco use. Most of those deaths will be in developing countries. Stringent anti-tobacco laws in the west have turned those companies' attention to sub-Saharan Africa and Nigeria is considered the "jewel" in the tobacco business. Tobacco-related health problems are worse in Nigeria because the tobacco content of the cigarettes sold in the country is higher than in those sold in western nations.

http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2012/05/19/Tobacco-lobby-thwarts-anti-smoking-law-in-Nigeria/UPIU-8941335372958/

Children of the Tobacco Fields

From November's Socialist Standard

We all know that tobacco harms those who smoke it. Few are aware of the damage it does to those who pick and process it.

The “children’s organisation” Plan International recently issued a report about children in Malawi, some as young as five, who toil up to twelve hours in the tobacco fields for an average daily wage of 11p. (Hard Work, long hours and little pay).

The finding that has attracted most attention is that these children are being poisoned by the nicotine “juice” they absorb through the skin – and also ingest, as they have no chance to wash hands before eating. Many of the ailments that plague them -- headaches, abdominal and chest pain, nausea, breathlessness, dizziness – are symptoms of Green Tobacco Sickness.

But much of their suffering has nothing to do with nicotine. All have blisters on their hands. All have pains – in the shoulders, neck, back, knees – caused by overexertion of their immature muscles. About a third of the children are coughing blood, which suggests TB.

Many of the children examined had been beaten, kicked or otherwise physically abused by estate owners or supervisors. Many of the girls had been raped by them. One boy had deep knee wounds as a result of being made to walk across a stony field on his knees as punishment for “laziness”.

Who owns the estates?
Who are these estate owners?
Commercial tobacco farming in Malawi began late in the 19th century, when it was the British colony of Nyasaland. White settlers seized much of the best arable land for plantations of tea, coffee, tung trees (for their oil, used as a wood finisher) and – mostly -- tobacco. Even today the majority of owners of large estates are descendants of the colonial settlers, although now there are also black owners.
In 1948 some tung and tobacco plantations (estates) were taken over by the Colonial Development Corporation, funded mainly by the British Treasury. After Malawi gained formal independence in 1964, these came under state ownership. Later they were reprivatised. Another recent change is the direct acquisition of some estates by international tobacco companies.

The estates were established on land stolen from traditional peasant communities. The process began in colonial times but continued even after independence, under the Banda regime. Land theft impoverishes local communities and compels those worst affected to offer themselves – or their children! – to the estate owners as wage slaves.
Tobacco is also grown on many small family farms. Here too, children work and suck in nicotine juice, alongside their parents.

The tobacco cartel
Malawi’s tobacco market is dominated – through subsidiaries -- by two international corporations, Universal Corporation and Alliance One International. These corporations operate a cartel, refusing to compete and colluding to keep tobacco purchase prices low. This in turn intensifies the pressure on farm owners to minimise costs by exploiting cheap or free child labour – a practice that the corporations hypocritically claim to oppose.

Representatives of the corporations sit on several committees that advise the government of Malawi on economic policy. By this means they ensure that their interests are served and block any initiatives to diversify the economy and reduce the country’s dependence on tobacco.

The main reason why child labour is so prevalent in Malawian agriculture is the poverty – in particular, land hunger -- of most of the rural population. This reflects not any absolute shortage of land but rather the highly skewed pattern of land ownership. Large tracts of land lie fallow on the big estates.

A pathetic contrast
How does Plan International propose to help the children on the tobacco farms?
Well, it will “educate farm owners and supervisors” and persuade them to provide the children with protective clothing. Taking the tobacco companies’ PR at face value, it will urge them to “scrutinise their suppliers more closely”. It will not, however, support a ban on children picking tobacco because that is “unrealistic” – as indeed it is if you refuse to challenge underlying social conditions.

But what a pathetic contrast such “realism” makes with Plan International’s “vision” of “a world in which all children realise their full potential in societies that respect people’s rights and dignity”!

Environmental degradation
Besides ruining people’s health, tobacco degrades the environment. The tobacco monoculture that dominates much of Malawi depletes the soil of nutrients. It also causes extensive deforestation, as trees are felled to provide firewood for curing the tobacco leaves, and this in turn further erodes the soil. Water sources are contaminated. After over a century of tobacco cultivation, all these processes are already far advanced. (For fuller analysis, see the chapter by Geist, Otanez and Kapito in Andrew Millington and Wendy Jepson, eds. Land Change Science in the Tropics: Changing Agricultural Landscapes, Springer 2008.)

Tobacco in socialist society?
Will tobacco be grown in socialist society? On a small scale, possibly, by addicts for their own use. But it’s hard to imagine socialist society making planned provision, within the framework of democratic decision-making, for tobacco production. People aware of all the harm caused by tobacco will surely prefer to halt cultivation of this noxious weed. They will seek to restore soil fertility, reverse deforestation and enhance local food supply.

Even if, for the sake of argument, we suppose that the decision is made to continue producing tobacco, will it be implemented? Will the free people of socialist society, no longer spurred on by economic necessity, voluntarily poison themselves just to feed others’ addictions?

STEFAN

poisoning children for capitalism

Children picking tobacco in the fields of Malawi for consumers far beyond the African country's borders are being poisoned as they absorb up to two cigarette packs' worth of nicotine each day, a children's rights organization said.

The "extremely high levels of nicotine poisoning" produces not only nausea, headaches, dizziness, difficulty in breathing and other symptoms but "long-lasting changes in brain structure and function," London-based Plan International said in a report.

More than 78,000 children, some as young as 5, work on tobacco estates across the southern African country, some up to 12 hours a day for less than 1.7 cents an hour and without protective clothing.Large-tobacco production has shifted from the United States to developing countries like Malawi, where "children are being exposed to exploitative and hazardous working conditions." Malawians are so poor that many families send their children to work in the fields.Tobacco is an important cash crop in Malawi, generating 75 percent of foreign exchange income. More than 80 percent of Malawians are directly or indirectly employed by the tobacco industry, which contributes up to 30 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product.