the FCTC: A Threat to Tobacco Growing Communities?

The FCTC: A Threat to Tobacco Growing Communities?
Multinational cigarette companies have sought to publicly link themselves with tobacco farmers
as a means of putting a “human face” on the industry. A document from a major 1985 Philip
Morris International meeting on smoking and health issues, for example, details the company’s
efforts to “enlist the help of our natural allies such as the trade [sic] and growers” (emphasis in
original) to oppose tobacco tax increases and other anti-smoking measures. The document
states that “we have already helped organize growers in a number of countries” and that “we
intend to do more on tax and health issues with the growers in Europe.”5 Another Philip Morris document from 1989 suggests the creation of a “global agro-lobby” citing as some of the
benefits the “purity of the agro-lobby”, “useful Third-World bias” and that agricultural issues are
the “weak flank of W.H.O.”6 By convincing farmers that the public health community and WHO
are out to destroy their source of livelihood, the companies have been able to enlist farmers’
opposition to all sorts of regulations.
Because tobacco companies are the sole purchasers of tobacco, individual farmers are
reluctant to publicly criticize the practices of the industry out of fear of retaliation. In fact, many
of the organizations purporting to speak for farmers, such as the International Tobacco Growers
Association (ITGA), rarely, if ever, criticize the tobacco industry for actions which might imperil
the economic security of tobacco farmers. Rather, they reserve their opposition for tobacco
control efforts such as the FCTC, whose impact will not be felt by tobacco farmers for many
generations.
Even under the most optimistic tobacco control scenarios, global tobacco consumption is
projected to increase over the next three decades. According to the World Bank, if current
trends continue, the absolute number of smokers will increase from the current 1.1 billion to 1.6
billion in 2025 (due in part to an increase in global population), even as overall prevalence falls
in some countries. While future declines in consumption will clearly reduce the number of
tobacco farming jobs in the future, this will occur over many generations.7 There is simply no
realistic scenario under which anyone farming tobacco today will be put out of work as a result
of the passage of the FCTC. Opposition to the FCTC is about protecting the profits of the
tobacco industry, not the livelihoods of tobacco farmers.
A much greater threat to the viability of tobacco growers are the tobacco companies
themselves. By encouraging more and more countries to cultivate tobacco, by pressuring for the
elimination of price support systems such as in the United States, by spending tens of millions
of dollars designing cigarettes containing less tobacco, and by playing off countries against
each other, the companies are attempting to drive down the global price of tobacco leaf in order
to ensure continued profits for the companies.