Markets of Smokeless Tobacco Products: Challenges and Way Forward
01, 09 March 2020
The philosopher and world famous traveler Ibn Battuta wrote his book "The Traveler of Ibn Battuta" regarding the tradition of consuming betel leaf in this subcontinent. But he did not mention about the use of tobacco with the betel leaf in his book. However, the use of Zarda, Gul, Sadapata, Khaini, were part of the social ritual, but in last few decades these products have been proved as harmful ones for health and thus emerge the necessity to work for controlling these items.
According to Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) 2017, 20.6% of adult men (22 million) use smokeless tobacco in Bangladesh, of which 16.2% are male and 24.8% are female. 18.7% of adult men (20 million) use Zarda, of which 14.3% are male and 23% female; and 3.6% of adult man (3.9 million) use gul, of which 3.1% are male and 4.1% women. In addition, Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) 2013, a study was conducted with 3245 high school students (class nine) from 50 schools across the country. It was found 4.5% students use smokeless tobacco, among them 5.9% are male and 2.0% are female adolescents. Despite the uncontrolled use of tobacco, due to several issues, proper steps are yet to be taken to control the consumption.
“Smokeless tobacco product factories are difficult to find, but the market of these products is well organized and conducted in a well-structured mechanism, so strengthening the market monitoring system can reduce tax evasion and implementation of Graphic health Warning with ease”.
Laws and Policies for the Control of Smokeless Tobacco
Smokeless tobacco has been defined in the Smoking and Tobacco Use (Control) Act 2005 (Amendment in 2013). It is possible to implement graphic health warnings and to ban the sale to minors through this Act. Recently, the National Tobacco Control Cell has created a strategy paper on smokeless tobacco control. Besides, tax on smokeless tobacco products is imposed through the Finance Act and VAT Act. However, due to the lack of sufficient inform
Revenue from Smokeless Tobacco
Total 486.5 million BDT revenue was received from smokeless tobacco products during the last 2017- 2018 fiscal years. Of this, the revenue came from Zarda, was 470.1 million BDT and the revenue from Gul was 16.4 million BDT. If all smokeless tobacco companies are brought under proper taxation system, the revenue generated will be increase several hundred times. But in Bangladesh there are hundreds of Zarda and Gul producing companies, which are still outside the tax base.
Smokeless Tobacco has a Specific Market System: TCRC Report
Smokeless tobacco production is small and unorganized, majority of the companies are not registered legally. So it is difficult to find these factories. Factory owners adopt several unfair means to defraud the revenue and laws. These include setting up factories in the household levels, not registering companies and factories, selling of products to other regions then the area of production, transferring the factory for tax evasion, not having the proper name and address of the tobacco company, having multiple products in the same name, having multiple companies under same ownership, inserting false addresses, false VAT registration, trademark and use of fabricated BSTI logos. However, no strong steps has been taken, so far to bring the companies under strong regulation. The government of Bangladesh has made it mandatory to provide graphic health warnings on all tobacco products packages in 2016. Tobacco Control and Research Cell (TCRC) of Dhaka International University adopted a number of activities aimed at implementing the law in order to ensure the graphic health warnings under the auspices of Bloomberg Initiative with the technical assistance of the Union. Under
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