By Edu Abade
Big tobacco industry, represented by Philip Morris International (PMI), British American Tobacco (BAT) and Japan Tobacco International (JTI), among others have been at the forefront of exploiting wars and crises around the world by prioritizing profits above public health and human life as they sell their harmful products even in war-ravaged regions globally.
This revelation was made at a virtual training for journalists from the print, online and electronic media in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Tobacco Control and Tobacco Control Dashboard Initiative (TCDI) organized by the Renevlyn Development Initiative (RDI) with support from Development Gateway.
In her presentation on Tobacco and Conflict, a United Kingdom (UK)-based tobacco control expert, Oluchi Joy Robert, who cited an opinion piece published in the British Medical Journal blog in October 2024, said the tobacco industry’s history of profiteering from war and crisis spans centuries, adding that there are no winners in war, just terrible pain, destruction and fatalities.
“Nevertheless, the tobacco industry continues to make money by taking advantage of humanitarian crises and human suffering, making money in war-torn places while leaving consumers hungry, homeless and displaced. Since World War I (1914-18), tobacco companies have targeted troops with free cigarettes, direct mail, branded merchandise and “welcome home” events, thereby creating a new market and normalizing smoking.
“In World War II (1939-1945) cigarettes were included in soldiers’ rations, further solidifying smoking popularity. With the onset of the Cold War (1947-1948) tobacco companies started targeting developing countries, expanding their markets.”
She explained that with more recent conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, tobacco companies have been exploiting weak regulations and targeting vulnerable populations. Their approach has only been modified with the distribution of tobacco products and nicotine to soldiers, promotion of tobacco products in countries weakened by conflict and involvement in illicit trade, among others.
She revealed that after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, some large transnational corporations, including tobacco companies said they would pull out of Russia, but PMI, BAT and JTI did not, prioritizing profits over human rights and health.
“In May 2024, JTI announced that it would continue its operations in Russia to satisfy investors, despite previously announcing that they were leaving. In 2022, the two companies JTI and PMI earned $7.9b and $7.4b in profits, respectively and paid hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate taxes to Russia amounting to $206m and $193m respectively.
She also pointed out that in Ukraine, PMI controls 24 percent of the cigarettes market, adding that after temporarily suspending production in 2022, it continued to supply its cigarettes to Ukraine from eight factories located outside the country and by partnering with Imperial Brands which still operates in Ukraine.
In 2024 the UK and Ukraine government agreed to provide cigarettes, nicotine sachets and electronic cigarettes to Ukrainian soldiers who came to train across the Channel. The products were donated by an anonymous international tobacco company, and distributed to the soldiers as part of their rations.
She also recalled that in Syria, the civil war since 2011 has led to forced displacement of over 12 million people and disrupting agriculture, yet the country remains a tobacco exporter. In 2023, the World Bank database recorded Syrian exports of cigarettes to importers Lebanon, Jordan and Qatar.
Also, Yemen, which has been in conflict for nine years and facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises imported 3,361,440kg worth of cigarettes in 2019, mostly from the United Arab Emirate (UAE).
She urged governments and policymakers to take up the tobacco industry’s exploitation of vulnerable situations, including conflicts to market and promote their products, targeting of vulnerable populations, especially youth, women and low-income communities with aggressive marketing tactics, illicit trade, weak regulations and tobacco in humanitarian settings, among others.
The virtual training which was moderated by Aji Mamayong Veronica had prominent speakers including Technical Advisor of TCDI Programme, DRC Prof. Patrick Shamba; Founder, Vital Voices for Africa (VVA), Caleb Ayong; Founder, Being Africa, Achieng Otieno and Executive Director of RDI, Philip Jakpor and select journalists from Nigeria.
Jakpor, who convened the Webinar explained that the training is the first that the group was organising with support from Development Gateway, and that in conceiving it, RDI realized that the media remains key not only in keeping members of the public adequately informed as part of its watchdog role, but also in eliciting robust discourse that ultimately translate into policy responses and actions.
He said that the indispensability of the media to tobacco control is exemplified in the amount of money that the tobacco industry spends annually to market its products using media channels.
He revealed that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S. recently revealed that in that country alone the tobacco industry increased its spending on visibility activities including cigarette advertising and promotions from $7.84 billion in 2020 to $8.06 billion in 2021 and $8.3 billion in 2022.
Jakpor pointed out that tobacco companies have also been linked to social media influencers who covertly promote tobacco products, using subtle company campaigns, adding that in the DRC and other African countries, smoking remains a major public health problem with significant impact on morbidity and mortality from Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs).
Lamenting that tobacco control in DRC hardly makes the news, he noted that the training was necessitated by the need for more robust and educative reports on tobacco control coming from journalists in the DRC and reminded the participants that policy makers rely on what they read, hear or watch to make laws that are rooted in facts and that the task of ensuring that the right information gets to them rests on the media.
In his intervention, Prof. Shamba, who spoke on the current state of tobacco control in the DRC, explained that smoking is a major public health problem in the country with significant impact on morbidity and mortality from NCDs.
He revealed that tobacco control in the DRC has been hampered by lack of specific regulatory measures, lack of detailed provisions for the effective implementation of the 2018 framework law, tobacco industry interference, illicit trade in tobacco products and difficulties in controlling and regulating the parallel market.
To address the issues, he said the media has the task of raising public awareness, informing members of the public about the dangers of tobacco and promoting preventive measures, monitoring industry activities and exposing its attempts to interfere in public policy.
The media, he said, must also support legislative initiatives, and report on progress and challenges in implementing smoke-free legislation, among others and canvassed collective engagement, especially greater collaboration between government, civil society and the media to achieve effective tobacco control measures.
While calling for the development of detailed regulatory measures and setting up of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, he took the participants on a tour of Development Gateway’s TC Dashboard, explaining that the platform warehouses data and information cutting across six thematic areas: Prevalence of Tobacco Use, Tobacco Control Legislation, Tobacco Industry Interference, Tobacco Taxation, Morbidity and Illicit Trade. The dashboard is regularly updated with new information as it becomes available.
In his intervention on Using Data to Make Tobacco Control Stories Relevant, Ayong, said data is information collected, stored and processed for analysis or decision-making. They can be numbers, text, images, or any other form of recorded details.
On their relevance, he stressed the quality of being closely connected or appropriate to a given topic or situation and he added that data determines how useful or meaningful something is in a specific context.
He stressed that in presenting their facts, journalists should ensure such facts must be relatable and speak to emotions, adding for instance, when it is said that approximately 25,000 people die every year from tobacco-related diseases in DRC and that tobacco causes poverty, corruption, health emergency, environment and human rights violations.
On his part, Otieno, whose presentation dwelled on How Tobacco Industry Targets Young People in Africa, said rising tobacco use, especially among African youth is influenced by urbanization and western cultural imports, adding that tobacco and nicotine use have devastating consequences, especially on the health of smokers and represents a growing burden on healthcare systems across the continent.
He revealed that the youth demographics show that Africa has the world’s largest youth population, making it a prime target for tobacco marketing, saying: “There is also a market shift from the west to Africa as a result of declining sales there. The industry is also adopting aggressive marketing tactics, often targeting vulnerable populations. Weak enforcement of tobacco control laws also allow for continued exploitation of loopholes.”
