TOBACCO CONTROL LAWS OF BANGLADESH: ANALYSIS OF GAPS AND PROPOSED REFORMS

Executive Summary

Tobacco use is the most serious worldwide public health challenge. Medical science clearly recognizes tobacco as the single most significant cause of mortality and morbidity across the globe. It has assumed the dimension of an epidemic resulting in enormous disability, disease and death. In addition to disease burden, tobacco use results in severe social, economic and environmental burdens. Tobacco and related industries have been employing sustained tactics to attract new generations of tobacco users.

The Honourable Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina while speaking in the South Asian speakers’ summit in Dhaka in 2016 declared, inter alia, “My government will take all possible measures for effective implementation of existing tobacco control laws and in turn we will make our laws fully compliant with FCTC in line with our national priorities to achieve SDGs”.

The latest national survey (GATS 2017) showed that 35.3% (37.8 million) of adults over 15 years in Bangladesh currently use tobacco. Tobacco is the direct cause of over 126,000 deaths every year in Bangladesh (13.5% of ALL deaths from any cause, Health cost study 2018). According to Tobacco Atlas 2020, total death was recorded as 161,253.

There are currently about 1.5 million adults suffering from tobacco-attributable illness in Bangladesh, and more than 61,000 children (below age 15) are suffering from diseases caused by exposure to secondhand smoking.

The death and disease caused by tobacco has an economic impact as well. Smoking-attributable Health Expenditure (direct healthcare costs attributable to tobacco) in Bangladesh is estimated to be BDT 83.9 billion annually, 76% of which was paid by tobacco users’ households and 24% was financed through the public health sector budget, representing nearly 9% of total government health expenditure in the fiscal year 2018-19.

Bangladesh has been conscious of the harmful effects of tobacco use and the efforts of the tobacco industries to attract new, young users. Bangladesh was one of the founding signatory Parties of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), the first coordinated global effort to reduce tobacco use. Bangladesh signing the treaty on 16 June 2003 and ratifying it on 14 June 2004. The WHO FCTC then entered into force on February 27, 2005. The treaty requires Parties to implement evidence-based measures to reduce tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke. When effectively implemented, the WHO FCTC is a fundamental tool to reduce the devastating global consequences of tobacco products on health, lives, economies and environments. With 182 Parties as of May 2020, the WHO FCTC is one of the most widely adopted treaties in the United Nations system.

Bangladesh followed this by adopting The Smoking and Usage of Tobacco Products (Control) Act 2005, (SUTPCA 2005) which was further updated in 2013.

The Act, together with its implementing Rules, bans smoking in some public places, the sale of tobacco products to minors, and most direct and indirect advertising of tobacco and tobacco use. The Act also specifies the mandatory display of pictorial health warning on tobacco packs.

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